Site Menu:
This is an archived Horseadvice.com Discussion. The parent article and menus are available on the navigation menu below: |
HorseAdvice.com » Horse Care » Horse Pasture, Fencing, Barns » Barn Design and Layout » |
Discussion on How Clean is Your Barn?? | |
Author | Message |
Member: ajudson1 |
Posted on Thursday, Jul 23, 2009 - 11:01 am: Hi Guys,This is meant to be funny! And somewhat serious. We've been updating how our barn is used, and rearranging things on the guys end, building ceilings, enclosing an area for hubby's wood shop, built an enclosed tool room. Then I decided to clean the tack room, and pretty soon I found myself washing windows, disinfecting the counter, sink, and shelfs, using the shop vac on the aisle, getting every spec of hay sucked up. Thinking of varnishing the stall doors. I was chuckling, and got to wondering, how clean do others keep their barns? I always see pictures of barns you could probably eat off the floor! (not that I'd want to of course!) I know some people can't stand any manure in a stall. I am not one of those, so my clean barn is just a fluke right now. It sure looks nice right now! Until I rasp hoofs, throw down hay, or groom anyone. Maybe I'll just keep the horses out of the barn from now on... |
Member: annes |
Posted on Thursday, Jul 23, 2009 - 11:58 am: Angie, I spend more time working in the barn than in the house but I do hope my house is cleaner. I just adopted two rescue cats - both are black and sisters. They are having a great time mousing in the barn. Yesterday morning they both had cobwebs encircling their heads - looked like halos! I had to laugh out loud. So maybe that tells you how clean my barn is! I am one of those who can't stand manure in the stalls. I clean them 2x every day and in between if I happen to see a pile. |
Member: sdms |
Posted on Thursday, Jul 23, 2009 - 12:12 pm: Barn? What barn?? |
Member: vickija |
Posted on Thursday, Jul 23, 2009 - 12:18 pm: We only put our horses in the barn when sick. Otherwise they are out 24/7 year round. We live in the mountains with pretty severe winters but they have a run in and the barn itself has 12 foot overhangs to act as a wind block. The only reason I mention it is because it is a real departure to how I was brought up to think about horses and since I have had these guys (5 years) I have not had 1 day of sickness (knock on wood) and they are healthy as a horse!Maybe barns should be kept for humans? |
Member: tpmiller |
Posted on Thursday, Jul 23, 2009 - 12:20 pm: Past 7 years have used a stall sifter to clean stalls. Works great. Paid for itself many times over in saved sawdust. Can't get a stall cleaner hand picking.I use a cheap plastic snow shovel and strip stalls daily, all the bad stuff DrOps into a muck bucket for discard. Treat any wet spots on the pads by spraying with Stabal Fresh, live organisms that eat urine. Absolutely no smell in the barn. |
Member: canter |
Posted on Thursday, Jul 23, 2009 - 12:54 pm: As many know, I board my mare. The barn is cleaned every morning after the horses are fed. The BO is meticulous to the point of almost being funny. In the evenings, when she has the time, she will watch for us to finish up our rides and then head down to the barn to chat. Funny thing is, she never stops to just chat....as we're talking, she grabs a broom and sweeps down cobwebs. Or pops into the feed room to sweep it out. Half the time, she's picked out Sparkles stall or swept up the aisle before I get to it. I've often teased her and told her to let me clean up my own mess as it prolongs the amount of time I'm out there, and after all, I'd rather clean my horse's mess in the barn than scrub a toilet at home! Last night, when I got there, the arena was freshly dragged. Because of rain, I rode in there and before I was done putting away my stuff, the BO had attached the drag to her golf cart and evened out the footing again.She's wonderful and keeps a great place. Because of this, I try to help her out when she's not around. I've scrubbed walls down for her, popped in to check waters, brought in horses...whatever help she needs. Having my horse in a clean and safe environment is worth every volunteer minute I put in...plus some. |
Member: vickiann |
