Weekly schedule of horse management

[MXL]

If This topic has been covered in detail, then please just send the thread notice. I am a full-time professional with a family and a farm with multiple horses. As my job has limited, or rather I have allowed my job to limit, the hours I spend riding, etc, I wanted advice on a base line schedule, much like the cleaning people advocate “zone cleaning.”

First, preemptively: my horses receive superior and regular vet and farrier care. They have fecal tests regularly and are treated accordingly. They re all on schedule with all inoculations and receive quality feed and hay.

So my question is not HOW to care for my horses. I do that.
But my question is what weekly schedules do other women, who work fullltime, employ to get everything done? I’m just thinking of the “zone” cleaning house maintenance model. Do any of you have your own weekly schedules you maintain? That you’ll share?

Again, if this topic has been addressed before, please point me to URL. Apologies for not knowing best search terms.

I don’t need basic farm/horse care. I am interested in: How all of you, working women, parse out work to make it seem regular. Just as trying to clean all the house in one day, it can be overwhelming to attempt to clean all the horses and all the leather and replace fence posts and mow overgrown pastures and weed tack up areas and hang fly strips and and and… Every barn owner reading this knows exactly what I’m saying. And I have fewer than a handful of horses… I know there are people out there who have figured this out.

I’m seeking models for breaking all this work down into weekly, daily goals. Thank you.

[EquestrianRunner]

I don’t have any tips but I am very interested in seeing what other people use!!!

I don’t know if this is helpful, but I love google calendar for my own life-- not so sure though how it would work in this situation

[TheJenners]

Well since I don’t use zone cleaning in the house, I don’t really have a schedule for the barn/farm maintenance either. I keep things tidy and do little things as I come to them. Ie, cut a bale, throw away the string immediately; don’t let feed bags pile up (I actually recycle them, so they get rolled into a bag); if I’m waiting for a trough to fill I’ll sweep the aisle or the feed room; as I sweep I knock down cobwebs I can reach with the broom; etc. I admit I’m pretty bad about cleaning tack, as in I do it annually…maybe… Everything else like mowing and weed whacking isn’t done on a schedule but as-needed. Ditto fence repair. I’m not going to schedule it in a calendar unless it’s needed, and if fence repair is needed then it generally needs to get done PDQ.

[FreshAir]

First, my new motto is “you can’t be good at everything” so I delegate housework. I am at the barn at 7 to feed, turnout, muck two stalls. If I am moving along, out of there by 8. Mondays is a no ride, must work day for me.
The next thing you need to figure out is - when are you best at riding. The longer I wait through the day, the more likely I am to put it off. So if I can get it done in the morning before turnout, all the better. The rest of the stuff I fit in - grain store as needed. Mowing is delegated, shavings are delivered. You can’t do everything yourself and be successful. The days I am most mad at myself are when I schedule too many work/social appointments and feel like I am doing lots of things and none of them well.

[ElementFarm]

I work ~50 hr weeks, plus a 45 min each way commute every day.
I have 7 horses, three of whom are in regular work, and DH does help with the bigger barn work, but I do most of the day-to-day stuff.

Summer schedule:
M-F, AM: ride 1 horse at first light (gives me time to ride 30 mins), bring in 4 horses, feed grain.
-work
PM: ride 1 horse, feed dinner, turn out. Then do barn (stalls, water, set up hay for AM)
I rotate which horses I ride AM and PM so they get equal work. If DH isn’t home and there’s no expectation of me feeding HIM dinner, I will often ride 2 horses PM.

Sat and Sunday are the days I do “catch up”.
I try to ride 2-3 horses each day.
I also do water trough scrubbing, non emergency fence repairs, buy grain, drag the ring and re-set jumps, decobweb the barn and pick/drag pastures (usually 1-3 of these things in addition to buying grain. not all every weekend.) And then work any other farm projects we’ve been meaning to do (painting, construction).

I don’t have an indoor, so my riding is weather dependent (I also don’t ride when it’s super hot, so I often don’t have any PM rides in July/Aug). DH is a good sport about helping and generally does the mowing and some of the dragging. And we do bigger projects together (like fencing in a new pasture). There are weekends where illness, weather, or family activities mean I get little or no “other” stuff done. But if I keep the barn tidy during the week, there’s usually nothing desperate on weekends.

