My dry lots or sacrifice paddocks are crushed stone base so I wouldnt be using a drag, right now I use a fork. In the pastures I had hopped to drag them instead of having to pick them. It takes about 45 -1 hour per horse picking them so was hoping to save some time. This will be my part time job so I dont mind to a degree. If I take the three mares ontop of my 2 horses and dont take the other boarder who has been asking then I will have 5 horses here. And for 5 months in the summer I will also have up to a max of 3 foals in addition. I would keep the mares and foals seperate so I would have to use the dry paddocks and pick them. Probably would keep my 2 in the dry paddocks and the mares and foals on the pasture. Does it sound more reasonable on the size of pasture that way? Probably the equiviliant of 4.5 horses on 3 1 acre pastures.
I think you will find that it will take a VERY long time for the pile to melt.
It tends to freeze into a huge ice blob that you are stuck with until it melts. Kind of like the huge pile that ends up in the parking lots of retail establishments that are still there in July.
Sand that grows grass well? Because some sand is great for drainage but not so great for growing grass.
I have four horses on a 100x200ish drylot with nice footing 24/7. I pick poop 2x/day while I feed using feedbags. I can get the drylot clean in the 20 min that it takes the horses to snarf every last morsel. It helps a lot that the footing is good compacted limestone and that I have mats in the sheds and around the hay feeder. That combination makes picking with metal fork easy. The 2x/day frequency means the piles are mostly intact. I live in Wisconsin. We have winterā¦frozen poop is not so bad!
Weāve had the horses home for 4yrs. Started with only two and slowly added. In the beginning I thought I would scrape periodically with the skid steer, but it becomes a mud mess without regular manure removal and I found I was inadvertently removing too much footing.
Your grass paddocks will have to be limited to a couple hours a day, max, or you wonāt have grass. Thatās entertainment time, not real food/nutrition time. Your stocking rate is too high to let those paddocks rest long enough for healthy regrowth after being eaten down to a minimum
People manage more horses on fewer acres, so it IS possible, but the higher the stocking rate the more labor-intensive things are on a daily basis.
IMHO the ideal from an overall perspective is small paddocks attached to each stall for in-out ability while āstalledā, a bigger dry lot for multiple horse turnout, and some small grass paddocks for entertainment. The āmare motelā setup makes it easier to pick up manure daily
If you drag manure in recently vacated grass paddocks, you should wait at least 2 weeks in temps 85* or higher before putting horses back out there. Itās that heat which kills them, not just time.
What sort of snow cover do you typically get? Horses will paw through snow, and they can dig up grass in a big hurry.
Cherry Hillās Horsekeeping on Small Acreage is a great resource
I think you would spend wise money hiring someone who plans horse facilities for a living. They will find ways to make maximum use out of any and all space.
Yeah because there is a river near by all the houses in this area are sand for 200ft down with topsoil on top. It grows grass, not here yet because it was forest and I cleared it. I will have to bring some topsoil in next year and seed in the fall.
And yeah I know those banks well around here too lol.
Thank you ! this is so helpful. How on earth are you so quick?? Lol I do at least 1 hour 2 times a day. But I dont have my mats down around the feeder yet and the footing isnt compacted everywhere.the compacted areas are easiest and I could see scraping the mats down with a shovel easy too. That gives me hope for my paddocks! My stuff is similar to what crushed limestone would be I was told. But maybe I will do the other in limestone if I can find it. I also use a plastic forkā¦ maybe metal will help. I think I saw one at tsc. Normally I only see the plastic.
I will give that a read. Thank you for all the tips! Yeah there is a stable up the road with 4 paddocks equaling about 1 acre and 20 stalls. They are full. But wow the mud is knee deep. Not something I want. My dry paddock stayed nice and clean and we had the wettest fall this area has ever had. At that time I had 3 horses.
