Homemade Hoof Supplement

I'll preface this post by saying that I am not a big supplement person because so many of them seem unlikely to result in anything but expensive urine. However, one of my Thoroughbreds came to me with crappy feet so I did a lot of research on how to help him grow healthy new hoof, and this is one area in which there's some scientific support for supplementation. I did a lot of research and cost comparisons, and I ultimately ended up mixing my own hoof supplement, which is less expensive than premade options and contains more adequate levels of some key ingredients.

Here is what some commercial hoof supplements cost, and what they contain:

Prices are as of the date of this post, including shipping whenever I could calculate it without entering personal information. This is certainly not an exhaustive list, as there are probably hundreds if not thousands of hoof supplements out there. It also doesn't include every ingredient in every supplement since that would make the spreadsheet unwieldy and impossible to post. Plus, 2 mg of lysine, for example, is such a drop in the bucket compared to what the horses take in from their grass, hay, and grain that it's hardly worth noting. I was primarily concerned about biotin, copper, and zinc so that's what I included.

Here are some sources of biotin, copper, and zinc:

I ended up choosing Uckele pelleted copper and zinc (because my horse is picky about powder) and Biotin Plus (which has a ground flax base and smells absolutely delicious). If I bought all those ingredients today it would cost me $24.48 per month. None of the commercial hoof supplements come close to providing the levels of copper and zinc that I can get for this price, except for Hay Harmony, which I discovered recently and might try when I finish my current bag of Biotin Plus. Since Uckele Biotin 2% requires such an incredibly low feeding rate (only 1 g of powder per day!) that might be worth a try too; $3.35/mo doesn't sound like much savings but in a year that adds up to $40.

One tip is to stock up on supplement ingredients during major sales, like Black Friday. They should keep for a long time if properly stored and you may save 10-20%. Buying large quantities at a time can buffer you from price increases too. 

4 oz cup of homemade supplement, with Biotin Plus on the bottom and Uckele pelleted copper and zinc on top. Cheaper and more environmentally friendly than SmartPaks or commercial hoof supplements!

Information on my ingredients

Biotin (a B-vitamin) is a very common hoof supplement ingredient. Some studies have found statistically significant improvements in hoof quality when horses are fed 15 to 25 mg of biotin per day. (Keep in mind that results won't be evident until the new hoof grows out, and that it takes 8 to 15 months for a horse to grow all new hoof.) Other studies have found no effect, but everyone seems to agree that reasonable biotin supplementation can't hurt and might help. For $10 per month, I thought it was worth a shot. (https://ker.com/equinews/biotin-basics/ and https://thehorse.com/130220/biotin-does-it-work/)

Why feed copper and zinc? The soil in my area is very high in iron, which means that the grass and water are as well. (To see soil nutrient levels in your area, go to the National Geological Survey website.) Many commercial horse feeds also contain added iron for some reason, despite most horses getting plenty from their environment. High iron intake negatively impacts the absorption of copper and zinc, which are crucial for connective tissue strength and many other functions.

"Copper supports enzymes that form the strengthening cross-links between collagen and elastin molecules in connective tissue. Deficiencies lead to abnormalities in bone, cartilage, tendons, ligaments, and arterial walls among the most dramatic consequences. In horses, copper deficiency has been linked to uterine artery rupture in mares, a fatal complication of labor. Copper deficiency is known to cause developmental bone disease in foals. From research in other animals we also know that copper deficiency has adverse effects in hair quality. Although it hasn't been studied in horses, remember that the ingredients and growth mechanisms for hair and the hoof are virtually identical.

Zinc performs a host of functions in the body. Structures on proteins called zinc fingers allow them to bind to DNA. Zinc fingers also influence the folding and structure of proteins. In enzyme systems, zinc is essential for pigment formation, antioxidant function, transport of carbon dioxide in the blood, bone building and remodeling, insulin production and release among others. (Eleanor Kellon, VMD, reprinted on https://www.hoofrehab.com/Diet.html)

"When the efficacy of hoof supplements is considered, the inclusion of zinc methionine along with biotin and 3 grams of methionine appears to result in greater growth of the stratum germinativum and the tubular horn of the hoof wall than does the feeding of biotin alone." (https://ker.com/equinews/trace-minerals-horses-zinc-copper/)

Spreading vs. Composting Manure

A couple months ago, I decided I was fed up with shoveling stall waste into my compost bins only to shovel it back out again a short time later, and I decided to try spreading manure on the fields directly (post here). I think it is about time to update with the results of this experiment.