I’m lucky that two of my riding horses are old pros, and need little “schooling”, just fitness and practice work and then a focused spin up for any horse show. I do have a pro come ride my greenie once a week.

Right now I’m traveling for work and DH (he should get lots of “D’s” in front of the H) is doing ALL the barn work for an extended time. I know the barn isn’t as tidy as I would keep it, and he doesn’t scrub water buckets daily, but the horses are happy and cared for, and does a great job. I’m so lucky to have him.

Caveat: while the barn is generally tidy, my house is often not. I try to cram in a vacuuming and declutter on weekends, but thorough cleaning is usually only done prior to out-of-town visitors. I WISH I could afford a 1-2/week house cleaning service, but I can’t–I have 7 horses

[seabreeze]

I made up a schedule last year that “sort of” worked. On lesson nights, after returning home after hauling out for my lesson, I did one “big” barn chore like making a repair, taking down cobwebs, cleaning unused tack, etc. I chose that evening because it is a “sacrifice” evening–no cooking dinner, no other work at home scheduled due to the time devoted to hauling out.

I would choose one day that I wasn’t going to ride to make a feed store run (try to do this only once a month), scrub buckets, add bedding, etc. Usually that day would be Monday, but I would adjust based on the ride-ability of the weather. I tried to get those bigger chores done on those two week nights so that weekends only consisted of basic chores so that I could ride and not feel like “barn time” was so daunting. I don’t have an indoor nor outdoor lights, so weekend riding is important for me when daylight becomes scarce.

I would put horse laundry on the schedule for one night, too. I keep enough schooling pads and boots that I can use a fresh set each day and just toss into a laundry bag to bring up to the house one night a week.

As someone else mentioned, being a stickler about putting things back in their place all the time is the most significant way I stay on top of things.

I say this “kind of” worked because my mom became very ill in the fall and it has been a roller coaster ride ever since. With that life complication, everything else sort of took a back seat. However, the schedule did help while things were “normal.”

[AKB]

Most of my tasks are done twice daily or daily. I check each water trough twice daily and clean and refill as needed. I scan the fence line twice daily to make sure no trees are down and the fences are intact. Feeding and stall cleaning are done twice daily.

A few things are done annually. The fence man comes annually to replace fence sections that won’t survive the year. The trailer goes in for maintenance annually. I usually have major barn repairs done annually. Tack cleaning is done every winter. Routine veterinary care, including coggins testing, is done annually.

[fjordie03]

Fly Lady zones for the Farm

I am a Flybaby so I zone clean. This is how I’ve translated her ideas to my small private farm (consisting of our 2 horses & chickens)

1. Shine your sink: my tack room feed table is my sink.
2. I created a Weekly Farm Blessing which consists of 4 tasks that I only spend 10 minutes on each of them at the most: 1. collect trash & recycling and take to dump, 2. clear Hot Spots (barn aisle & tack room), 3. sweep somewhere (aisle, loft stairs, tack room, stall mats or loft), 4. rake aprons in front of barn aisle doors (bc we throw hay down in this area).
3. Then I break down the farm into Zones and aim to spend at least 15 minutes each week on a zone. Like FlyLady, Zones follow the calendar so today is Aug 29 so it’s Zone 5. On Sept 1, I’ll be back in Zone 1. FMI, google FlyLady.

My Farm zones are:
Zone 1: horse stalls & chicken coops: cobwebs & dust & sweep (CDS), wash feed buckets (if not doing this daily during fly season), insect patrol, clean chicken coops
Zone 2: Tack & Feed Room: pick up & put away (PU/PA), CDS, clean windows & doors, straighten/clean equipment and tack, clean fridge, wash brushes & fly masks, etc
Zone 3: Barn aisle, DH’s workshop area & loft: PU/PA, CDS
Zone 4: Paddocks/turnouts: Check fence, bee patrol, (depending on season) pick up manure with tractor (small summer paddock gets cleaned daily).
Zone 5: miscellaneous work: building projects, seasonal work (prepping for winter), or simply “I’m burned out and I do nothing” Zone or I catch up with a zone I missed during the month.