By mare motel, are you referring to the stalls with attached single paddocks? We get tons of snow. Without googling I am not sure but it will get to like 3 or 4 feet I think?
My husband has requested I ask you to come here and and teach a clinic on fast paddock cleaning. XD kidding of course. But I got a kick out of that.
I have a large dry lot with well-compacted stonedust and most of the time it is very easy and fast to pick, which like @NaturalSelection I do while the horses eat their grain from nose bags. Itās not as easy when the manure is frozen or partially buried in snow, in the sandy area that can freeze into lumps, or when the horses run around and grind it into the footing. Even so, I would not want to pick 8 horsesā manure out of it every dayā¦
If I wanted to keep 8 horses on that acreage I would plan to stall them with small runs about half the time (I have 12āx12ā stalls, each of which has a run about 15āx30ā, and the runs make a big difference in the horsesā quality of life and the time I spent cleaning stalls). I also would avoid a turnout system that only works if they all get along, especially if you will be boarding other peopleās horses.
I am really thinking you are planning to have more horses than you have room for. Mares and foals need space to run around, be together, so that is 4, to socialize into civil young horses. Running builds bone and muscle. Dry lotting them is restrictive mentally and physically.
4 adult horses in that dry lot is probably too many and no place to get away if needed. That crowding often adds up in Vet bills.
Your manure should actually be spread on your land to improve it. Sand is particularly needy of organic matter to entice the micro organisms living in the soil, which benefits soil to grow pastures. Composting manure is nice, but takes up space you can use for grazing. I spread daily manure on an unused (at that moment) pasture. I also rotate my small pastures every couple days, so they never have 2 full weeks of rest as JB suggests. We worm using fecal checks, and the horses seem to be mostly wormless. The manure spreading has really improved my pastures, mostly by adding organic matter to the soil. Horse manure is poor fertilizer, so I get fields soil-tested and apply spring fertilizer to balance what the plants needs to grow well.
I do plan on our 8-9 horses getting their main source of food from the pastures over the growing season. We have about 11 acres they can graze, all divided up. I will supplement hay during a drought, like last summer. They are stalled during day hours because of insects. They like being in out of the bugs and sun.
As a person WANTING excellent grazing, I do not let them ever graze it to the dirt before moving them. I TRY to move them, then mow, when grass gets down to about 5 inches. But with good rain, I mow grass at heights between 8 -10 inches, or before it can set seed. I mow high, never shorter than 5 inches. This length protects the roots from sun, does not shock plants with major leaf removal, helps develop strong grass roots and slows any water running across the fields. I mow by grass heights, which can mean weekly or further apart. Grass trimmings left on the field actually add nutrients back to the soil, a bonus! I have nice pastures these days, so i use a finish mower that cuts everything at the same height. It has a side chute that spreads clippings in a wide, thin layer that dries quickly. So no windrows after heavy grass mowing!
I do not have an actual dry lot, we use the unfenced riding arena, 90ft x 300ft plus a very wide edge, with sandy footing for that. It is about an acre in that entire paddock lots oF play room for 4-5 big horses to run. The other 4 horses have an acre of undeveloped ground (muddy) as their sacrifice spring turnout. No grass after winter nibbling. They all get turned out in those 2 places as the frost comes out of the ground in spring. I take a while getting them all used to grass again, developing stomach flora that can digest the new grass, to prevent foundering anyone. We start with 15 minutes a day, build up over 6 weeks to full turnout time. Other people use much less time, but stomach flora only grows so fast, canāt hurry it. What worked in the past for your horses MAY NOT work this year! Seen that happen a number of times!! Not worth the chance of founder to me, so we slowly acclimate to grass each year.