As expected, spreading the stall waste directly on the fields was a nice timesaver. Rather than dreading shoveling out the manure bin once a month or so in the summer, every week I hooked up the tractor, toodled on out to the field, and spent less than 10 minutes driving around emptying it. Bing bang boom, no shoveling involved. I monitored temperatures in the spreader as I would in the compost pile and found that even without any aeration, the waste would naturally heat to over 140 degrees, hot enough to kill weed seeds and pathogens.

My two horses were on stall rest at the time so they were filling the spreader up in about a week, and probably would have filled a compost bin in 3-4 weeks. As the horses started to get turnout again, I spread the waste on sections of the paddock that they weren't using.

The one downside is that I have to remove the tractor's PTO arms to use the spreader, which was kind of annoying when done on a weekly basis (though not nearly as labor-intensive as cleaning out the bin).

You may notice I'm writing in the past tense...this is because I stopped this method after about a month out of concern for how it was affecting my grass. Here are some photos:

This photo was taken just days after spreading some fresh stall waste and you can see how it already burned a swath of grass.

Close-up taken the same day as above.

Two weeks later, the very lush late-spring grass appears fully recovered.

As you can see, the grass suffered what I believe to be nitrogen burn from the direct spreading, which has never happened when I spread even briefly composted manure. At first I thought this might be caused by the added ammonium sulfate, so I cut down on how much I was adding and then stopped adding it entirely. The burn continued. The grass did recover within a couple of weeks, but I was concerned that it wouldn't once summer heat and dryness set in, so I stopped direct spreading and switched back to compost, despite its flaws.

I think the direct spreading method could be perfectly fine if you have more acreage and don't need it all for grazing, but since I have to spread on my meager three acres of pasture I really don't want to damage any of the grass.

So I was back to composting, and still wondering why it didn't seem to work very well for me. Fortunately my local Soil Conservation District has some great staff who can troubleshoot issues like this. One of their helpful staff members came out in June and after examining my compost pile (which involved standing in the full bin and digging a deep hole), he said: 

A couple fingers are pointing to the possibility of a moisture imbalance in your compost, which may be brought on by you selectively removing only urine-soaked shavings from the stalls. At least one of the people I talked to mentioned how without drier materials to reabsorb it moisture can migrate from the top of the pile to the bottom, causing anaerobic conditions in the bottom while limiting the ability of the waste material on the top to be composted. This may go far in explaining a bottom layer which was warm mud that smelled like ammonia, a middle which was hot and actively composting, and a top which was warm but not doing too much. This is not a dynamic that could be seen in a wheelbarrow from a barn or one that can be addressed by a forced air system. It is simply physics. Adding more dry shavings might help with it, but it may also skew your C-N balance.

So apparently I clean my stalls too efficiently by removing only the manure and soiled bedding? The thought of deliberately throwing away clean shavings just to make my compost pile happier is anathema to my frugal, anti-waste nature, so I am looking to switch from aerated compost to a traditional multi-bin system that can be turned with the tractor. Thankfully the county also assists with funding for projects like these. Meanwhile, I continue composting and until I have a better system I may just leave the gross "mud" in the bottom the next time I empty a bin, since the top seems to compost fairly well.

Looking down into the compost pile, you can see that it is much darker, denser, and wetter at the bottom. This pile accumulated from last fall to about April of this year (since the horses lived outside all winter, there wasn't much stall waste to deal with).

The End of Aerated Compost? 3-Year Retrospective

It has been almost exactly three years since I installed my O2 Compost aerated compost system so I have been thinking again about how it has worked for me.

