What Chores Require the Most Time on Your Farm?

[PeteyPie]

After reading the thread about whether people regretted buying a farm, I started wondering about efficiency. When I build my barn I really want to choose materials and structures with an eye toward low maintenance. I also want to design an efficient layout so that I can feed and clean up quickly and easily. There are several items I have figured out but I am curious about what time suckers exist on your farm which could have been eliminated or mitigated with a better design.

Here are some things I have thought of:
Fencing. Where I board in Southern California, the owner installed v-mesh fences with steel pipe posts with a top rail of the same material welded onto the posts. These fences were installed thirty years ago and are still in great shape, except in two narrow paddocks where his mares got in a kicking match and bent and damaged the v-mesh. That problem there could have been avoided by placing the gates farther apart, the feeders at opposite corners, and/or having an alley between the paddocks. I will get that type of fencing.

Metal Gates. The wooden stall gates are pretty, but I want something that the horses won’t chew. It seems like this is a good choice for pastures as well as stalls.

Close Hay Storage. I buy hay now and store about twenty-four bales by each feeder. It’s pretty efficient, but if I could buy round bales, I’ll bet that would be even better.

Grooming Supplies/Grooming Area. I don’t have a good grooming area and I waste a lot of time because I have to bring my stuff in a bucket and it seems like I always need something I didn’t bring. Any system will be better than what I do now.

Manure. I don’t know of any way to pick up manure in the paddocks any faster than just using a wheelbarrow and a good manure fork. Have a dumping place or composting bin close to the paddock will help reduce time spent on that, but that’s the best I can think of.

So what do you spend the most time on, as far as maintaining your farm and your horses? If you could change it, how would you?

Edit to add: Also, what time-consuming chores do you hate?

[The_Crone_of_Cottonmouth_Count]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: when it comes to paddock poop, nothing beats the Gator fitted with a hydraulic dump-thing. I can pick 3 horses’ worth on five acres in 20 minutes. I can also keep the manure pile a pleasant distance away, since I can drive to it in about 1 minute, thus keeping the barnyard odor- and fly-free. I would go mad and require hospitalization without that dump truck Gator. I use it for about 4672 other chores, too. Best purchase ever.

[GoForAGallop]

I have to haul water to my barn once it gets too cold for the hose. (Even when draining it.)

It is the bane of my existence. It is only 100’, tops, from the back door to the barn. I only have three horses. Every year there is at least one break down moment, where I slip in 2’ of snow, dump hot water all over myself (which then promptly freezes all over my clothing), and then sit there sobbing my heart out.

I’ve had them home 10+ years now and still haven’t found time to put a water line in, so it’s my own darn fault.

But that’s my suggestion. Frost free hydrants everywhere. So many that you’re tripping over the darn things.

I am building a new barn next fall, and there will be water access at every single point you could need it. If I never haul a bucket again, it will be too soon.

[jawa]

Grass cutting, weed eating, spraying.

[LookmaNohands]

Dragging the ring, painting jumps, maintain tractor, spreader, finding good hay at a great price, ENDLESS advertising!!

[IFG]

Goforagallop, do you have electricity? If yes, could you put a 100 gallon tank near the barn with a heater and fill it? So much better than hauling water. I keep a heated tank in the paddock and fill it once or twice a week. I hate dragging the ring. Of course, since it doubles as my paddock, I have to pick it first.

[tangledweb]

Mowing, repairing broken infrastructure (plumbing, fencing, lights), servicing/repairing broken equipment (mowers, tractors), weed-whacking. Probably in that order.

[JoZ]

Filling water troughs. This is a matter of personal preference. I don’t like using floats on the pasture troughs. A lot of people do, and that’s fine. It certainly would make my life easier! But I want to know if the horses are suddenly not drinking – is the water too warm? Is there something in there that has made it unpalatable? Is someone not feeling well and not drinking enough? So anyway, I fill them by hand. I don’t mind if they overflow, so I can leave them running, but having them all running sucks down the water pressure so if I’m doing anything at the barn at the same time, I get just a trickle. And of course I don’t want them to overflow all night, so I do need to remember to go back out and shut them all off.

In the winter, the horses are watered in their stalls. That has its own set of issues. The containers are smaller, and of course being indoors I don’t want overflow at all! So there’s only so much I can do at the same time. Sometimes it works out well to pick stalls while the waters are filling.

The other obvious culprit for taking time is stall cleaning and picking. Also picking the turnout.