Sorry, I do not have time to pick up poop daily. Stalls are cleaned daily. Not going to be trying to pry up frozen pieces. I use a chain harrow to drag in warm weather, for breaking things up to dry out well. You do have to figure in money return from boarders at a rate more than your wages. Otherwise farm turns into a money eater, you cannot break even. Hay costs, fuel costs, dirt put back after scraping, grain, seed, fertilizer fence and barn repairs expenses, should be charged ABOVE your wages (lots of hours doing hand picking, fixing things), added together, to see how much you should be charging. Horsekeeping is not you subsidizing your boarder horses!!
It sounds like you get much more snow than us. I still pick 2x/day when there is snow cover, but it I canāt get the wheelbarrow through the drifts, I just chuck to poop over the fence into the resting pasture or hay field.
I will also say that my husband gives me a hard look when I start making noises about a fifth horse. From the maintenance perspective, I can manage picking for four with a single wheelbarrow load. Five would probably mean each picking session would require multiple trips and would throw off the magic timing of the feeding and picking session. Plus I donāt actually need a fifth horse.
I know you plan to feed hay year round, which is good. What might help with removal is trying to get them to poop in a certain area? Mine tend to go together which helps when we clean the dry lot they are in overnight.
Picking manure on an acre will be extremely time consuming and I donāt see how even with rotation that you will keep much grass cover in them and they will eventually be just dirt paddocks. If your soil is sandy that will be good for footingā¦
We kept 3 horses on 1 1/2 acres total year round( sandier- well drained) and while they had no grass to speak of the footing stayed good and we just drug the area a couple times a year to break things up and mowed for weeds during the growing seasonā¦
I did remove manure in the barn and around where they were fed hay and we spread that on our hay field.
Twenty horses on one acre?
This is, actually, a bit hard to imagine. Doesnāt your area have rules about - say - the distance manure piles have to be from wells, or any kind of livestock zoning laws? Where do people ride? And why would anybody board in such a place to begin with?
I think I must be missing something here.
I meant 1 acre of paddocks 
We are rural in unorganized here. No rules about anything. In the city, 20 minutes away, there is. But not here.
They have an indoor and outdoor and viewing lounge. Very nice place but knee deep mud in tiny paddocks.
Yeah I am not sure how the ground will hold up but itās pretty good in the areas around the barn and such that have had time to pack. I only really wanted grass to hold the ground together since it wont be enough to eat. Its nice for them to graze too. But I think they will be staying in the paddocks primarily and just rotating out on the grass a few hours a day now that I have been chatting on here. Iāll figure out by trial and error how long I can get away with. And then stalls at night. That should make manure management a little easier at least.
And all 20 are turned out on that acre at once, or theyāre just stalled all the time? Is there at least a Eurociser or something?
(This is completely OT, I know; Iām just perversely curious.)
Will you be foaling out these mares yourself? Do you have experience with mares and foals?
There is always the possibility that one or more of the mares will not get along so youāll have to have a contingency plan if you expect to keep them all together.
Farms with large acreage can put mares and foals together, but if you crowd them you may have serious trouble and injured foals.
@goodhors Off topic but what is your secret to not ending up with very fat horses? Iād love to run my pasture longer but I struggle as the horses just get so fat.
This spring/early summer Iāve let it grow longer, then had my little cows through to take off the juicy bits, then the horses to pick through whatās left. So far this seems better - the horses donāt eat the rough stalky bits as closely and I seem to be able to keep more grass length. Weāve only been here a year so itās a learning process.
There are numerous mechanical manure pick up machines. These can work on all types of surfaces. Just look for āpasture rake or mechanical manure removalā and you will be down a rabbit hole.
The issue here is that you can technically put as many horses on your grounds as you choose, but the old adage of a horse per acre is minimum, is true. Often at the end if the year, I tally up what I spent on feed, hay, gravel, water, fencing, repairs, tractor, implements, etc and then factor in our time @ minimum wage. I then realize I could board them for close to the same amount. Would the care be the same? Who knows! Would I be able to sit on my porch and watch them graze? No! Would I be dry in my house instead of slogging out to the barn? YES! Then I would have time to ride, 
