time to muck out, fill haynets and waters?

skint1

Well-Known Member
Joined
11 February 2010
Messages
5,321
Visit site
Jeez I really am slow, hope I never have to work on a yard I don't think I would last the morning before being fired :D
 

tankgirl1

Well-Known Member
Joined
6 October 2012
Messages
2,486
Location
Derbyshire
Visit site
I'm really slow! Takes me 50 minutes in a morning to change rugs, muck out straw bed, fill water buckets, fill, soak and drain haynets, sweep yard (I hate bits of straw everywhere!) and turnout. I can't seem to speed up either!

I can skip out, bring in, feed, hay and water in about 30 minutes if I'm really pushed - usually takes me about 2 hours though as I keep stopping for pony snuggles etc :p
 

nicelittle

Well-Known Member
Joined
30 January 2008
Messages
460
Visit site
3 ponies in 45 minutes, including turning out, water and hay! (And struggling to muck heap through the mud at the moment!)
 

rachk89

Well-Known Member
Joined
11 May 2015
Messages
2,523
Visit site
Wow i am slow then. About 45 mins I think to do everything except turn out. To be fair nothing is close together and it takes two wheelbarrows full to clean his stable he is such a pig. Separating everything takes ages too as he manages to hide everything disgusting. It was quicker with a straw bed but now it's shavings. It is better for his lungs though.
 

Molly-Chops

New User
Joined
20 April 2016
Messages
6
Visit site
I used to work on a dressage yard when I was younger and it took me about 2 hours for 5 stables. The owner was very particular about not having any droppings left in the bed at all so I wore rubber gloves and picked the small bits up that fell through the fork! Overall I was there for 3 hours each morning including all the sweeping (soo much sweeping!) and cleaning buckets. I made sure those stables were immaculate every time I left!
 

Janey5

Member
Joined
24 December 2018
Messages
22
Location
Wales
Visit site
I have had A LOT of practice working on big yards and having my own. Currently at work I muck out anywhere between six and twenty in the mornings, depending on who is working with me. I am fast, so if working with slow people I end up doing a lot more!

I can do a full muck out of a big straw bed, bed down, perfect (enormous) banks, hay on floor and haynet filled and hung up, plus water bucket scrubbed and re filled in 10 - 20 mins depending on how dirty the horse is. I am only that fast because I have had so much practice. My beds are always uniform - big banks, big fluffy beds - just the same as I do with my own horse. In fact, as someone has said above, I would be more careful with work horses as people are paying a lot of money to keep their horses with us!

Shavings take slightly longer as those we have at work on shavings are all dirty beggars.

You'll get faster with practice. You need to work out your system. Mine is -

Start by flicking all clean straw/shavings up into the banks, making a pile of poo and wet/dirty bedding in the middle of the box.

Remove the pile in the middle, into big wheelbarrow, then sweep out the middle of the box and put that into the barrow too.

Flick the banks over to get any wet out from underneath, and put that into barrow too.

Re build banks.

Tip water into wheelbarrow, leave bucket outside door.

Take haynet down, and take it and my barrow to the muck heap.

Empty barrow, re fill haynet and fill barrow with straw/shavings to bed down, half large slice of hay or haylage for the floor (if horses are in during the day we give hay on the floor during the day and fill haynet ready for the evening, if out they get half a section of hay or haylage on the floor, and haynet hung up ready for them to come in to) and haynet if horse is out and it can be hung up.

Return to stable, hang net, put hay in corner under manger, bed down.

Sweep front of the stable clean and bedding into straight line.

Scrub, re fill and replace water bucket.

Sounds like a lot, but when you do it so often you get faster. And we're lucky that everything is very close together.

ETS - we normally have 45 in during the winter, and five of us working. We feed at half 7 and start changing rugs, then those going out are turned out (a bloody trek all over the farm!) then we start mucking out. We are usually done between 10:30 and 11:00. That includes changing rugs and turning out anything up to twenty horses, full muck out, hay water, and sweeping the four separate yards. That's the bit that irritates me. The endless sweeping! If all were in one yard I'm sure we'd save a serious amount of time! Ten of these horses are riding school ponies on rubber mats with a thin, flat layer of shavings in the back of the box. Their boxes take about five minutes each as we sweep everything out and the re bed each day. We aren't superhuman, we just have a very good team and a good system!
I need to up my game !
 

Birker2020

Well-Known Member
Joined
18 January 2021
Messages
10,767
Location
West Mids
Visit site
Okay, everythings really close together. What I mean by ocd is i make sure all my banks are really big and square and exactly tthe same size, I'll put about double the amount of straw in as I need, there can't be a piece of straw out of place, my buckets have to be level with each other....its crazy haha
Yep that sounds like me. My rubber matting that I used to scrub every month so always looked black couldn't have a flake of shavings on it!

I always, every night, scrubbed my water buckets out, I've only ever seen one livery do that to theirs before!


When I used to work at the yard I only used to do deep litter beds which were, in the main, skipped out, so twenty five mins hay, water and skip out I think. Straw I'd be there hours 😄
 

blitznbobs

Well-Known Member
Joined
19 June 2010
Messages
6,648
Location
Cheshire
Visit site
Lots of considerations - what are they bedded on? Where is the tap for the water? How big is the wheelbarrow?

I can do the 5 of mine that are in in 1hr30- if i get on with it - i have big barrows but our muck heap is 50 yards away - 3 on shavings (quicker) and 2 on straw.
 

Canelloni

Member
Joined
17 March 2023
Messages
19
Visit site
Okay, everythings really close together. What I mean by ocd is i make sure all my banks are really big and square and exactly tthe same size, I'll put about double the amount of straw in as I need, there can't be a piece of straw out of place, my buckets have to be level with each other....its crazy haha
I hope your horse appreciates his nice level buckets!!🤣
 
Top