Posted on Thursday, Jul 23, 2009 - 5:34 pm: I keep my stalls and paddocks picked clean twice daily but do not ordinarily shut the horses in.They come up to the barn to eat hay or grain but in the summertime there is ample pasture. Sometimes they come in to get out of the rain or to rest in the shade, though they do have shade trees. My tack room looks like a hurricane hit it, but most of the time when riding I am operating out of one of my trailers where the tidiness of the tack areas varies! The horse area is kept clean always. I have found it very beneficial to have the inside of my barn pressure cleaned at least once yearly so that there is less dust and cobwebs and this makes the air better to breath for the horses and helps to prevent coughing and allergies. For quite some time after building my barn, I kept the feed and tack rooms and everything spotless out of a love of being up there. Reality eventually set in that while I prefer it very clean and tidy, there is just so much time in a day. Periodically I throw away out-dated products, get rid of unused equipment and tidy up, but it is kept more at barn than house standards. I'd rather be riding than cleaning! Health and safety are the most important priorities for me. Sometimes I have been in barns where everything is nice and clean with all of the leather routinely polished. Then I've walked out and looked at the pastures and paddocks and seen many species of toxic weeds growing out there, or water tanks that need to be cleaned. This strikes me as a reversal of appropriate priorities. |
Member: mitch316 |
Posted on Thursday, Jul 23, 2009 - 6:07 pm: While in the summer, we rarely put our horses in the barn, in the winter the stalls are mucked out daily (which we turn into mulch and sell to the tree huggers). We try to keep the main isles swept, but there would be noone eating off of our floors, ha. The main thing for our current barn is that it is a woodshop, auto garage, horse nursery/doctoring/grooming station, and whatever else we need it for. In the new place, we will actually have stables for horses, and other buildings for those other things (cannot wait). I have been in some that were so clean, you would be hard pressed to believe that some animals lived there, and yet some others that were so filled with flies and filth, that you would gag. we just try to keep ours reasonable, if that means anything because my reasonable might not be yours, ha. |
Member: mrose |
Posted on Thursday, Jul 23, 2009 - 6:56 pm: I'd love for my barn to look like one of those ads for barn flooring. Unfortuneately, we live where there is dust and wind. Plus, my horses are slobs. I can't get them to wipe their feet before coming in, they shed dirt and hair all over, strew their hay around, and seem to enjoy slobbering, rubbing, banging and chewing on everything. It's difficult to keep things clean with them around. Then of course, there's the neighbor's dogs that come in looking for the cat food. He tries to climb up the shelves to reach where the cat is fed and drags down all the blankets and everything else on the shelves.I do try and keep the tack room pretty clean; if I didn't I'd never find anything once it went in there. And, I do clean stalls twice a day at least, no so much because I feel sorry for the messy slobs, but because I hate flies! |
Member: mrose |
Posted on Thursday, Jul 23, 2009 - 6:58 pm: btw, I've hit upon using cheap, odor killing cat litter for the stalls. It seems to work great. I even put it on the wet spots in the pens. It helps dry things up and keeps the flies away. You can get big bags or buckets of it at both Costco and Wally World really cheaply - much less than the stall deodorizer. |
Member: ajudson1 |
Posted on Thursday, Jul 23, 2009 - 7:32 pm: Sounds like my barn keeping skills are in the normal range, lol! If the S*** gets too deep, I clean, the dust too thick, I clean ;-).I don't let the horses in the stalls much, otherwise I have to clean the 2 open ones every other day at least. I think if I ever move and have a choice on hay storage, it won't be in the barn, that makes the most mess IMO. I couldn't believe the dust, old hay, and dead flies/bugs when I helped on the guys end of the barn. ICK. My daughter shaved the cats in the tack room, that was fun to vacuum up! AH Choo! And of course if my barn is clean, the house isn't. Fran, Your barn owner sounds like my mother in law, lol! She can stop in, and she just goes and fills the sink with water, collects dishes to do (even if