Managing Poo

At the HITS Saugerties New York showgrounds, each barn of 80 stalls shares one manure trailer.   And believe me, even when only 50 or 60 horses are in residence, we are talking about a lot of used bedding and manure being mucked out to the trailer on a daily basis...   A trailer which can get filled up fairly quickly.

With so many horse owners sharing a muck heap trailer, you would think they'd all do their part to make it as usable as possible for as long as possible, right?   Ha!   Within hours, the floor of the trailer gets covered, but only to a depth that makes very inefficient use of the trailer.   And then, without any boards or planks to make it easier, very few people will try to push their wheelbarrow over the low soft piles of bedding & manure to build height to the whole muck heap.

But at home, you can bet most of the horse owners do maintain more efficient muck heaps that are well over 2 feet tall.

This morning, the trailer was emptied and by the time I got out there with my morning contributions, already the back 6 or 7 feet was "filled" to a whooping height of 24 inches.   With nothing else to do while Jeddien rested, I did what I was taught to do many years ago.   I worked the muck heap, making it taller and buying everyone a few more precious feet of muck heap trailer space.   And so, the muck trailer at Barn 11 was looking managed instead of just used.

For a few minutes anyway...