# Do all hoofed animals soil their sleeping areas?



## boots (Jan 16, 2012)

I can only answer for cattle, sheep, and horses.

The cattle I work are range cattle. Only inside if injured or having trouble giving birth. In those cases they void anywhere. But they've never become accustomed to being stalled.

Same for sheep.

Horses run the gamut. Some are tidy. Others are very messy. Some people say stallions are the neatest, but not all. It's the luck of the draw, IME.


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## jonbailey (May 7, 2018)

Carnivores, predators, have a more highly-developed brain than prey animals: horses, cows, sheep, etc.. They are much more trainable for house-breaking, managing bowel and bladder control. 

Humans, highly-developed animal species, are generally averse to squalor by nature and the higher-level cats and dogs (meat eaters with larger brains) are also not fond of crap and pee in their beds.


The lower species are more oblivious, insensitive, to squalor, maybe.


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## AnitaAnne (Oct 31, 2010)

You are generalizing...I have had horses that are very neat in their stalls! 

Most of the ones I have had never urinate in their stalls unless it get really cold and they can't get out (ie I have shut the doors) 

They definitely hold their urine!! I have had several that refuse to drink in the stall or when in the trailer because they won't urinate in the trailer. 

My RMHA gelding ALWAYS has to pee before a ride. He likes to move along, and a full bladder is uncomfortable gaiting :smile:

My current mare and gelding both put their manure in the back corner of their stall farthest from their feed bucket. In the pasture, they have potty areas and grazing areas. 

Even when coming in to eat, my gelding will often make a detour to the poo pile before coming in to eat. 

I would definitely NOT say the horses are stupider than dogs and cats...


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## JCnGrace (Apr 28, 2013)

Llamas are the only ones that I know of that are fairly neat. Our old neighbors raised llamas and as long as they were provided a sand box that is where they would go. As for llama sand boxes it was actually a large square frame made with lumber and I forget if it was made from 2x4s or 2x6es that was laid on the ground and then filled with sand.


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## secuono (Jul 6, 2011)

Llamas, alpacas and hogs. And dogs n cats 

The first two are lazy, they will eventually make a toilet pile in the barn. Why? Because the sun was too bright or it drizzled or the wind blew the wrong direction and they "couldn't" leave the barn to toilet!

Hogs are toilet trained at birth. My newborn piglets would wander a foot away to potty. Further every day. Literally, still wet from birth & they will move away to potty. 

Horses sometimes won't potty in the stall/barn. Others use the barn as the toilet...
Mine are locked out because of just that. They have two favorite spots to potty outside the barn that they use, but they won't search them out like an alpaca/llama will.

Sheep/goats crap in their sleep. Get them to stand after laying and chewing cud for a bit & the first thing they do is pee huge puddle! Then poop. There's a reason people keep them out all the time or on slat floors!


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## Feathers7 (Jun 11, 2019)

My horse has preferred pasture areas to manure, but she likes to use her stall as a pee area...sometimes right before I feed her. (This shows how much she wants to stay in her stall...which is not at all.) Wild horses tend to toilet as they go, but they're usually on the go most of the time. I imagine that's similar for many of the animals we've deemed 'domestic.' We sometimes don't give them much choice but to poop where they sleep. From what I understand, goats can't ... "hold" their bowel movements...so there's really no point to trying to get them to do otherwise. Sounds like sheep are the same way, but I'm not sure. Any input there @secuono ?


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## Horsef (May 1, 2014)

Horses at my barn have made a poo pile in their field. Everyone goes to the same spot and there is no poo anywhere else. The pile is cleaned up regularly but the workers make sure they always leave some behind in case the horses need a marker. My mare only poos in one corner of her stall, furthest from her food. Other horses may not be as neat.


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## Foxhunter (Feb 5, 2012)

Cleaning dairy cows was fairly easy. In winter, when they were inside, they had free access to the silage clamps, they had pipe stalls where they would lay to sleep and chew cud. About 2' from the front of the stall was a pipe bar, about 3' high so, when they got up they stepped back. 

As said, they peed and pooped as soon as they got up so, in stepping back, they did this into a channel, easy to scrape up. As for the outside yards - a mess! 

Some horses are clean, others not so much. A lot depends on the size of the stable they are in.


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## walkinthewalk (Jul 23, 2008)

jonbailey said:


> Carnivores, predators, have a more highly-developed brain than prey animals: horses, cows, sheep, etc.. They are much more trainable for house-breaking, managing bowel and bladder control.
> 
> Humans, highly-developed animal species, are generally averse to squalor by nature and the higher-level cats and dogs (meat eaters with larger brains) are also not fond of crap and pee in their beds.
> 
> ...


Nice to see your reference to horses as “lower species” —- I will be sure to tell that to my gelding (he will whoa at liberty when I am standing behind him) who now has two stalls when he comes in at night. He will never - that is NEVER leave manure in his “living room”, as long as I leave the door open to the back stall. He also has certain areas of that stall that he prefers to use. He would be 75, were he human.

