# Paddock Cleaning



## HisMissus2013 (Jun 12, 2019)

Ok, this is probably a stupid question - like, a really stupid one - and if you laugh I will not be offended.

Is there any way to encourage horses to poop in certain areas??

I had a super muddy dry lot; knee deep, horrible. My husband and I spent $2000 and an entire weekend to dig it out, lay drainage and gravel it (with the proper gravel). At the time I had a mule and a filly; the filly did whatever the mule did, and the mule only pooped out of the way so they didn't walk through it. It was so easy to clean every day!

Now I've brought back my Arab mare, and she poops EVERYWHERE. THEN RUNS THROUGH IT. I clean the dry lot daily because it will never get that bad again, but my nice firm neat piles are now scattered bits of manure sometimes buried under gravel. I'm doing my best, but it now takes me 3x as long for it to be half as clean as it was.

Is there any way to encourage her to poop somewhere else, maybe off the beaten path so it's not trampled? I know it sounds so stupid, but I figured it was worth a shot. Thanks for any helpful feedback!


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## boots (Jan 16, 2012)

I don't think it's a stupid question. 

I've heard of people training a horse to go in certain areas by discouraging them from going in any other. They claimed they could spray different things that their horses didn't like. I'll be seeing a friend's who leases paddocks and ask her if she remembers what they used. 

Anybody here know?


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## Feathers7 (Jun 11, 2019)

Not a stupid question. My horse does poop in certain areas naturally. As in...when we free-lunge in her pasture...she will suddenly veer off, go make a pit stop in her manure area, and then continue onward after. Usually horses do this because they don't desire eating near where they poop. And I do feed my mare in her pasture. Perhaps that is something you can use? Place her food wherever you don't want her to poop? You can put hay in a slow-feed hay back, tie it up with baling twine, and flop it on top of a rubber mat or "clean" (as can be) surface.


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## JCnGrace (Apr 28, 2013)

If you figure out anything that works let me know!


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## SueC (Feb 22, 2014)

For those who want to avoid this problem who've not yet bought a horse, stallions are usually lovely and neat in paddocks, leaving their manure in mounds, so you can just pick it up from a couple of piles instead of scattered all over. Some late-gelded horses retain this characteristic to an extent.


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## Acadianartist (Apr 21, 2015)

I wonder if using a strong scent, like mare in heat urine, would help? Hunters use it, so you should be able to buy some easily at a hunting supplies store. It would likely get them sniffing the area at least, and maybe it would trigger something...


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## Aprilswissmiss (May 12, 2019)

I am also curious if anyone has any ideas about this. Fortunately, I do not have this issue as my mare is very tidy about where she poops, and refuses to step in it. If I'm riding her through the pasture and we happen upon one of her favorite poop spots, she WILL stop and poop. Even if she doesn't need to poop when we get there, she'll stop and raise her tail. She also goes out of her way to poop into or within a couple feet of the manure pile in the far corner of the pasture as often as possible.


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## jaydee (May 10, 2012)

I’ve found that some will always use one spot and others couldn’t care less where they go. I find they’re the same in the stable.
Not sure how much room you have but you could maybe try having a small sacrifice area where you always leave a few piles of manure and see if that attracts the horse to use the same spot all the time?


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## AnitaAnne (Oct 31, 2010)

I'm not sure if it is possible, because I tried for years with an appendix QH that not only consumed groceries at an alarming rate, but scattered the results everywhere and stomped them too. 

An overnight stay in the stall resulted in complete deep cleanings nearly every time...

If one has a horse that eats a normal horse amount, and thus makes a normal amount of horsey poo, one can sometimes teach them to be a little more clean, but it is not failsafe...

I have done this with stalled horses, don't know that it translates to outside. 

1) start with clean stall, including (if matted) cleaning off the mats with bleach along the front of the stall. Put the water and feed buckets along the front wall, and the hay net in the front corner.

2)After horse poops, place it in the back corner, straight behind the hay net. 

3) this is hard to explain, but when cleaning stalls, do not mix up the shavings. Make sure to clean up every bit of manure/urine in the front areas, but continue to leave the poo in the back corner, or at least some of it. 

If the horse notices, sometimes they can learn to go only in the back, but some just don't notice or don't care. 

IME, stall raised babies are messy, and pasture raised babies are neater.


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## Aprilswissmiss (May 12, 2019)

AnitaAnne said:


> IME, stall raised babies are messy, and pasture raised babies are neater.


