Poo crisis on DIY yard

I think issue a letter saying that if poo picking is not done then livery will go up to cover the cost of paying someone to do it, sometimes people have the best intentions but in the dark wintery evenings it'd be easy to think 'I'll do it next time!' 3 barrows a week is quite reasonable, you could all do it at the weekend!
 
Three barrows per week? My pony doesn't even fill one barrow per week in his individual paddock at this time of year, there's no way I'd be happy about clearing up after other people's horses.

You need to fence your paddocks, see who's looking after theirs and who isn't. Those who aren't warn and if needs be boot off. The more you make people forced to share space the more you will have some people taking the p!ss and some people doing too much. Allow people to manage their own time and their own horses in their own space and most will take pride in it, its only the odd few who will still be lazy once its obvious who they are. Plus then its possible to do it for just them and give them a bill.
 
Last edited:
This is one reason I am glad all my liveries want individual paddocks as you know who isn't keeping up with poo picking ;)

We normally have 4 youngsters on 5 acres and we don't poo pick, we use it for 5 months and then they are moved and this is then harrowed and rolled. Worm counts are always clear. It is also rotated with sheep which helps too. This winter I have 9 on 20 acres and again it won't be poo picked, just harrowed in the spring.

Personally, I would just harrow in spring and don't worry about poo picking in winter, just do it in the summer.
 
This is definitely one thing I don't miss since my old girl was PTS. I used to spend so much time shovelling up other people's because they were too pigging lazy to do it themselves. No wonder my back is wrecked. Last year I was shifting 9 barrows every week. This year it was 3 barrows but considering my old girl only did 2 piles each night when she was in ...


YO used to go mad with everyone every so often, but frankly she didn't come down hard enough or often enough. The galling things is it only takes 20 minutes to fill a barrow and bring it back. I used to do it while my girl was eating her feed.
 
This is the reason that there's no decent DIY livery around. Because people are too lazy to clear up their own horse's poo! Do you all expect your YO to muck out stables for you?

A trug is an easy way of doing things. I do it daily (twice if they're out 24/7). It takes literally minutes and I do it as I bring in. If it's heavy to carry then empty it half way. It isn't rocket science!

I've seen soured grass. Horses are fussy and will not eat grass near poo so you end up with badly grazed grass.

I only have one at livery but I'd be kicked off if I didn't poo pick. As it is, I'm MORE than happy to do it as I don't see why YO should have to clean up after my horse. I pay for stable and field, not YO's poo picking services. Fields are immaculate, and it's lovely :)
 
I just don't get the bigger fields therefore don't need to poo pick argument. :confused:If you have 3 acres per horse, it will look as bad after 3 weeks as one acre per horse does after one week. It looks awful! Horses won't eat where poo has lain for a long time, fresh manure is actually BAD for the soil and the grass which is why you should only use well rotted manure to fertilize. And it is bad for horses due to worm eggs. The longer poo stays in the field, the longer the contamination lasts. Our horses have had a clear wormcount for seven years! Except for the mare that went to stud and the pony that goes to shows where they can graze on the grass.
 
I've been at DIY yards wher eI've had to poo pick for some years now and love the feeling of a nice clean field. My current yard has smallish fields with 1 or 2 or 3 in them, YO doesn't see the benefit of poo picking so doesn't make us. I poo picked in the summer but ended up cleaning the field of her ponies poo as well as they'd grazed it a few weeks before mine.

Our fields have been really wet all year, it's very difficult to get barrows into, out of and around the field.

I was worried about worm counts but had them done a little while ago, one had a very low count and one was just over the "maybe you should think of worming her" level, which was a relief.

Yards I've been on in the past where you don't poo pick have harrowed, rested and rotated grazing - a much better system IME but only suitable for larger fields with herd turnout, both of which seem to be disappearing.
 
ponypilotmum said:
This is the reason that there's no decent DIY livery around. Because people are too lazy to clear up their own horse's poo! Do you all expect your YO to muck out stables for you?

A trug is an easy way of doing things. I do it daily (twice if they're out 24/7). It takes literally minutes and I do it as I bring in. If it's heavy to carry then empty it half way. It isn't rocket science!

I've seen soured grass. Horses are fussy and will not eat grass near poo so you end up with badly grazed grass.

I only have one at livery but I'd be kicked off if I didn't poo pick. As it is, I'm MORE than happy to do it as I don't see why YO should have to clean up after my horse. I pay for stable and field, not YO's poo picking services. Fields are immaculate, and it's lovely :)
Click to expand...

^ this


There is NO excuse for not poo picking WHAT EVER size field you have. If its 20+ then invest in a machine or hire someone.


You (people who do not poo pick) fuss about making the stables nice neat and clean so he has a nice bed to lie in, but you wont make his play/ feed area clean..

I use wheel barrow and tractor, to poo pick . These dark nights i have to zoom round so use tractor. We have 8 acres I would NEVER leave the fields un cleared.

