Well thanks to a post suggestion by a lovely reader, you're getting a real post! This reader asked if I could describe the different types of stable management and how it compares with my own experiences. What's the differences in feeding types, schedules, etc. How's the clean up different and what types of materials are used.
To answer that, I have to describe what type of establishment each place was, and how my own is.
My own "barn" isn't a lot of land, only about 3 acres, we have built four stalls that they can go in and out of at any time. The stalls are separated as they are in two different shelters. The only times we lock them in are during icy rain, if they're too stupid to stay inside on their own. However they do like to stand in there when it's hot, and they stand around and poo everywhere by the slow feeders.
We have shavings, teeny little rocks kind of like cat litter, that are in the stalls and the general feeding area. We have some sand in the arena and we'd like to get more.
Here is a video of when we got it.
Anyway, the shavings are really pretty cheap and we only have to put them down two or so times a year when it gets too low or washed away. Of course we would have to do more if we kept ours locked up, but we don't. Because of this bedding is not a big expense for us, which is great, it's also super easy to clean since only a few of the rocks stick to the manure and the urine, when they go in their stalls, tends to disperse or congeal.
We use a bucket type of pitch fork/muck rake.
Because I think they're awesome.
So we really only have to poo pick for about 10 minutes a day, with 4 horses, and we get the stalls and feeding area. We feed twice a day so we just scoop poop while we're waiting for them to finish. We do lock them up when they eat, because they're greedy little bastards.
However, we do have to do the occasional pasture clean up where we go around and try and pick up all the manure in the pasture.... It sucks. The grass gets tangled in the rakes and it's just an unpleasant job. Thankfully it's not a frequent one.
Okay, so we've established that my own pasture is rock shavings with free turn out and stall access. The second location, Spain, was a riding holiday business. They had 16 horses and even less pasture than I do, yikes. Most of one pasture is this awful hard clay stuff that's common in the area. It's rock hard when it dries but becomes a slick muck as soon as it's wet, the problem is that it tends to dry with hoof prints in it, which means the pasture is uneven and poo gets trapped in the pockets. It's also damn near impossible to get that mud off of the horses if they roll in it. It's basically hell mud.
So their pasture was divided into three parts; two that were permanent pastures and one for grazing and some exercise. One was covered in hell mud, with a lock in stall for the oldest horse, and several shelters of the lean to persuasion. Underneath these shelters was cement. Not always nice to walk on, but easy to pick manure off of.
The other paddock was part clay and half cement with stalls that had the doors removed so that they could go in when they wanted, there was also walls removed between the stalls so no one would get trapped. In some of these stalls there were rubber mats, which always stank of urine because they'd go and pee on them.
The paddocks, since they were so small (not uncommon in Spain) had to be cleaned 3 times a day, at feeding time.
We cleaned them with a push broom, an actual rake for the dirt parts, a shovel and I think there was a manure fork, but I could be wrong. Cleaning took about 35-50 minutes each time.
The second location, France, was a riding stable with a club and lessons. They had around 30 horses and plenty of acres divided up into different pastures. There was a barn, with 5-6 big box stalls in it. They used straw as bedding. This was my first real experience using straw as regular bedding. The stable I worked at when I was younger used wood chip shavings. I HATE straw. It's annoying.
The problem comes from wanting to conserve straw to save on costs, understandable, so we'd only take the parts with manure on it, trying to just get the manure and maybe the worst parts with urine. Then we'd sweep the part under the feed buckets, cerement, to keep that clear. Not too difficult. They used pitch forks (hay forks) for spreading the straw, muck raked for getting the manure, a rake and broom for getting the parts that escaped onto what was supposed to stay cement and a shovel to get those bits.
So this was my first "welp, I guess everyone has a different definition of clean..." moment. Because to me, some of those stalls still looked gross under the layer of fresh straw and needed to be stripped. I believe the thought was part 'save money on straw' and part 'they need that for padding'. Anyway, I had already decided that straw and I must clearly be enemies, although we reached an uneasy truce.
Straw betrayed my trust and broke this truce in Italy. And what that translates into, for normal humans who don't speak stablehandese, is that Italy was my least favorite place to do the mucking.
Italy: Part riding lessons/clubs/camp and part riding holiday. Basically it was the happy medium between my two other locations. They had 16 or so horses. And they had straw. They also had outdoor paddocks with run in shelters but since only 1-2 horses were in each paddock that meant some got rotated in to stay in the stalls.