I have noticed this too. At the stable I most recently worked at, we had a pony that had never seen a stall in his life before being bought by the barn owner, and he was incredibly organized and neat both in his stall and in the pasture. (He was also a total butthead that would bust through fences to eat the metabolic ponies' safe starch and then kick anyone who would try to catch him, but that's a different story.) They also had a gelding that was born and raised on their heavy-stall-user farm, and my gosh did I dread cleaning his stall every day. He would also grab any and all items hanging on his door - halter, blanket, lead rope - and drag it into his stall, poop everywhere, and then stomp and mix it all into oblivion, sometimes such a homogenous mixture that we couldn't find his halter at all until we dug for it!


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## WildestDandelion (Apr 4, 2019)

Both of my horses want to poop right where the food is. It's horrible!


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## AnitaAnne (Oct 31, 2010)

Aprilswissmiss said:


> I have noticed this too. At the stable I most recently worked at, we had a pony that had never seen a stall in his life before being bought by the barn owner, and he was incredibly organized and neat both in his stall and in the pasture. (He was also a total butthead that would bust through fences to eat the metabolic ponies' safe starch and then kick anyone who would try to catch him, but that's a different story.) They also had a gelding that was born and raised on their heavy-stall-user farm, and my gosh did I dread cleaning his stall every day. He would also grab any and all items hanging on his door - halter, blanket, lead rope - and drag it into his stall, poop everywhere, and then stomp and mix it all into oblivion, sometimes such a homogenous mixture that we couldn't find his halter at all until we dug for it!


Would guess that stable had a hard time keeping help!


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## AnitaAnne (Oct 31, 2010)

WildestDandelion said:


> Both of my horses want to poop right where the food is. It's horrible!


Are they outside or inside? Close together? 

Sometimes horses "claim" the area but that is usually seen with the occasional gelding peeing on the hay after they have finished with it. 

Have seen some horses poop around round bales, but think that is a case of being too lazy to walk away and too piggy to get far from the food. 

Had one horse that kept pooping in the water bucket :evil: that was the same Appendix QH but a boarder's mare did it at times too. Yucky


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## WildestDandelion (Apr 4, 2019)

AnitaAnne said:


> Are they outside or inside? Close together?
> 
> Sometimes horses "claim" the area but that is usually seen with the occasional gelding peeing on the hay after they have finished with it.
> 
> ...



They are outside, one mare and one gelding. Both poop around their round bale, as well as at their feed buckets!


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## AnitaAnne (Oct 31, 2010)

WildestDandelion said:


> They are outside, one mare and one gelding. Both poop around their round bale, as well as at their feed buckets!


Try feeding inside in separate stalls, see if they do the same thing. Sounds like they are "claiming" the area. 

Gross to eat dropped grain from around feeders!


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## WildestDandelion (Apr 4, 2019)

AnitaAnne said:


> Try feeding inside in separate stalls, see if they do the same thing. Sounds like they are "claiming" the area.
> 
> Gross to eat dropped grain from around feeders!


We don't have stalls, just a run in. For their hard feed, we feed them far apart, but their round bale is in a hay net. Before we got the net, they tore the last bale into shreds in 5 days, pooped in all of it, and would then sleep in it and roll around in it.


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## Aprilswissmiss (May 12, 2019)

AnitaAnne said:


> Would guess that stable had a hard time keeping help!


It was a private stable with only six or seven horses so it really wasn't quite that bad. They paid well for menial labor and actually paid their workers to ride and drive their horses, and even paid their workers to lesson with their fantastic trainer! It was a rich old lady's stable who had competitively carriage driven all around the world her whole life. I'm not sure where she got all the money from.

I eventually left not because of the horses, but because the entire place and all the horses had to be absolutely pristine (it's a stable, horses are dirty, what do you expect?) when we left each shift, and it was one person per shift. It was a three to four hour chore just to take care of six horses each morning, let alone the noon and evening. It felt very tedious. The owner would be upset if any of her precious lawn got the lightest footprint on it (thus, we had to walk ourselves and the horses on the pavement all the way around the whole stable to turn out, which took twice as long). I'll never forget how deliriously upset she got when someone got a little bit of mud on the outside of the gator. What do you expect, it's a farm!!


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## SueC (Feb 22, 2014)

AnitaAnne said:


> I'm not sure if it is possible, because I tried for years with an appendix QH that not only consumed groceries at an alarming rate, but scattered the results everywhere and stomped them too.


