What to Do with All of that Horse Manure in the Winter
Any of you who have horses know that horses produce a lot of waste, up to 50 pounds a day per horse. That is so much manure.
And then once you multiply by a few horse and it gets to be a lot. So today I’m going to go through how I went from having to pick a ton of manure to now having to pick hardly any.
I’ve always kept my horses on full time pasture in the summer, which means there’s very, very little manure to pick. But in the winter they were always kept in the paddock which means all of their waste is getting dumped in one spot.
That meant I was out there with a metal shovel in subzero weather, picking hard-as-rock poop and trying to put it in a pile. Not fun.
When January or February hit, I sort of gave up on it and I would always end up with a muddy slurry in the spring. Also not fun.
This year I decided to try something different. I’m going to take you along as I do chores and explain how all of the poop that used to get dumped in the paddock that I would then have to deal with is now building soil in the pastures.
Put Your Horses to Work Building up the Soil in Your Pastures Instead
I start by putting the hay onto a sled because we have to get it out relatively far, so that is step one. When I used to feed them here in the paddock, I’d be stuffing the hay in the nets, which is super, super convenient other than it causing a ton of manure picking responsibilities.
You can see in the paddock here they have water and shelter. We’re going to be walking right through that opening and that is going to take us to the pasture so that access to this whole area so they can get shelter and water, but they don’t have to be in the paddock all the time.
Here we are up in the pasture. You can see there’s a lot of manure up here. There’s hay and way back down the aisle way is where they can go for all of their shelter and their water.
All of this manure is now getting placed on the pasture where in the spring everything will thaw out and the soil will be able to use those nutrients.
Few Items to Keep in Mind
Don’t Overload a Section of the Pasture; Rotate Hay Locations
Now, there are a couple of key important things that I need to keep in mind as I’ve experimented with this this year.
First of all, I cannot overload a certain section of the pasture. So especially in Minnesota where we get frequent snowfalls, it’s really easy for the snow to cover up where I have already been grazing the horses and then I can’t see all the manure that’s already there.
Then I could end up leaving the horses there too long and there could be way too much manure come spring time, so I have to be super careful about that.
I want to make sure that I’m rotating around where I put the hay so that I’m not overloading the soil because although it can be a blessing come spring, it could also become a curse very quickly if I do not regulate where I’m putting the hay.
Move your Horses Back to a Central Area in the Spring
The second thing that I have to keep in mind is that when the snow starts melting in the spring, I am going to have to put the horses back in the paddock where I used to keep them all winter so that they don’t muck up the pastures and completely destroy them.
So there will be a point in time where I do have to pick just as much manure, but that should only be 6 to 8 weeks instead of six months.
Final Thoughts
So no, this does not completely eliminate my manure picking duties. As you can see, there is still some in the paddock and it has to be picked up, but it is so much more manageable and so much less time consuming.
It makes chores a whole lot easier, so that’s my experiment for this year.
I’ve done this in one pasture last year. I didn’t want to go overboard because I wasn’t sure of the results, but it worked out pretty well.
And as long as I don’t overloaded, I think it should be good. We’ll see what they look like come spring or don’t. thanks for watching today, everyone. Happy New Year and we’ll see you again next Sunday.