They had a barn with 8 (?) box stalls and 5 small standing/tie stalls for during the day between lessons when there were too many horses up for the stalls.
Lesson/ride plan
Anyway, since there were usually horses in the stalls, there was usually lots of poo! And some of the horses liked to eat the straw, the messy little bastards.
Thankfully, we only had to help do the stalls about half the time we were there and then somebody else came and took over. It was normally their job anyway, but circumstances happened so that Sandra and I had to do them or most of them.
This was my least favorite place to muck out, by far. I had asked how they liked it done and received a very vague 'oh you know, just try and get the really dirty bits and save straw'. Welp, I guess I'll do it like the last place.
Nooope. Wrong.
So I grabbed the muck fork,
this kind
But apparently that's the wrong thing to use. Apparently that should only be used for the two wood shavings stalls...
Alrighty then. Well, if I can't use a muck rake, what should I use?
The answer is a pitch fork, a shovel and a broom.
Now someone answer me exactly how in the sam hell you're supposed to pick up piles of manure, without wasting straw, with that?
.
So I tried scooping up a big thing of straw with manure on it and gently tipping it into the wheel barrow and snatching it away as soon as the manure was off.
Nope, wasting too much straw.
I even tried picking out the good straw from the wheel barrow.
Apparently we took way too long to do the stalls. Which Sandra has never mucked out before and has no muscles and no idea how to clean them (No, she wasn't shown even though she asked. That was left to me. I'd been there for 3 days at that point.) Since even with my experience mucking out I still didn't get how she wanted them done I figured Sandra didn't stand a chance.
I gave up trying and found a metal muck rake
This kind
When she came to ask me why on Earth I was using this kind, apparently it's also only for the chip stalls, I said because I didn't get how to heck to only get manure with the hay fork and I was most familiar with this type of rake. I also said it was faster. Because it was for me.
She said it wasn't because it wasn't the right tools for the job, but I wasn't budging. If I had to clean these damn stalls I'm going to do it in a way that doesn't take me 6 times as long.
After making a comment about my 'expertise' knowing better she said "to each their own I suppose".
Okay, so readers, how many of you use or have ever seen a pitch fork actually used to muck out on a daily basis? Some of you, but it's just so dang useless.
I finally figured out how she wanted them done... about a week or so before I left.
Can you guess the method?
Well, the method I came up with was (I'm still not completely sure it was right):
1. Get the major piles
2. Get as all of the 'clean' loose straw as you can, put it in a pile on the side.
3. Pick through remaining 'questionable straw' for any clean stuff you can get with the pitch fork.
4. Pile the manure bits on the other side.
5. Pick through with fork again.
6. Use broom to sweep up gross bottom bits on the cement. Sweep it to the poo pile.
7. Sweep food area clean.
8. Use shovel to get poo pile and un-save-able straw into wheelbarrow. Keep the grossest bits for last to put on top of straw that might be called 'acceptable' but is really dirty and hard to remove.
9. Spread the good straw back over the stall.
10. Sigh and pick out the nuggets of poo that you missed the first time. Wonder why you chose this type of work..
11. Dump wheelbarrow in manure heap out back.
12. Get a few flakes of clean straw to spread over thin bits if needed. Sweep outside the stall.
13. Move on to next stall.
This is why I'm glad somebody else took over doing the stalls and we just had to help the kids. I don't think I've ever found a more complicated or annoying system of picking up manure.
So that was the differences in stall types and mucking out. This post actually went longer than I intended, probably because the differences of what people considered 'dirty' or 'clean' or the right tools for the job were all so different that it drove me a little nuts. I will be happy to get back to my own pasture so I can muck out the way I know best.
The next post will try to answer the rest of your question awesome reader, so stay tuned.
Coming up: Different Riding Styles: how each felt, learning the slight differences (and sometimes major ones) and what I learned vs what I knew.
That will probably be it's own post and go long.
Oh, as for the bonding, no I didn't really get to bond with any particular horse, I mean, I had favorites and projects, but I rode different horses so often it was hard to form a bond with any particular one. It was a lot of work, and since I usually rode the horses with either issues or more complications, it was sort of work as well, but even when it wasn't, I didn't have a great bond with any of them.
Although all of my favorites tended to be more difficult to work with than some of the others.
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