you are not done eating!) She never just SITS, in her mid 70s, the grand kids call her "Gramma Tornado." She was great when we cleaned the barn up spic and span for our sons graduation party 3 years ago...yup, took down the cobwebs, had a bucket with water and sponge, and if the floor wasn't clean enough to eat off of, the tack room was, and we served the food out of there. Guess we need to plan another party? Jesse, I've hinted several times that the auto section our son uses needs to be in it's own building; (I hate the smell of gas, he hates the smell of horses, especially trimmed hoofs) the wood shop too. But I suspect my husband thinks I'd just put in another 5 stalls, and then fill them, with 5 more horses |
Member: ajudson1 |
Posted on Thursday, Jul 23, 2009 - 7:59 pm: Sara,Just the clay cat litter I presume? I buy the cheapest I can at WM to keep in the cars in the winter, great for traction if you get stuck. We have some in the barn all the time for spills in the "auto shop" and I have put it on the "belts" that I have on the aisle to keep the horses from slipping when we have those really damp days. I never thought to buy the odor control kind, but I can see using that. Especially for little Miss Pee Pot, Gem, who can completely soak and trash a stall within an hour! She goes, walks and walks in circles, goes again..just a nervous little thing she is. |
Member: erika |
Posted on Thursday, Jul 23, 2009 - 9:02 pm: How appropriate to come across your thread today Angie. While waiting for the vet to come tranq a horse for the dentist, I vacuumed the barn--yes, vacuumed!As you may know, my husband surprised me with a barn makeover last summer, complete with rubber tiles on the aisle floor. They look great, but are are impossible to sweep! The blower works, but I hate breathing the air with everything flying. So I bought a cheap vacuum cleaner just for the barn. Usually I'm like you, I get ambitious once in a while and clean everything, then entropy sets in again for a while... Erika |
Member: mrose |
Posted on Friday, Jul 24, 2009 - 12:10 am: I use a vacuum for cobwebs and dust on the shelves. It never occured to me to vacuum the floors! Duh. |
Member: mrose |
Posted on Friday, Jul 24, 2009 - 12:16 am: Angie, yes, whatever is the cheapest with odor control. When I clean the stalls (we have mats) there is often a film of urine the shavings don't pick up, even though I use a snow shovel to scrape up the wet shavings. I just sprinkle a coating of the litter down and put the shavings down on top. I just put a "frosting" of it on the wet spots in the pens.I'll put my older mare up against your Pee Pot any day! |
Member: sodmonst |
Posted on Friday, Jul 24, 2009 - 12:33 am: I love to organize and clean the feed and tack rooms. The horses live outside, 24/7, but I'll admit that all four of their water tubs get cleaned daily and disinfected with Clorox several times per week. They have more than one tub to insure that if one or two get fouled by a toad or other critter, they will still be able to get to water.While I know that show horses need extra TLC to keep them looking spiffy,IMHO our horses are happiest living outside, walking around, and socializing. If it sleets or tries to snow (not too often around here), the turnout blankets go on. When my horse did live in a barn, he would stand outdoors in his run rather than come in out of the rain! Victoria, you might like this bit of trivia. In the 1800's the hard winters would kill off the cattle in North Dakota, but the horses could survive. The government provided quality stallions to some of the ranches and they raised a lot of the remounts for the cavalry up there. |
Member: vickija |
Posted on Friday, Jul 24, 2009 - 10:23 am: Thanks for the trivia Susie. When I first moved here and got these horses I was horrified at the thought of them staying out through the tough winters but they seemed just fine with it. As long as they can get out of the wind and have a shelter for the snowy days they love being outside. We experimented with leaving one of the stalls open for them to go into the barn if they needed but they never did! |
Member: paul303 |
Posted on Saturday, Jul 25, 2009 - 12:53 am: YAK!!! OK, Angie, my barn is scrubbed, shop vacked ( in the cement floored tack room, and wash stall ), and disinfected where necessary. This year we are having trouble with starlings, sparrows, and barn swallows, so the place keeps getting power washed when necessary, for bird poops.Do NOT, repeat NOTTT!!! ask me about my house. |