My other gelding used to be equally as neat but serious health issues have got in the way of him caring anymore. He’d be 72 were he human - even senior humans have incontinence issues when they reach that age.

The two elder geldings I laid to rest a few years back, were also very neat — the Arab being superbly clean - probably because it’s in his lower species DNA to sleep in a tent (take that literally) with their human.


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## jonbailey (May 7, 2018)

walkinthewalk said:


> Nice to see your reference to horses as *“lower species”* —- I will be sure to tell that to my gelding (he will whoa at liberty when I am standing behind him) who now has two stalls when he comes in at night. He will never - that is NEVER leave manure in his “living room”, as long as I leave the door open to the back stall. He also has certain areas of that stall that he prefers to use. He would be 75, were he human.
> 
> My other gelding used to be equally as neat but serious health issues have got in the way of him caring anymore. He’d be 72 were he human - even senior humans have incontinence issues when they reach that age.
> 
> The two elder geldings I laid to rest a few years back, were also very neat — the Arab being superbly clean - probably because it’s in his lower species DNA to sleep in a tent (take that literally) with their human.


Well, then I give those domestic herbivorous equids much more credit now than I ever had thought before if your geldings behave so civilly.

It makes your job easier as a horse owner if the ponies do their business out of doors.


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## ACinATX (Sep 12, 2018)

jonbailey said:


> Carnivores, predators, have a more highly-developed brain than prey animals: horses, cows, sheep, etc.. They are much more trainable for house-breaking, managing bowel and bladder control.
> 
> Humans, highly-developed animal species, are generally averse to squalor by nature and the higher-level cats and dogs (meat eaters with larger brains) are also not fond of crap and pee in their beds.
> 
> ...


A horse that is kept in a stall doesn't have a choice. Keep a dog or a cat in a crate for two days and they'll use the bathroom there as well.

Even a human, which I'm sure would be your definition of "higher species" would do the same thing. At some point, you just can't hold it any more.

And horses have to poop every few hours at the least. 

I have to wonder about the point of some of your posts sometimes.


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## 4horses (Nov 26, 2012)

My horses live in dry lots. In general the back of the paddock is a designated potty area. All manure is in the back. The front of the dry lot is usually kept clean. 

But some horses are pigs and go wherever they happen to be standing. The horses that are pigs were usually stalled at some point before I got them. The best horses for going in a designated spot are those that were in a free range environment in a herd. 

These are just generalizations from my small herd so I'm not certain how this applies to other horses... But even when i worked at big barns, they had horses that had very neat stalls and some with messy stalls. 

I suppose they are similar to people. Some like a clean, organized environment and some can live with a huge mess. Perhaps it is personality.


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## JCnGrace (Apr 28, 2013)

@4horses, mine are all slobs and most of them have been raised with access to pasture and the freedom to come in and out of the barn at will. If they're standing in the barn they go where they're standing and if they're out grazing they go where they're standing. LOL


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## loosie (Jun 19, 2008)

I don't know if they are harder to toilet train than say a dog(& IME some dogs are more difficult...) . Just that most don't bother to teach their horses. The racehorse trainer I worked for in a past life had all his horses trained to go on cue in a bucket - but of course if the were left stabledstabled for long periods they couldn't help it. He would always bring the bucket out before going in the truck, before going into a tie stall, before a race. But he never had new horses come in while I worked for him so I never saw him train them to do this. And the race track had a 'horse toilet'- a designated stall where people took their horses... assuming no bucket training I suppose. Have heard of other toilet trained horses, and they do use minis as assistance animals too, who need to be toilet trained.


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## Avna (Jul 11, 2015)

Think about it:

Most hoofed domestic animals are grazers/browsers who naturally much move continually to eat. Those that sleep at night often don't sleep in the same place again. Those that are "cleaner" are those which use manure to mark territory (like stallions and by extension geldings). 

There is no evolutionary reason for them to be clean in their sleeping place, as there is for predator species which den, like dogs (wolves), cats, etc. 

We create very artificial spaces for domestic animals, and they cope with what tools they have. 

By the way, there is no such thing as lower or higher animals, that is totally debunked as a scientific theory. We are all waypoints on evolutionary trees reaching forward into the future. That's all. We are all adaptations to the environment as it is presented to us, as best we can do.


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## rambo99 (Nov 29, 2016)

My dog that crossed the rainbow bridge this spring. When he was a puppy if put in his crate he never went potty in it.

He also potty trained, to go outside in just a few weeks time. Had very few accidents in the house after he was trained. He was very smart dog I could talk to him, an he knew what I was telling him. 

The last winter he was here we had an ice storm. Deck was glare ice that next morning. I went to let him out I told him be CAREFUL it SLIPPERY. Didn't expect he would take heed to my warning. But he did ever so carefully he walked down deck steps. 