Now remember, you’re only supposed to spend 15 minutes in a zone. Yeah… So it takes longer than a month to get a zone completely done, usually. So in the summer, during Zone 1, I focus on insect control but in the winter, I might focus on cobwebs.

Then finally, I have a Monthly To Do List on top of this (ie: October: prep for winter)

Ok, true confession time:
I always get my Farm Blessing done and my tack room feed table shined but sometimes life gets in the way of thoroughly getting to Zone cleaning each week. And I’m ok with that. This summer was my Cursed Summer of Sick Horses so I did no zone cleaning for 6 weeks - and that’s ok.

I find that if I consistently don’t get something done, I either give up on it, give up on something else to make time for it, or hire it out.

I am a mom with a DH who travels for work constantly so I’m usually on my own. Both of our kids have special needs, so I am not working full time right now. I work PT when I can. For a full year, I’ve tried to be uber organized to free up more time because I want to go back to work full time: I menu planned for the month. I shopped in bulk. I purged our house Marie Kondo style. I made our kids do their own laundry. I taught kids to cook dinner once a week. These measures still didn’t free up enough time! The reality is, in order for me to go back to work full time, I will have to hire help, either at home or in the barn, or give up the farm and board out. Because our kids are teens, there may be light at the end of the tunnel regarding the sheer amount of housework and cooking I need to do once they become adults but I doubt it will make a big difference because our horses are seniors and are becoming more needy/high maintenance as they age and farm upkeep is never ending.

So that’s how I do it. To keep track of Zone cleaning tasks and Monthly To Do Lists, I use an application on my phone called Home Routines.

[MXL]

Thanks, all, for inspiring responses! Busy people, all, accomplishing so much!

[FreshAir]

I can’t get over Element’s schedule!! Worker!

[Boo]

House work always take a back seat at our place. I try and do zone cleaning on weekends but it really depends on time availability. If i have guests coming i will make it a priority and that’s about it.

We are both more outside people and having recently bought 13 acres of bare land for the horses there is a lot of outside work to be done. So it takes priority.

I’m pregnant with our first though and due in November…i’m definitely starting to get “nesty” and the house is driving me crazy but it still is a time issue. During the working week with the commute etc there’s just not enough time without giving up the 1hr or so of rest time before bed that we get anyway.

[Dutchmare433]

I worked at a barn where we printed up daily, weekly, and monthly charts. Then you can check off what gets done–not really daily because that’s easy enough to remember.

Say Daily:
Feed/hay/water, clean buckets, clean stalls, medications, turn in/out, ride X number of horses, maybe commit to cleaning each bit after you use it, sweep up, set up for tomorrow (Figure out what’s necessary every day, the world won’t end if you don’t sweep, you’ll save time in the long run cleaning bits and bridles, but again, horses will not wither and die if you don’t scrub their bridle every day.)

Weekly:
Clean bridles, clean water troughs, (refill as needed), if you feed wet food, maybe clean feed buckets, pick out paddocks, drop hay for the week, mix new fly spray

Monthly:
Cob web, clean out feed room (empty before grain delivery and sweep up/throw away stuff), clean saddles, mend fencing (some of this is in the day it happens category of course), stripping stalls (frequency depends on how much your horses are in), in the winter maybe clean blankets

Rainy day/can’t ride stuff:
pull manes, clip legs, take a break

Figure out what needs to be done every day, do it, then figure out what needs to be done every week, and pick a day to do each chore, so it’s spread out some, same with monthly tasks.

It’s not exactly zone cleaning, but it worked for us at that farm pretty well.

[Pocket_Pony]

I don’t work as long hours as some of you guys, but here are some things that I do.

I ride in the mornings before work - if I waited until after work, I likely wouldn’t do it (and in the winter it would be too dark). I plan out my week for riding and Mr. PoPo helps me by riding one horse 2x/week (I have three horses, but two that I ride). One horse gets ridden 4-5 times per week, the other gets ridden 4 times per week. Both get ridden on the weekends.