I have 10/11 animals to dee poo after every day

I have 3 diy's who have to do 1 day depooing the whole field to make up for me doing it every day or pay extra and I do it. They ALL opt to pay extra and i do it.

OP I would put a sign up with dee pooing must be done. write it in contract and get them to sign. Say if the dee poing is not done by the following week you will add 10 pounds per week per client to cover you doing it.
 
Last edited:
when I was 13 and volunteered at RDA we used to have so much fun poo picking, playing rounders with the poo & the forks ahahahha took 10x as long but was a lot of fun ;) maybe organise a yard rounders game?! ;)
 
Debsey, it absolute makes sense to poo pick 3 horses on 6 acres. However not 6 on 7 acres (in the winter at any rate) as it's a battle not worth fighting and certainly not one you'll ever win. At the first sign of wet weather the field will be trashed anyway, with no grass to worry about.
 
The other way is have a rota of who does which day do singlely or pairs. Some times when a nice day we decide to use barrows. We ( hubby and i) go round together one barrow each.


Its lovely looking across field s which are clear and not covered in

  • Poo
  • Spread poo via harrow

The idea of harrow is you have to see the un sightly mess for weeks untill its spread then IMO it still looks a mess. When our farmer harrows our fields in spring I hate the fact that some of the fresh poo gets spread while he is working but he cannot avoid spreading and odd one or two.
 
I was at a yard with 40 DIYs in various fields and had to clear two barrows a week each. There was a list up and you wrote the day and time you did your barrows. It was pretty easy to tell if someone wrote their name up but hadn't been out poo picking. If the fields weren't clear of poo on Saturday evening then nothing was allowed to be turned out on Sunday until it was done. It did mean that if someone hasn't done there share then some of us would be doing extra and it then meant people would keep an eye out for those who hadn't done any. If you hadn't written the day and time of two barrows you were charged £5 per barrow and the YO would do it. If anyone was caught writing they had done a barrow when they hadn't they were kicked off the yard. It worked really well for such a huge DIY yard.
 
Sorry but I think it is lazy not poo picking.
Where is the sense in, mucking out the stables but not the fields???

poo vacuums are not expensive these days if you have larger fields, get some of the weekend helpers to pick poo for rides???

Every one comments on ours being clear , its a good fitness programme and cheaper than going to the gym. :D and unlike the gym where you cant see the difference you can with the clean field.
 
Last edited:
Leviathan said:
Sorry but I think it is lazy not poo picking. Mucking out horses stable but not mucking out the field

Where is the sense in, mucking out the stables but not the fields???

poo vacuums are not expensive these days if you have larger fields, get some of the weekend helpers to pick poo for rides???

Every one comments on ours being clear , its a good fitness programme and cheaper than going to the gym. :D and unlike the gym where you cant see the difference you can with the clean field.
Click to expand...

Again, this. We also have a Terravac, OH bought an ex-demo one, but it only comes out after the snow and ice now, when it's been impossible the chip the muck off the frozen ground....! It then takes the sting out of heaving barrows up the ramp onto the trailer when theres a lot.
 
On my yard, we all poo pick, or the YO offers the alternative of her doing it for you for £10 a week. It's either/ or, or you don't stay on the yard.

Fwiw, i think the idea of the trug per person is inspired, and could work really well on a lot of yards. :)
 
In the winter months when you cannot push a barrow round in deep snow, again we are not phased.

Out comes the cheap plastic sledge from homebase and


  1. water buckets go on it and sledged across to the stables.
  2. feed goes on it and sledged to the feed store
  3. dee pooing the tub trugs sit on it and we sledge it round the field. It in some ways is easier than the barrow.
 
I struggle with those that don't poo pick? Why not? It's lovely. I put my iPod on, watch my nags mooching about or take a break to give them a good scratch when they come to investigate & there is a great sense of satisfaction looking across a clear field :)
I must be odd :D
 
poo picking is only satisfying when it's all in a nice pile (as it came out). It's when the rain and birds have scattered it everywhere that it ain't fun at all. Best of all when it's frozen and comes up in one slab :D
 
I poo pick in summer when our five are on 2-3 acre paddocks (as they're big fatties) this is done either with barrow, or 4x4 with trailer (godsend that!). One 6 acre field gets rested for 3 months minimum in winter, so plenty of time for the crows to go through, by the time the horses are back on in it spring, there's no poo left.

I don't get people who says field with poo 'spread ' on them look bad, you can't see ANY poo after ours have been harrowed and rolled, harrowing doesn't make it look like there's been a muck spreader in there fgs. And why not use manure as fertiliser, beats synthetic ones and people pay to put horse manure on their gardens.

We kept horses on this land for 25 years, we had 9 at one point (although a coupl of them would have been diddly ponies), have sheep on ever few years if there's too much grass and we never have worm problems.

Plus, call me lazy, but I really do have better things to do with my time than poo pick a very hilly, 12 acre field ever day! :D
 
Wagtail said:
Yes, I know that method is used by some yards. I think it's lazy. The fields still look an absolute mess. I couldn't stand it. Nothing like the feeling after poo picking all the acres and the paddocks look spotless. :)
Click to expand...

