When I asked about tools, I guess I meant what type of fork. The basket ones are so handy for shaking out clean bedding. The regular kind makes my cleaning take much longer for me.
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MPS, you are a sick person. :lol::lol::lol:
When I was self-boarding, I used about 4 inches of pelleted bedding; horse was a fairly neat mare, with 24/7 access to her sand paddock. I also did the stalls and paddocks (maybe 15ā x50ā, more or less) for a large, messy horse and two maliciously messy minis who hid everything and scattered it evenly throughout their shared stall and peeād in different spots every day; the latter two stalls were bedded with about 4+ inches of shavings. My routine was to take out the obvious pee (down to the mat) and poop, and then throw all the bedding against one wall, remove the poop that rolled down the mound, then flip it against another wall, and remove what poop rolled down that mound. It took me about 10 minutes to do the pelleted stall, sometimes less if all the poop was outside; and it took a good 20+ minutes each to clean the other two stalls (not including time to the manure pile and back, getting more shavings, etc). I know people say they can clean a stall in eight minutes, but, Iām an otherwise pretty sedentary 57-yo and didnāt grow up doing stalls, and I just could never do a good job in such a short time, and would have been miserable trying. I didnāt have to hurry; Iām sure if I were āon the clockā I might have been able to be alittle faster.
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They have to make two trips to a spreader and then lift the full tubs into the spreader for every stall? Iām a pretty fast mucker but have crud awful deadlift strength. By the third round of picking up a full tub, Iād be moving like molasses.
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before retiring it took about 20 minutes to clean five stalls and maybe the one paddock as they were cleaned prior to going to work.
After retirement, 90 minutes to two hours for the same five stalls (but might check all five paddocks)ā¦ speed is not needed, pet horse as it comes in to see whatās happeningā¦ run Socks out of the feed room, go kill flies for a while. see why the minies are being such a bother, check on the cat, sweep the floor, look at the calendar to see when the farrier is coming, check the horses in the pasture ā¦find them is the question as the bays blend into the shadows ā¦ then say to oneās self that was a job well done and return to the computer (and air conditioning)
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OP, your stall bedding and cleaning time estimate (4 stalls in an hour) sounds reasonable to me, but I can imagine that if youāre getting staff who previously worked at facilities that used minimal bedding and just stripped stalls each day, they may literally not have the skill/technique for sifting and banking in their repertoire. I remember learning how to clean banked stalls and it was a process. I now occasionally show someone how I clean stalls (and these are people who have cleaned a lot of stalls) and sometimes I am literally showing them how to hold the fork to be able to sift and toss bedding as they clean. Only you will be able to determine if your staff is wasting time, but give them time to adjust.
I agree that lifting a muck bucket would slow me down over time. Itās tiring! And messy.
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At one point in college, I worked at a big barn and had it down to about 5 minutes/stallā¦ for 38 10x10 stalls. Maybe 8 minutes for the really gross horses. Sawdust, mats, dirt floor underneath. Stalls mucked every day, manure and all wet spots (mucked all the way to the mat) removed, still-clean sawdust leveled out. Horses were inside for about 16 hours/day. No banking. New sawdust was added 2-3 times/week with a bucket tractor. They used a deep bedding method and there was probably close to 12" of sawdust in some of the stalls. The barn did not smell at all.
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Thatās four minutes (and a few seconds) per stall. Are your horses turned out for a significant portion of the day and night?