Member: kpaint |
Posted on Saturday, Jul 25, 2009 - 6:53 am: I'd probably fall on the side of cleaner rather than dirtier/more clutter. Perhaps part of it is that my "new" barn is only a year old, I'm thrilled with it, and I like looking at it tidy.The aisle is swept thoroughly once a week with broom/leaf blower/shopvac and spot cleaned with broom daily. Still, there is hay now and again on the floor from feeding. There are no cobwebs or accumulated dust in the aisle. Electric receptacles are dust free. Tack room is a bit messy right now, but it's project work/cleaning supplies; tack is on wall organizer/racks and always put away unless it's on the cleaning working table. Stalls are cleaned 1 and often 2x daily as are the drylots off the stalls. Stall mats and walls swept throughly every other day. The galvanized bars on the stalls need cleaned. They have sort of a sticky/dust build up right now so that is on the list for next week. Automatic waterers cleaned weekly. I only have three horses, so it's not like I have to manage 40 boarded horses... Mine have never been shut in their stalls. They always have access to their drylot; however, grazing the lush pasture is restricted although they also have a more sparse pasture to graze. I like Sara W's idea of kitty litter for the mats. I'll have to try that. Mine rarely whiz in the stalls; they chose the drylot in warmer temps in a place that has thicker stone and less splash. However, in the winter the mare usually uses her stall. As the new wears off the barn and there being only so much time in a day--as someone else stated!--the sweeping/dust may get more lax... |
Member: ajudson1 |
Posted on Saturday, Jul 25, 2009 - 9:07 am: O.k., Vicki,That was depressing reading your barn cleaning routine,! Not sure if I did that much even when the barn was new like 6 years ago? Lee, Laughing about the "Don't ask me about my house!" I just read something about a prediction for what our lives were going to be like in the year 2000: "A house wife would just need to turn on some type of washing system that cleaned the house. All of our furniture and flooring would be water proof, and drains hidden in the floor." Anyone got a new modern home like that? Or barn?? Off to get the hose and pressure wand after I type this! I do like to once a year, remove the stall flooring, drag it out, and borrow a pressure washer to clean it good. It's a papermill product, comes off the huge paper machines and it's porous, but super tough and heavy nylon. After I have fight with removing the boards that I have along the walls to hold it up, then I work on the flooring. I have to put visegrips on it, and drag, and tug, and keep moving the grips to get it out. Then I redo the gravel base which gets packed down with time, I break up, add more, sometimes add lime to the sand under it. I am thinking this year I will REMOVE the gravel, put something smaller and less likely to pack, maybe pea gravel? 'Nways, I know if I visit Lee, we'll stay in the barn, ya hoo!!! |
Member: lilo |
Posted on Saturday, Jul 25, 2009 - 11:26 am: Folks - if we had a contest on the dirtiest barn, I would win hands-down! Pole barn with dirt floors, dust everywhere, cobwebs and barn swallow poop (fortunately they had only one nest this year, in the third stall that I don't use for the horses, just for wheelbarrow and stuff).I can't power wash, since my hay is stored in there also. My stalls finally have rubber mats, and I do clean them up daily. That has been a help. My horses are never locked in, and in the winter rarely urinate inside the stalls (I don't use bedding, or they would urinate inside more often). However, when it is really hot, their potty training goes to pot also... Sara - I love your idea of the kitty litter. I could use that outside in Moonlight's corral along with the stove pellets in her "pee spot". I would not use it in the stalls, since I compost (more or less) the manure for spreading on the pastures. I have bought a leaf blower and hope to use it in the fall to possibly get rid of some of the cobwebs. If I had the money, I would put concrete floors or asphalt in the aisle and hay storage area and that would help a lot. But that is not in the budget ... Lilo |