This sounds amazingly similar to some people I know.


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## rambo99 (Nov 29, 2016)

AnitaAnne said:


> IME, stall raised babies are messy, and pasture raised babies are neater.


Ice was pasture raised as was cinder. Cinder is the biggest pig in stall. Bring him in over night it's wall to wall poop. 
Kicked around stepped in hay mixed in. Biggest bonus is he poops in his water bucket an feed bucket too. 
So only enough bedding to barely cover mats. Because it's shovel out entire stall every time he's in stall overnight. 

Ice is sometime neat poops In one corner. Other times he poops everywhere.


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## Acadianartist (Apr 21, 2015)

Gotta love the water bucket poopers. Especially with heated water buckets. The soupy aroma when you discover the resulting tea in the morning is simply enchanting.:icon_rolleyes:


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## SueC (Feb 22, 2014)

Organic gardeners call that "manure tea", @Acadianartist, and they make it on purpose as a liquid fertiliser. Me, I prefer to compost the stuff and use it then - less stinky. But apparently some people love stink. They even make rotten fish emulsion, which is supposed to be really yummy to plants. Mmmmh, the smell of the countryside! ;-)


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## Acadianartist (Apr 21, 2015)

SueC said:


> Organic gardeners call that "manure tea", @Acadianartist, and they make it on purpose as a liquid fertiliser. Me, I prefer to compost the stuff and use it then - less stinky. But apparently some people love stink. They even make rotten fish emulsion, which is supposed to be really yummy to plants. Mmmmh, the smell of the countryside! ;-)


Well, the soil around my barn must be very rich! I'll skip the rotten fish though.


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## SueC (Feb 22, 2014)

Maybe you should be growing potatoes, @Acadianartist! When the weather is suitable! ;-)


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## Aprilswissmiss (May 12, 2019)

SueC said:


> Organic gardeners call that "manure tea", @Acadianartist, and they make it on purpose as a liquid fertiliser. Me, I prefer to compost the stuff and use it then - less stinky. But apparently some people love stink. They even make rotten fish emulsion, which is supposed to be really yummy to plants. Mmmmh, the smell of the countryside! ;-)


Where I grew up, very close to the ocean, gardens often sold rotten shellfish compost. Yuck, no thanks!


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## Acadianartist (Apr 21, 2015)

SueC said:


> Maybe you should be growing potatoes, @Acadianartist! When the weather is suitable! ;-)


We do, and we have amazing potatoes!


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## SueC (Feb 22, 2014)

Well, it's nice to meet another potato grower! :bowwdown:

We grew our first ones about ten years ago and were so amazed by the difference in flavour between shop-bought and home-grown. The home-grown ones are so potato-ey! :winetime: And isn't it nice to think that some of the food we shovel into horses actually comes back to benefit us as well? :Angel:


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## Acadianartist (Apr 21, 2015)

SueC said:


> Well, it's nice to meet another potato grower! :bowwdown:
> 
> We grew our first ones about ten years ago and were so amazed by the difference in flavour between shop-bought and home-grown. The home-grown ones are so potato-ey! :winetime: And isn't it nice to think that some of the food we shovel into horses actually comes back to benefit us as well? :Angel:


Oh yes, we find our own potatoes to be completely different from store-bought. Our property is actually an old potato farm though, so the soil was probably good to start with. Nonetheless, we do use our composted manure as well as our compost bin with vegetable scraps in the garden (also in the apple and pear orchard) and have noticed a difference. We also have amazing carrots (which the horses enjoy as well so the cycle is complete!). The only thing we have not had great success growing is brussel sprouts. We grow kale (my fave), swiss chard, lettuce, green beans, snow peas, beets, squash, pumpkins, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, radish, onions... I love going out to the garden in the summer to pick the veggies for our meals! If only our growing season were longer.


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## SueC (Feb 22, 2014)

Wow, amazing you grow all this in your short gardening season!  

I finally managed to grow Brussels sprouts from seed (we grow all the vegetables from seed), and had amazing-looking plants that were like something out of Jurassic Park... but unfortunately, they didn't head properly because they matured too late and, from what I can gather, because they had too much nitrogen, the small sprouts they did develop were loose, rather than properly bunched up. Apparently they are difficult to grow - I will make another attempt, and to get them out earlier, will try germinating them in a shadehouse in summer, instead of in autumn as I did last time (here, you're supposed to time them so they are mature early in winter).

