All the scoop on the poop

When I posted last week that my wheelbarrow runneth over, many of you asked what I did with all the poop. Allow me to explain.

First of all, exactly how much poop are we talking about? The average 1,000-pound horse produces around 30 pounds of manure per day. Since Hank weighs about 1,200 pounds, and the burros together add up to another 1,200 pounds...that all works out to about 72 pounds of poop. Per. Day.

I am obsessed with keeping the barn and the corral poop-free. I also try to keep the pasture areas behind the barn and close to the house poop-free. The poop that lands further out in the pasture is another story, which I'll get to later.

Let me introduce you to the tools in my battle against the poop:

Several times a day, I pull my poop cart around, scooping poop in the poop tub. When the tub is full, I dump it into the Newer Spreader. When the spreader is full, I hook it up to the Ranger and haul it over to the poop track.

Here's a little map to help you get the lay of the land:

 

The Newer Spreader is a pretty slick invention, and I could not live without it. The poop goes in...

...and an agitator in the bottom of the bin turns, crumbling the poop and dumping it out the bottom.

So here we are over on the poop track:

I merrily drive around in a figure eight, spreading the poop behind me. Fresh poop crumbles very easily, frozen poop - not so much. So a few times during the winter months, I'll hook up the harrow to the Ranger and drive it around the track to pulverize the poop. I'll also harrow the track a few times during the summer to churn things up. Farmers plow their fields, I plow my poop.

Amazingly, all I've got to show for over five years' worth of poop is about a six-inch layer of crumbled, dry stuff.

Much of it simply blows away to fertilize the rangeland around the 7MSN. There isn't enough moisture out here to turn it into a rich, organic compost. This stuff has no odor and turns into a dry kind of dirt when you crush it.

As obsessed as I am with keeping the ranch clean, there's no way I can pick up all the poop piles in the 80 acres of pasture.

So when I'm out walking in the pasture, whenever I come upon a pile of poop...

I kick the crap out of it. This breaks up the pile and helps it decompose a little faster.

There you have it – all the scoop on the poop and just another chapter in my glamorous life.