But maybe experience of slidding off deck in past do to ice,had something to do with him listening. 

My two geldings are pigs to lazy to walk away from hay feeder to poo. In summer ice has his places he poops and pees. In the pasture they have 5 or 6 places where they poop. Never see poop anywhere else. They are tidy out on pasture. 

In stalls it's hit an miss sometimes they poop In back of stall. Other times it poop from wall to wall. Reason I only put enough shavings to just cover mats. So just rake it all up and shovle into wheel barrow. 

So yeah they soil where they sleep when in stalls. Outside they choose a clean place to lay down. But when locked up if there pigs not much choice. 

I prefer they live outside for most part just healthier for them.


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## secuono (Jul 6, 2011)

Feathers7 said:


> My horse has preferred pasture areas to manure, but she likes to use her stall as a pee area...sometimes right before I feed her. (This shows how much she wants to stay in her stall...which is not at all.) Wild horses tend to toilet as they go, but they're usually on the go most of the time. I imagine that's similar for many of the animals we've deemed 'domestic.' We sometimes don't give them much choice but to poop where they sleep. From what I understand, goats can't ... "hold" their bowel movements...so there's really no point to trying to get them to do otherwise. Sounds like sheep are the same way, but I'm not sure. Any input there @secuono ?


I have read that sheep can be potty trained. There's a sheep on FB that is clicker trained and I believe that she's said he is potty trained in her posts.
I've never tried, so no personal experience with it.


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## loosie (Jun 19, 2008)

^Oh my eldest, who loves & breeds chickens wants one as a housepet and people do keep the friendly varieties as such and housetrain them too. I'm sure my dogs would love to share the house with a chook... for a very short time.


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## QtrBel (May 31, 2012)

We had a hen that paper trained. She spent much of her time in the house once she healed from being attacked in the pen.


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## boots (Jan 16, 2012)

secuono said:


> I have read that sheep can be potty trained. There's a sheep on FB that is clicker trained and I believe that she's said he is potty trained in her posts.
> I've never tried, so no personal experience with it.


That reminds me... I did meet a woman who had a housebroke sheep. They raised sheep, but one lamb in particular took to the couple's preschool-aged daughter. The little girl has some physical and cognitive challenges. 

After the lamb was weaned they thought they might let their daughter try to show it in local shows and 4H eventually. But, the relationship went far beyond showing. When the daughter was home the pair was almost inseparable. The youngster even perfected walking by hanging on to the lamb's wool, and the lamb would position herself to be helpful. It was amazing. 

A woolly angel. I wonder how long they got to be together. I moved from the area.

Mom said the lamb only had two accidents in the house.


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## Change (Jul 19, 2014)

My gelding always leaves the barn to pee or poop. My diva mare won't go outside if it's raining, too hot, or if she just doesn't feel like it. When I had an 8 stall barn with runouts, the geldings always peed in the same place, creating ammonia pits. I'd have to put tires over their pee spots to dry them up. The boys usually stepped outside to poop, too. The mares were hit and miss, although mares closer to foaling seemed more likely to keep the indoor area poop free.


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## trailhorserider (Oct 13, 2009)

Almost every horse I've ever ridden will choose a soft spot in the sand or pine needles to pee when they are out riding on the trail. They definitely don't like to be splashed with their own pee! My current horse will go off trail to find the perfect pee spot. I used to think she was just wandering off trail but I quickly realized she only did that when she was looking for a place to pee. So I think their stall pee habits are probably similar......they try to find the spot with the least splash-back.


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## Avna (Jul 11, 2015)

trailhorserider said:


> Almost every horse I've ever ridden will choose a soft spot in the sand or pine needles to pee when they are out riding on the trail. They definitely don't like to be splashed with their own pee! My current horse will go off trail to find the perfect pee spot. I used to think she was just wandering off trail but I quickly realized she only did that when she was looking for a place to pee. So I think their stall pee habits are probably similar......they try to find the spot with the least splash-back.


My horses have five acres and in/out stalls with mats and shavings. They pretty much just come in the stalls to potty. I believe they think of them as horse toilets.


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## ACinATX (Sep 12, 2018)

Avna said:


> My horses have five acres and in/out stalls with mats and shavings. They pretty much just come in the stalls to potty. I believe they think of them as horse toilets.


Moonshine is the same way -- she comes in, eats the few bites of alfalfa hay that we give her, and then pees. Then we'll toss her some more hay and she will eat it and pee again. Sometimes she'll pee three times in that stall. In like one hour or less of total stall time. And the thing is, they aren't run-ins -- the horses only get to come in when we let them in. I can't imagine how long she's been holding it each time, since we come at random times. Oh, and since Pony has been on stall rest in a larger stall, she has really enjoyed going in his stall and peeing there.

I bet when we get to the new place and get the stalls set up as run-ins, she will come in to pee every single time.

The boys NEVER pee in their stalls, only outside.


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