We love kale - our favourite varieties here are the Tuscan Black (beautiful plant too) and the Scotch Dwarf Blue, which has lovely crinkly leaves and is incredibly long-lasting. I'm still cutting leaves off a plant that's now two years old, but it is on its last legs! I didn't particularly like the Red Russian kale, or the Siberian, so won't be growing those again.

How do you like to eat your kale? We mostly use it in soups and stir-fries, but also as a side vegetable (nice combined with carrots). I hear Dutch people make a thing called Stompepot which features potatoes, kale and sausages, and want to try that. Always looking for new ideas for eating our kale!


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## QtrBel (May 31, 2012)

The hardest thing for me to accept when I first got out on my own and was gardening as well as doing design and landscape work was that some plants resent our efforts. The more we tend and care for them the worse they perform.


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## Acadianartist (Apr 21, 2015)

SueC said:


> Wow, amazing you grow all this in your short gardening season!
> 
> I finally managed to grow Brussels sprouts from seed (we grow all the vegetables from seed), and had amazing-looking plants that were like something out of Jurassic Park... but unfortunately, they didn't head properly because they matured too late and, from what I can gather, because they had too much nitrogen, the small sprouts they did develop were loose, rather than properly bunched up. Apparently they are difficult to grow - I will make another attempt, and to get them out earlier, will try germinating them in a shadehouse in summer, instead of in autumn as I did last time (here, you're supposed to time them so they are mature early in winter).
> 
> ...


Our growing season is short, but intense. We also grow almost everything from seed (with the exception of tomatoes, and sometimes cucumbers). But we had no luck with the brussel sprouts. The heads were tiny and brown, and they didn't taste very good. Bugs are always a problem - we spend a lot of time hand picking potato bugs! We don't use any chemicals so I try to stick to varieties that are naturally resistant. I order seeds from a company that sells only heritage varieties which are more resistant naturally and are not genetically modified. Same with our apple and pear trees. I can't believe how well they do with minimal care. I worry about the beautiful brussel sprouts we buy at the grocery store - what do they put in them for them to do so well? How do they keep the bugs from eating them?

I even grew vegetables in a cold frame a couple of winters and had lots of leafy greens most of the winter. Then it disappeared under the snow and I forgot about it. In the spring, when the snow melted, I noticed some green through the glass and opened it to find some lovely spinach! 

I have grown the Scotch Dwarf Blue kale as well! It is my favorite I think. My kids think I'm crazy but I love kale so much. My favorite recipe is kale stir-fried in olive oil and garlic. I coat it nicely, add a little vegetable broth, cover to steam a bit, and before serving I add a splash of lemon juice. But I will also snip a leaf on my way to the barn and eat it raw  Kale chips are good, but are a bit more fussy as you have to get just the right texture or they're either mushy or burned. 

Sunday my husband actually dug all the carrots out of the garden. We should have had that done by now, but procrastinated. It has been freezing cold here for over a month, but we had a mild weekend and all the snow melted so he went out with a shovel and dug them all out. I washed them and cut off the tips and they are laying all over my kitchen counters drying before we put them in the cold room - there's quite a pile there! Some are still good and we will eat them. Some show signs of freezing so I'll chop those up and feed them to the horses as treats all winter. Very little gets wasted here! 

And this year, to help with the garden and orchards, we even got bees! Well, our friend who is a beekeeper installed two hives on our land. We don't actually have to do anything but watch them buzz around. The fresh honey is so much better than store-bought! And they're doing very well on our property, though one hive may not survive the winter as our beekeeper friend coudn't find the queen last time he was here. But he'll bring in new bees if necessary - he tells us this is to be expected for a new hive.


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## Acadianartist (Apr 21, 2015)

Oh, sorry, I see I completely derailed the thread. Apologies OP. Did you find a solution to your horses' filthy pooping habits?


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## WildestDandelion (Apr 4, 2019)

Acadianartist said:


> But we had no luck with the brussel sprouts. The heads were tiny and brown, and they didn't taste very good. Bugs are


I assume you grew them during the cold season?


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## Acadianartist (Apr 21, 2015)

WildestDandelion said:


> I assume you grew them during the cold season?


I am in Canada, we only have about three months when we can grow anything so that's when I grew them. We have snow from November to April. We plant in June and by September, we have frost. You think I should have planted them later?


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