skint1
Well-Known Member
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
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 need to up my game !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!
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!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
Why are you repeatedly digging up old innocuous threads?I need to up my game !
I know weirdWhy are you repeatedly digging up old innocuous threads?
I hope your horse appreciates his nice level buckets!!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