I am cleaning 5 12x24 and 13 12x12 dirt floor stalls with deep wood chips in about 2.5 hours. Does that seam like a reasonable amount of time to you all? The stalls are not very well maintained, I just started 2 days ago. They have very packed wet spots that have been neglected for some time. You need a shovel to even get “some” of the wet spots up and even then its still shotty. Also not all the horses are turned out during cleaning time and three of which are stallions(12x24 stalls). One stud is extremely invasive and pushy and makes me very nervous, so I try to spend as little time with him as possible. I’m stressed that I’m not doing a good enough job. I am not very experienced with cleaning stalls with bedding anyway, but It seams more difficult than it needs to be. I start at about 3-3:30pm till about 6:45 and that’s with dropping feed for about 47 horses. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
I’m not an expert by any means but that is a lot of stalls. Deeper bedding takes longer, as do larger stalls.
While you may become more efficient as you get to know the individual horses, 2 1/2 hours to much 18 stalls (almost 23 if you count the large ones as two) seems pretty efficient to me. :yes:
It would take me a lot longer than that, but I’m old.
I am assuming you are faire new to horses as well as to this job. I don’t like the idea of you mucking stalls with a horse especially a stallion that you don’t feel safe with. Can you move him into an empty stall while you muck?
It would take me a lot longer! Do you have stall freshener available to put on the wet spots? From the sounds of it the stalls must smell a bit like pee. Any way you can clean while horses are turned out? Really not best to clean while they are in the stalls especially with stallions. Wet and soiled bedding should be removed and more bedding added to replace what is removed.
Wow, it can take me 2.5 hours to clean 3 stalls! (Includes cleaning buckets and replacing hay.) How do people do it so fast without just shoveling everything out? I try not to waste the clean shavings (since I’m the one paying for them!), so I do more picking through than just scooping willy-nilly. It is quicker when the stalls are dirtier, because I can just shovel out more, but I guess I need to step up my picking-out game!
I’ve mucked stalls most of my life and I’m damn fast AND thorough - what you’re describing as able to do is a recipe for burnout. I think you’re going TOO FAST. :winkgrin: (that’s a compliment, btw).
And I agree, don’t be in a stall with a stallion loose. Get him out or tie him up or something.
There are lots of good YouTube videos on how to clean a horse stall. Watch and learn.
That being said, I agree that you should NOT be cleaning stallions’ stalls while the horses are still in them. It’s a recipe for disaster. Your employer needs to find an alternative, such as turning out the stallions while you’re working or putting them in different stalls. Depending on their level of training, it may not even be safe for you to be handling them at all (i.e., moving them to other stalls).
2.5 hours doesn’t sound like enough time to do a thorough job on that many stalls unless you have automatic equipment (4-wheeler, poop sifter, etc.) You don’t mention this in your post.
Good luck and insist on your own safety!
5 12X24 stalls is the equivalent of 10 12x12 if my math is correct 12X24 =288X5=1440 sqft divided by 144=10 So you are doing 23 stalls in 2.5 hours. How much are they paying you? I’ll up it.
I don’t use shavings find them to be a PITA to use, muck and expensive. To each their own on this. I only bed on straw because I can. In my lots of experience handling a pitch fork. It takes around 15 minutes to clean a straw bedded stall well. Water and hay.
Horse in the stall can and does add time to this. Yes, as others have pointed out this can be a risky way of doing it. I and all barns run by pros ALWAYS have a swing stall available to put a stalled horse in while mucking. Time is money to anyone that runs a tight efficient ship. A horse in the stall adds $$ to the cost. 5 extra minutes a day per stall X 365 = 30 1/2 extra hours a year per stall.
But more importantly for employee safety and the horses. If either one gets hurt that can and will add a lot of extra $$$.
WOW ! I hope they are paying you a ton of $
are you working hourly rate or by the job ?
Stallions need to be placed in a different stalls while cleaning.
- this does not sound like a safe, nor long term job anyone would want … too much… given time with feeding too… IMHO
Be careful and look for a better job.
Good lord, 5-7 minutes per 12’x12’ area with deep bedding, dirt floors, and poorly maintained? You’re cruising! I bet it is way more difficult than it needs to be, but that’s because of the BO/BM, not because of anything you’re doing. Does this farm have a high turnover rate for muckers/feeders? Because that sounds miserable.
I hate cleaning stalls with horses in them, no matter how much of a perfect gentleman the horse is. Move the horses still inside to another stall while you clean theirs.
I feed and turn out 13 horses, put on fly masks/take off blankets, set up grain for dinner, clean their stalls (sawdust bedding), dump and fill their buckets (two in each stall), fill the troughs, and put hay in their stalls for the evening. It takes me 3 hours to do that and I’m flying. I can’t get done any faster. The horses are in overnight.
If they were on shavings, I’d quit.
8 minutes per stall with shavings as bedding seems impossible, especially with 5 huge stalls, and some with horses in them.
If this includes adding new bedding, doing water and hay, as well as emptying muck buckets, it really seems impossible unless it’s a really haphazard job.
I have one very tidy mare, one stall churning mare, and one in between, on pellets, and it takes me about an hour to get the stalls completely ready for them to come in. I am very thorough, but still…
At my barn (24 12x12 stalls with mats, small flake shavings, hay nets, and automatic waterers), we need 16ish man hours per day in the winter (night time stalling and blanket changes), and 12ish man hours per day in the spring/fall/summer (daytime stalling) to complete all chores. I have no idea how you are doing what you are doing in that small time span.
Wow! You are very fast! And if the other cleaners are working as fast (or faster), that could explain the lack of upkeep. I generally budget 5-6 stalls per hour (cleaning, shavings, and topping off (but not cleaning) waters) with a decent setup. Stalls certainly can be done faster, but I’ve found that few people can do stalls well enough under 10 minutes that they don’t deteriorate over time.
I’m also so slow! My stalls also have dirt floors, and I use straw. It probably takes me 1.5 hrs to do them from start to finish. Which is why I rarely have time to ride both horses in winter (fortunately they are both out 24/7 spring-fall). Maybe I need to go watch @gumtree . Or I wonder if mats would make things more efficient?
That’s very fast. I do have a 12 x 24 and the rest are 12 x 12. But to be honest, just because the stall is bigger, that doesn’t mean that that horse poops and pees more! So it takes the same amount of time in my case for the big stall. 
2.5 hours to clean 3 stalls? 1.5 to clean 2? There’s no way, I literally would not do it; how you people are doing that day after day I do not understand.
I remember a woman in Ohio with a small boarding barn who was constantly looking for stall cleaners. My friend did it for like a week and said F this. There was a whopping six stalls and the stalls were apparently kept bedded like knee deep and the horses NEVER got turnout, so it took ~45 minutes to clean one stall - and I mean to clean the stall, not do any other task. No wonder she couldn’t keep help!
Too fast unless the horses are extremely clean and poop all in one corner. I would say you are missing a lot and will pay for it later.
I think that’s acceptable depending on what all your tasks include. For reference, I do 7 dirt floor stalls and 6 concrete floor stalls bedded in shavings, refill waters, and spread the manure, in 80 minutes. That does not include the time it takes for me to feed & hay 16, sweep up the aisle, or turn everybody in/out. That’s strictly stalls and waters.
If you’re concerned about the pace of your work, speak with whomever is overseeing your job. If they think you’re moving too slow, it’s apparent that they have low standards of stall cleanliness, and I would look for a different barn to work at. Others are right in that once you get into a routine and learn each horse’s stall habits, things will move quicker.