[ReSomething]

I spend an inordinate amount of time lugging feed buckets for two horses. And soaking and adding supplements. I’d like to keep the feed in a climate controlled area so the oil won’t get rancid in the summer and solidify in the winter, that is just a few steps from my feeding areas, easily accessed by my truck to drop off feed and bales so not too much handling.

And I can relate to GforG’s situation, sprawled in the snow with water rapidly freezing down my sleeves and boots. We do have oversize tanks with heaters that have held enough water that we can last until the weather warms a little, but we had extreme temps last year that made it difficult to say the least. Think heated tank with a skin of ice on top.

ETA, I see OP is in CA, so from when I was a kid, mud was the biggest pain, and putting in a stall floor that drained was a wonderful thing.

[GoForAGallop]

[QUOTE=IFG;7732898]
Goforagallop, do you have electricity? If yes, could you put a 100 gallon tank near the barn with a heater and fill it? So much better than hauling water. I keep a heated tank in the paddock and fill it once or twice a week. I hate dragging the ring. Of course, since it doubles as my paddock, I have to pick it first.[/QUOTE]

I do, and what I do is keep a heated “muck bucket” sized bucket in the barn, and dole out water from there. But that bucket still has to be filled, at some point. Usually I can drag a hose out mid-day for most of the winter and get everything filled up, but that’s during a NORMAL winter.

I have a heater in my big outdoor 100gal tank, but with the winter we had last winter, with week-long stretches of below zero weather, it couldn’t keep up and I still had to hack out the 3" of ice every day and refill with some warmer water.

Although half the frost-free hydrants in the area barns froze up as well, so I guess I would have been lugging water either way!

This past winter nearly broke me, I’m tellin’ ya!

[UrbanHennery]

On a daily basis, cleaning stalls takes the most time. The time I most begrudge is the time spent mowing and weed-wacking.

[tucktaway]

stalls

[Wonders12]

[QUOTE=tucktaway;7732994]
stalls[/QUOTE]

Without a doubt.

Also make sure you can feed from outside the stalls. It will save you when you’re running late.

Being in CA, there is no excuse for not having water EVERYWHERE. Ideally a spigot to every stall.

I hate mowing and weed whacking the most, but in the grand scheme of things, I think I feel like it’s more time consuming than it actually is.

If you want to get really fancy with your tacking and grooming, I saw a barn that had part of a tack room wall that rotated around to the grooming stall next to it. (Kind of like the feeder doors do.) So while you’re riding, you swing the wall around and everything is right there in the grooming stall. After, you swing it back and it’s all protected in the tack room. I think that’s a little excessive for most people though.

[PeteyPie]

[QUOTE=GoForAGallop;7732852]
I have to haul water to my barn once it gets too cold for the hose. (Even when draining it.)

It is the bane of my existence. It is only 100’, tops, from the back door to the barn. I only have three horses. Every year there is at least one break down moment, where I slip in 2’ of snow, dump hot water all over myself (which then promptly freezes all over my clothing), and then sit there sobbing my heart out.

I’ve had them home 10+ years now and still haven’t found time to put a water line in, so it’s my own darn fault.

But that’s my suggestion. Frost free hydrants everywhere. So many that you’re tripping over the darn things.

I am building a new barn next fall, and there will be water access at every single point you could need it. If I never haul a bucket again, it will be too soon.[/QUOTE]

Am I the only one who read that bolded quote with this picture in mind?: GoForAGallop in silhouette, a la Scarlett O’Hara – actually, looking EXACTLY like Scarlett O’Hara in her thin dirty dress holding up her carrot and shouting at the heavens “As God is my witness, I will never be hungry again!!” – except of course GoForAGallop is holding up a bucket. And maybe wearing Carhartts and Sorels. Wet Carhartts.

[kalidascope]

I find that the ones I do twice a day, every day - feeding and hay - the most time consuming. It takes me half an hour morning and night, for five horses. They live out 24/7, and get fed in the paddocks, so there’s no mucking out. I feed a moist chaff (preserved forage) so can’t make up feeds in advance, but I keep it as simple as possible to keep the making-up feeds time as low as possible.

I think manure is one of my areas of greatest efficiency. I kick it as they go (5 min a day), then after they’ve finished one paddock it’s mowed it to blitz the manure/leftover hay and to top any weeds/rank grass that has been left behind. Makes a huge difference in how quickly the manure rots back into the ground, and of courses the horses don’t form lawns and roughs as the whole paddock is fairly even-tasting. I don’t remove the manure because a) I’m not dedicating an hour or more a day poo-picking for five horses and b) I don’t want to remove that valuable organic matter from the pasture/grazing cycle.