This plus in a lot of the UK the temperatures do not consistently reach a level where the exposure and harrowing of poo is effective to reliably kill worms.

In the far south of UK, with a large acreage per horse, it might work quite well, but most yards are not in that position - for many areas it is not suitable, and is the lazy option Im afraid....
 
I'm a bit surprised at some of the replies to this...

I very much doubt any of you would willingly and happily walk out of your horses stable and leave it full of poo... So why leave your fields full of poo!!? They don't eat their bedding, but they eat the grass!

I too think not poo picking is lazy... If you keep on top of it its a doddle, not matter how big the field is. The chances are if you poo pick every day/every other day, the poos will always be in the same place.

Poo picking is part of owning a horse - you bought it, you feed it, it poos, pick it up, simple.

OP - unfortunately poo picking on DIY yards is a real problem, there will always be one high and mighty person who thinks they can get away with leaving it to others. At my last yard we had one and in the end we left a 2 acre field with 4 horses grazing it (yes its small but they were all fatties and we rotated regularly between 3 fields) for a week and told her she had to do it all that weekend... Funnily enough she always did her share after that!

I think the trug idea is brilliant, wish I'd thought of that! If it doesn't work, I agree with whats already been said - they either do it or you charge them more to get someone in to do it.

I'm interested to hear how the trug idea works!!
 
lachlanandmarcus said:
with a large acreage per horse, it might work quite well, but most yards are not in that position
Click to expand...

Well I am and yes it does work very well for me :) To be frank if it only takes 10 or 20 mins to poo pick a field then that field sure isn't very big or isn't being cleared properly.

Actually poos are an excellent form of organic fertilizer for fields hence mine looking as beautiful as they do. I've seen some photos of peoples "fields" on here and many of them look like scruffy mud baths so to be honest I'd rather have my lush green fields, harrowed and rolled than some of the horrific looking dirt pens I see posted on here which are religiously poo picked daily. But horses for courses as they say.
 
Only read first page of replies...

3 barrows of poo a week is more than reasonable!!
In my opinion, not poo picking fields is dreadful practice and incredibly lazy. Even if it is not done everyday, at least twice a week is better than nothing at all.

I work part time one or both weekend days, plus going to uni and having assignments etc to do, yet will still find time to poo pick, even if it means cutting short riding by twenty minutes.
Oh and to get to the muck heap is all uphill in our fields, and it's a fair gradient too.

OP, I really like the idea suggested about the numbered trugs, if you get the super big ones a barrow will be easy to empty into them. If they don't do their fair share, charge them £3 for every barrow missed. I'm sure they don't want an extra £9 to pay a week, for the sake of 15 minutes of their time. Or tell them to go elsewhere if they're not going to pull their weight (lazy wotsits!!!)..?
 
Also, our fields aren't little paddocks by any stretch...

Of every poo there is in the field, it restricts the space they have to graze dramatically. You muck out the stable, but they live in the field too...
 
Spring Feather said:
Well I am and yes it does work very well for me :) To be frank if it only takes 10 or 20 mins to poo pick a field then that field sure isn't very big or isn't being cleared properly
Click to expand...

This, what I was alluding to, or trying to. To poo pick my field every day would take an hour minimum, it's not happening.

Horses in big enough field have toilet areas where they poo, we have acres of field completely poo free, but then high density poo in the toilet areas, horses don't eat in these areas until after they're harrowed and clean. Maybe I'm spoilt, but we got quite enough land for them and frankly losing a few acres to toilet spots only helps their waistlines! :D
 
This is why i love my yard- 12acres 3 horses. They rotate to another 12 for summer. Fields are grazed by sheep intermittently as well. Then harrowed, rolled etc when horses move.
All horses are healthy- even got one who is 36 on yard and still healthy!
 
Those of you who say grazing needs to be poo picked regardless of how much land you have clearly don't have much land. I had my two ponies at home as a child. I had 11 acres for them split in 3 paddocks (1 for hay in summer and grazing in autumn and the others grazing only). They were topped and harrowed in summer and had sheep on for tupping every autumn - no worm problem and I've yet to see ANY fields as green and healthy in the UK. I can't believe yards are allowed to keep horses on postage stamps Over here.
I'd far rather my horse had sufficient fresh meadow for turn out - with a few poo piles strewn about than a clean but inevitably barren patch of turnout. No contest.

Add to that I have far better things to do with my time than poo pick a field.

As for the stable argument, the reason for mucking out is IMO much more about the unhealthiness of standing on ammonia soaked bedding than the prospect of lying down in a few piles of poo.
 
Sugar_and_Spice said:
Increase the livery fee and use the money to employ someone to do it. I won't even livery at a yard where I'm expected to collect droppings from the field. I keep horses at livery because I don't want land to look after.
Click to expand...

I also think that livery should include poo-picking. For £40+ DIY I feel really aggrieved when I have to poo pick!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top