I plan one day off for appointments - either for me or for the horses (hoof trims, chiropractic, doctor, dentist, whatever). On that one day, I will do various chores while waiting for the service provider (or before going out myself) - I’ll sweep the barn aisle or clean my tack (or both!) or knock down cobwebs or drag the arena or set jumps or whatever.

Every morning I make the day’s worth of food all in the morning. I have multiple laundry baskets and hay nets and I weigh everything out and put it either in a basket or a net. That way when each meal comes around I am ready and don’t have to mess around. While I’m making dinner buckets for the horses I’ll dump and scrub water buckets.

I do my poo chores at night when I come home from work. If I’m not cooking dinner that night, I’ll do an extra “something” - right now it is one extra tractor bucket of pulling weeds on the nights I don’t cook.

Last year I did a lot of the pasture mowing, but this year Mr. PoPo has done it all except for one time. I don’t know why it worked out that way but it just did. He does other “heavy” farm work - stacking hay, cutting brush (although I’ll move it to the burn pile and I do the burn piles in the winter), weed eating.
I go to the feed store and buy feed and supplies when necessary. I buy all the horse stuff - hay and feed, bedding, jumps & accessories, tack, fencing, whatever. He buys equipment stuff.

It really helps that Mr. PoPo works from home and so can run to the grocery store during the day. That saves me a lot of time and worry.

Weekends are for cleaning the house.

Our life schedule is pretty regimented around running our little farm; most hours of the day are planned out. We try to take one weekend day off where we go on a trail ride together but otherwise don’t do farm chores (other than the daily stuff). I’d say we’re successful with that maybe twice a month.

It really is a labor of love and a lifestyle. We go on vacation once a year maybe but other than that we are at home.

[Palm_Beach]

I’m self employed, so I have a flexible schedule.

I do most chores in the morning - I am good with getting up early. Horses stay outside at night from March 1 through November, into December if it’s mild enough. This is key to keeping down the daily workload.

I use huge hay nets, they only need to be filled every 3rd day since horses are outside at night. Buckets get dumped and scrubbed as needed. Water troughs dumped and scrubbed as needed - usually no more than once or twice a week.

Electric tape fence with a top board - bingo, no more fence repairs. They leave it alone.

Fields get dragged and mown when needed. I muck stalls into a spreader, add fertilizer and lime daily, and spread right onto the fields. No manure pile, no big fertilize and lime project.

The only tack in the barn is what is needed for riding. Everything else is cleaned and stored in the house - it stays cleaner, no mold, no dust, etc.

Since I’m self employed I can sneak out and ride when I need to. The only thing I’m lax about is cleaning tack.

[MysticOakRanch]

I am now self employed, and don’t work full time, but… Back in the days when I did work full time (at least 40 hours plus about 1.5 hours of commute each day), first of all, I couldn’t have done it without arena lights. I had 2 horses under saddle for a while, and that was really tough.

Get up at 4, feed, go in, cup of coffee. Ride at 5. When I had 2 horses, I rode them every other day, except Wednesday they both got lunged. Finish up horses at 7, jump in shower, be at work by 8:30. Home by 6:30 or 7 most nights, feed horses, eat dinner, go to bed. I always wipe down my tack after riding -keep a bucket of water and small towel where I tack/untack. So there is no major tack cleaning required the rest of the time. I found if I waited until AFTER work, there was always an excuse to not ride - I was just too tired to be honest.

My husband would drag the arena at least once during the week, and would feed for me when I had to work really late.

Sunday was cleaning day - clean pastures (my horses don’t stay in stalls, makes a huge difference), scrub water tanks, drag the arena, etc. House cleaning - eh, if someone comes to visit, I shove things into the spare bedroom and run the vacuum. It just isn’t a huge priority in my life.

For a while, I had a job that was at least 60 hours/week, and that was impossible. I gave up riding, and just spent my spare time doing farm chores.

Now, I don’t work full time, I travel about 3 days/week (husband throws feed at the horses, and I have a guy who comes in once weekly and looks at them carefully, AND cleans my pastures;)), life is much easier. I worry when I’m gone, but the rest of the time, I can totally flex my work, and do it from the kitchen table with full view of the horses.

It is really hard when you work full time - actually easier to board the horses and not have all the chores :no: