How to clean a stall
Keeping your horse’s stall clean is important for the health of the horse. A dirty stall can cause problems such as thrush in a horse’s hooves and will attract flies and other bugs. Aim to clean your stalls daily, and at least every other day, depending on how often your horse is turned out.
To properly clean a stall, you will need a pitchfork and a wheelbarrow. Start off by picking through the piles of manure and filling the wheelbarrow with the manure. It helps if you clean in a pattern, so you could start with the front of the stall and work your way back. You could also clean clockwise – it’s up to you. Once you have most of the manure pieces thrown into the wheelbarrow, look for wet spots. Disgard any shavings or straw that is wet. After removing the wet spots, take your fork and move shavings away from the wall. Horses tend to push the bedding forward to the parameters of the stall by rolling and walking. Be sure to clean out any left over hay that the horse is not going to eat. Also be sure to clean up dropped grain since leftover grain can attract mice or other rodents.
Dump the wheelbarrow in a designated spot for manure, which is not close to a water source or where runoff water will pollute a stream. The manure pile should be away from the main stall area since manure attracts flies.
Bedding for horses is important for the overall comfort of the horse and for soaking up waste. You should plan to bed your stall with 2-3 bags of pine shavings which you can buy from a local feed mill or tack shop. You may also use straw to bed the stall, but straw is a little more difficult to clean than shavings and some horses have a tendancy to eat straw.
You can potentially compost your manure and use it on gardens or give it away by advertising on Craigslist to people in the area who may be able to use manure for fertilizing their flower beds or gardens.
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