Horse

Caring for horses entails mucking out their stalls to make their environment clean and healthy. Dirty stalls will harbor insects and bacteria, triggering potential problems with your horses’ hooves, such as thrush. Horse urine, if it stays too long on their bedding, causes horses to breathe in ammonia which can be harmful to their lungs. Cleaning out your horse’s stalls regularly will take a lot of dedication and hard work on your end but will help ensure its health and wellbeing.

Tips on cleaning your horses’ stalls:

Be appropriately dressed for the task – whenever you are going to work on cleaning the stables, use gloves so you won’t develop any blisters. Wear rubber boots, not expensive riding boots, since urine can erode the material.

The area to be cleaned should be cleared for anything that might get in the way - you can take your horse out to pasture while you are cleaning its stall.

Make sure you have the necessary tools to do the job – have needed equipment on hand such as a wheelbarrow, pitchfork, cart, water, soap, bucket, brushes, etc. If you use straw in the stalls, you can use a pitchfork to remove wet or soiled bedding material. If you use sawdust or shavings, you can use a shaving fork to remove the soiled parts.

Be thorough with your work and replace soiled beddings – check all the nooks and crannies in the stalls for soiled bedding or anything wet with urine. Once these have all been removed, spread clean, fresh beddings on the stall area. Ensure that the surface is evenly distributed. You can fluff out bales of straw with a pitchfork.

Know how thick your horse’s bedding should be – the thickness of the bedding depends on the type of flooring your stables have. For instance, if the stall flooring has thick rubber matting, you can use thinner bedding. But if your flooring is concrete, and especially in cold months, you can add more bedding so that the surface will not be too cold.

Do a complete weekly maintenance – completely strip all stalls at least once a week to maintain cleanliness. You can pile up the soiled bedding material unto the wheelbarrow until the floor is bare. You can then sweep the remaining bedding with a broom. Thoroughly wash the stall area with soap and water. Make sure the floor is fully dry before you place fresh bedding. See to it that the stall is ready for occupancy before returning the horse to the stable.

Photo: http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh134/bjz0819/Horseinstall.jpg

To view this article in spanish, click here: http://www.petsintouch.com/pnnespanol/12764/limpiando-correctamente-los-establos-de-caballos