How do I get quick and thorough with mucking out stables?

[Fifty Bales of Hay]

I often wonder how other people are so much quicker than me at mucking out. I am talking about fully mucking out, taking out the wet, turning over the bed, but leaving the banks, levelling it ready for bringing in. At the moment I am using Nedzbed (but doesn't seem to matter what I use for bedding) I am very thorough and pick out every piece (and seemingly my horses like to mush it all up too!) of poo from the bedding. But I am incredibly SLOW!!!!!!!

How can I speed up without losing the thoroughness I seem to need to do?

 

[Casey76]

Practice, practice, practice!

My horses have always been on full livery, so I've never had the practice in mucking out properly, and although I still like to muck out when and where I can I am sloooow! However the more I do, the quicker I get.

I am much faster doing a straw bed than I am my mares pellet bed - however I can (and do) spend an age seiving out the "micro poo" when I have the time.

 

[budley95]

Practice im afraid. No magic way. Skipping out when you can as soon as you see a poo. Wear rubber gloves for micro bits rather than faffing about. Im always slow November time when he comes back in for winter and am ridiculously quick by the time it comes to April and can do the whole yards 4 stables in 20 minutes. Then he goes out for summer and I get slow again.:-D

 

[MiJodsR2BlinkinTite]

Mmmm, agree with poster above re. the "tools" for the job.

My godsend is a skipper-out device, i.e. a thing like a dustpan with a long-handled sort of pooper-scooper on the end of it (sorry, you all know what I mean) - although I've seen ones with a different poo picking up device and they look even more easy to handle than what I've got which can be a bit cumbersome.

Second rubber-gloves. And a shavings fork makes doing shavings a heck of a lot easier.

Then its just about cracking on and going for it basically.

If you want to know how to "do your two" quickly and efficiently, go to a professional yard and see how mega-quick they do it!!!

 

[noblesteed]

I could do a nedsbed bed in 5 mins flat. Though my horse is very clean! maybe an obvious question but are you throwing the dry, poo-filled stuff against the top of the banks so the poo rolls out? No need to sift it with your fork then. Scrape the dry stuff on top off with a fork and throw that to let the poo roll out. Then you have the wee at the bottom exposed, and you can just dig that out. When you bed back down, put the slightly soiled stuff at the bottom as that will just get full of wee anyway. I turn over one bank a day so each gets done once every 3 days.
Don't put bedding under your nets so it doesn't end up mixed with hay.
Hope that helps!

 

[p87]

Find a method that works for you! I used to be ridiculously slow until I stopped trying to do the whole bed at once (making more of a mess as I went along) and started from one end working my way to the other.

Start at the cleanest end and make a bank of clean bedding

For piles of poo (no wet) just skim your fork underneath to pick up as little bedding as you can (like you would when skipping out) and gently shake any bedding out that you have picked up

For piles of poo (again no wet) that is mixed through the bedding, throw this high up onto your clean bank and all the poo will roll down to the bottom of the bank, making it easy to just scoop up - when you do this sift through the bank a few times to get any bits that might have been buried in the bank

For wet bits I pick all the wet up with the fork and throw it back down onto a clean bit of floor, making it easier to separate the wet and the dry - wet goes in the barrow, dry goes on top of the bank.

And as noblesteed has already said, keep your hay away form the bedding so it doesn't mix through

 

[kaiserchief]

I discovered rubber gloves last winter after watching the yard groom muck out in seconds and leave all her stables utterly immaculate.

Gloves on, into the stable with a skip, pick the poos directly into the skip and empty into your waiting wheelbarrow. Then grab the appropriate fork for your type of bedding and rake across the top of the bed. Dry bedding will come away easily, wet won't. So scrape all the dry to the sides leaving the wet wherever you've found it to scoop out with a shovel.

Scoop out the wet, sweep the floor to make sure you get all of it, then re-lay the dry using your fork.

Now I've started doing this, I can fully muck out my very mucky gelding's straw bed in about 5 minutes and I'm not wasting any bedding either which is great!