[TheJenners]

Leading in and out twice a day… took so long.

[wsmoak]

[QUOTE=JoZ;7732924]
Filling water troughs. This is a matter of personal preference. I don’t like using floats on the pasture troughs. A lot of people do, and that’s fine. It certainly would make my life easier! But I want to know if the horses are suddenly not drinking – is the water too warm? Is there something in there that has made it unpalatable? Is someone not feeling well and not drinking enough? So anyway, I fill them by hand. I don’t mind if they overflow, so I can leave them running, but having them all running sucks down the water pressure so if I’m doing anything at the barn at the same time, I get just a trickle. And of course I don’t want them to overflow all night, so I do need to remember to go back out and shut them all off.[/QUOTE]

You can have both! I call them my “flood abatement devices” since I cannot for the life of me remember that I’ve left a hose on.

So, I have floats, but I don’t leave the water on all the time. When the tank needs to be filled, the float turns off the water when it’s full. Then when I eventually remember to turn the water off, I have not flooded the place or damaged the well pump.

It’s just the one horse, so I use my trusty wagon to carry hot water in gallon jugs to fill his buckets in the run-in. I do not EVER carry five-gallon buckets around, even partially full. I might put one in my wagon, but the gallon jugs work much better – lighter and they don’t spill.

[msj]

[QUOTE=jawa;7732879]
Grass cutting, weed eating, spraying.[/QUOTE]

This because I’m anal about the external appearance of the farm as well as keeping bugs and weeds at bay. :yes:

After that MANUAL snow removal. While I do have a tractor with enclosed cab and a snowblower to remove snow from the front of the stalls that open to the pasture, I still have manually remove at least 1’ out from the stall doors and from where I attach the hay nets to the outside of the barn. That’s about 60’ total. Then there’s the front of the barn with 12’ sliding barn door that has to kept open so that’s actually 24’ and the walkway from the house to the driveway which is about 35’. The path to the heat pump and around the heat pump as well as the area at the whole house generator (one side only thank heavens). A few other places as well like the front of the garage doors. I figured out last yr there was over 180’ that had to be manually shoveled. Quite often I was out shoveling 6 times/day 2" of snow from most of it. Much easier to shovel 2" six times/day than 1’ once a day, especially if the snow is heavy and wet or gets packed in by the wind. :eek:

Having lost my last horse this spring and closing the barn permanently, I’m almost looking forward to winter this yr with having only to keep the house area shoveled! :yes:

[ponygirl]

[QUOTE=jawa;7732879]
Grass cutting, weed eating, spraying.[/QUOTE]

Definitely this.

[Nestor]

Well, I’ve set up my barn so that everything takes VERY little time, but things that ordinarily take a long time:

1. Stalls. You can only speed up the cleaning process so much. I added run-outs so that I can clean stalls really fast if I need to, but the run-outs are faster to clean than if those poops were inside. And I love that the horses will pee outside half of the time. Also make sure your manure pile is easily accessible. Either a short walk to the pile or a short walk to a vehicle to take manure to the pile.

2. Turnout. Walking horses to and from turnout should be quick, ideally. I made my run-outs open up onto grass paddocks so I just have to open a gate. That also saves me having to put water out in the paddock as they have access to their stall while they’re out. But I have just a 3-stall barn, one who is prone to founder, another who is too chicken to go out except during his certain prescribed circumstances (in the dark for an hour), and so the paddock just belongs to one easygoing mare.

3. Water. It’s easy to make watering very difficult. I put a frost-free hydrant at the end of my barn, and even in this last horrid winter in New England, it never froze. But I detached the hose for the entire winter, and threw a bucket over it between uses to protect it from freezing rain. I hate automatic waterers, so I can only make watering quick to a certain extent. But I discovered the Rapid Reel, and it is well worth the price for not ever having to fight with a tangled hose, and I can have non-horsey people water without worrying about having a mess to pick up later.

Feeding has never been a real problem for me. The only thing I’d do differently, for a large barn, would be to have drop-down doors from the hay loft into every stall, simply to limit the mess in the aisle. Obviously this doesn’t help for horses getting wet hay, dengi, etc., but it helps for the vast majority of horses.

I always get things ready in advance. If a horse gets a bucket of dengi multiple times a day, I’d rather fill those buckets once, at a less time-consuming feeding, and have them ready to grab and go for other feedings. Same goes for hay in hay nets. Similarly, I’ve always prepared buckets for grain and supplements ahead of time, so that feeding time just requires dumping into the horses’ feed buckets.