Wanting to see ideas for cheap as in nothing in concrete or real roofed fully free or salvaged materials manure storage areas or sawdust shaving storage ideas!!! Leaning towards ideas with pallets but any ideas would be great!!!
When we used to get stall sawdust by the ton we just had it dumped near the barn and threw a tarp over it. Worked fine.
As far as manure depends what you are going to do with it. Spread on fields, compost on site, or haulaway? Leachate is a problem with manure compost piles so a concrete floor is good. Otherwise I don’t see why you can’t keep 3 piles going under tarps, one active and two composting. If you don’t have a tractor I don’t know how you will turn it though.
It would help to know your area. None of what you mention has cost me a dime.
We did a bin with pallets for manure. Sink t posts, then slip pallets over them. It was maybe 16’ deep and 6’ wide? A single large pallet made up the end. Tractor and snow mobile stores are good places to score pallets.
You could easily do the same for shavings, just cover with a tarp. Or switch to pellets–they’re SO much easier to store.
For manure ‘bins’ I bought a roll of 4’ fence and cut it into four pieces. Lined it with reinforced plastic roofing underlayment that we had around here already. Optional, but it will keep the wire from rusting as quickly. So 25’ of fence makes about an 8’ circle, I set one T-post and tie the wire to it with hay string. I put them around tree stumps that I want to rot, or near the garden, or where ever. Fill it with manure and leave it for a year or so. You can remove the wire after a while, if you need it for a new bin, the pile will stay more or less in place.
For sawdust storage I assume you have it delivered in a dump truck or trailer? That will determine the location. I’d probably get a really big tarp and set some posts at the corners to tie it to, trying to keep the shavings dry and from blowing away. Pull the tarp back, have them dump, then re-cover it. As you can scavenge materials, make some walls around it, but make a back wall only if you are not using a front-loader to scoop up the shavings.
If you are using a front loader, people will be tempted to push the shavings up against the back wall to get more in the bucket, and that’s just going to push over anything but but a well reinforced wall, so… don’t bother, just do sides and then try to put it where you can get to both ends with the tractor. They can scoop from both ends and not destroy your walls.
Why store it when you can just spread it. Add fertilizer and lime and save yourself lots of time and labor. Your pasture will thank you.
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I am in east tn. Looking to basically store the manure till tax time when i can get a little spreader and then just spread it on the yard where the horses arent pastured.
I dont know of anywhere u can buy pellets in bulk 
thats why im looking for shaving storage ideas, so i can quit buying bagged from tsc lol
Because i cant afford a spreader right now. Id have to get a mini one to pull w my riding lawn mower lol. Thats at least till tax time away 
we dont have a tractor so it will definetly be wheel barrow and elbow grease w a shovel loading lol
Do i have to turn it? Cant i just have three piles n let them rot down n then when i get a spreader in the spring just spread that though?
You can buy a pallet of pellets from anywhere that sells them. TSC offers…5%? 10%? off the price if you buy a pallet at a time. You might be able to get even more off if you buy multiple pallets at once. Check your local private feed stores, too, because they might have a better deal on bulk purchasing.
Manure in BIG piles. I considered building bins, but they would fill up too fast, so now I have 3 piles. I turn with the tractor every couple of months. I spread composted manure when the weather permits (there is no future in spreading manure in the wind- too much blow back and you end up eating too much!). Shavings purchased by the bag, pellets by the pallet which are stored either in the barn or in a 9 X 11 stall in the shed. Looking at buying a used shipping container (small one) down the road for shavings and pellets, but trying to figure out a good place to put one due to land contours–would probably have to have a pad poured to level the ground for it. You can let your piles sit and age, but turning them really speeds up the process.
How many horses? When I had 3-5 at home I would spread my manure by hand as I dumped the wheelbarrow. I had one of the large ones with two wheels. Granted it wasn’t in a pasture as it’s hard to spread evenly. We had farm roads/trails that I would dump off of at the edge of the woods. The only restriction was the manure had to be so many feet from the well.
Pellets are sold by the bag or wrapped ton at any big feed supply store. They load them on your truck or trailer with a forklift and you unload them by hand (that’s what we do). Ours are stored in our barn on a pallet. Do fluff them up with water, don’t just pour in and leave-- you and your horse will feel like you are on marbles!
Spreading manure really depends on how much space you have, and if you have a protected water source that said manure can run off into. I can’t spread-not enough space and a stream at the back of our property is a salmon source. So, we built a DIY manure bin from power poles the local power district left for us as they were replacing them, totally free! Pallets on Tposts work too. Turning it will make it compost faster, but you can just leave it, too. Pelleted bedding breaks down infinitely faster than shavings and takes up much less space in the bin.
Right now I’m just doing my manure behind a long pile of dirt that we have from where we got an area leveled out. I have a creek on the far side of my property but here in East Tennessee people put cows where they can drink out of the creeks and poop in it kind of sad but at the same time I guess it works in my favor I do have the horses fenced off from the stream though because I am just not okay with them pooping in my creak lol. I would put the manure bin three-sided whenever I build on the very far end of my property as far away from the creek as possible. I think I’m going to have to go with the T post and pallet route I don’t have water ran out to my barn so pelleted bedding really would not be an option right now and then I would have the Shaving storage closer to the barn I’m probably in front of the area where I have the manure so if there is any runoff it won’t run down into the shavings
Totally agree with this! I have a three bin system and each bin is about 16’x8’. With four horses, I can fit a YEAR worth of manure and bedding in there. They’re stalled overnight on pelleted bedding. By the time a bin is full and I move it to the next one, the back part is usually pretty much done cooking. Another three months of sitting and the entire section is reduced in size by about half and just crumbly black soil.
We have some other piles around that the previous owners left, three years ago. They used shavings and it’s STILL not broken down.
I like that idea!!! But out of 3.63 acres i only have about an acre or so fenced off right now and the barn is inside said fence. Id like to have something to stash it in and cover it up so it will break down. I have a small pony and maybe will have a large pony for a friend so 2 to 2.5 manure tubs a day. Hoping to find a used small spreader i can spread it around the field i havent fenced yet or on the perimeter of the property which is nice grass but my neighbor has mowed it for hay for yrs so we didnt try to fence right to the prop edge. Its cattle hay so im hoping he wont give me any crap…haha… about spreading it on that side of the fence.
Do you soak your pelleted bedding, or just use the pellets dry? Last batch of pellets I bought (thank goodness I didn’t buy a pallet of them) breakdown into actual DUST!
OP- with the size of acreage, spreading manure will be problematic if you also intend to graze. Shavings take a long time to break down when simply spread out thinly. I’d think creating a pile then spreading composted manure in the fall might be doable. How many horses are you talking about?