As background, here are my previous posts on the system:

Bin Construction
The Composting Process
Spreading
Is It Right For You?
Pallet Floors for Air Pipes

After three years I have sort of a love/hate relationship with my compost bins. I love that I don't have to call some guy, wait for him to come swap dumpsters, then watch as he spins tires in my gravel driveway. Or better yet, as he blows his transmission because he doesn't know how to tow a heavy load and just decided to floor it, has his crippled truck towed across my backyard, then blames me for it all--true story!

I hate that emptying the bins requires so much backbreaking labor. The tractor can only do so much because the loader can't reach the back of the bins and can't fit around the aeration pipes. Even if the loader could reach, my wooden bins aren't sturdy enough to withstand being scraped and shoved by the tractor. A more permanent and expensive system with concrete sides and pipes recessed into the floor would be much easier to empty without manual labor but would also be, well, more permanent and expensive.

However, like any good farm owner, I'm used to hard work so what I really hate is that the "compost" looks almost exactly the same coming out as it did going in because I only have room for two bins so I usually can't let it cure. After a month or even two months of curing it still looks just like stall waste.

This has been curing for a month or two and yep, it's definitely still horse sh!t.

Circumstances allowed me to cure this compost for the longest I ever have, which was about 5-6 months. It has reduced in size somewhat and is drier than my usual batches, but it's still not that crumbly uniform compost that I was hoping for. Further down and along the wall between the two bins it was still pretty wet.

Meanwhile, it turns out that my stall pickings (manure plus bagged sawdust bedding) have the perfect composition to naturally fall in or just above the "active" temperature range as they are added to the bin. I might be wrong but my interpretation is that just by being piled up for a few days my stall waste is getting hot enough to kill pathogens and weed seeds, which for me is the main goal since apparently it's never going to cure enough to be nice finished compost anyway.

Yesterday's stall waste, already in the active range with no human intervention.

So then why am I shoveling all that waste into the bins only to shovel it all back out later? Over my six years of horsekeeping, my husband has developed a good-natured hatred of helping me undo things that have already been done. Example: we use T-posts and electric tape to subdivide the dry lot when I have an extra horse that can't get turned out with the others, and when that horse leaves in a year we remove the T-posts and electric tape. Another example: he builds a lovely stall divider for my mini-donkey, which he helps me remove when the new horse arrives because it needs the stall, then helps me replace when the new horse leaves so the donkey can have his stall back. Even though I think it's normal for my needs to change or for me to experiment with things then realize they don't work, I understand his objection to the Sisyphean nature of some tasks with which he kindly assists me. Helping me shovel horse poo out of the compost bins only to watch the "ungrateful horses" (his words, only partially joking and actually quite accurate) immediately fill them up again seems to fit in this category.

My husband rolling a giant ball of horse manure up a mountain for all eternity.

So all of this makes me wonder, what if instead of dumping wheelbarrows full of stall waste into compost bins only to move them to the manure spreader rather laboriously a few weeks later, looking much the same, I just dumped stall waste straight into the manure spreader? It would save quite a lot of time and effort, and my husband could absent himself from the farm's "waste management system" entirely, for which I'm sure he would be quite grateful. He's a good sport about it but in three years of helping me empty compost bins he has developed a strong distaste for horse manure, which didn't bother him at all pre-compost.

If the waste is getting hot enough all by itself to kill weed seeds and pathogens and it isn't curing long enough to be true compost anyway, what would I be losing if I mucked directly into the spreader and spread the waste on the pastures just a few weeks sooner, without aeration?

Direct spreading is a common practice, including amongst my neighbors. Ohio State's Agricultural Extension has a great fact sheet about it that you can find here. The takeaway is that although horse manure can be beneficial fertilizer, the sawdust or wood shavings in stall waste stunt crop/grass growth by inducing a nitrogen deficiency. To avoid this, you can add a small amount of nitrogen fertilizer to each wheelbarrow of waste. This seems so much simpler to me than my current system that I decided to try it.

Some of the constraints that might stop some farms from direct spreading don't affect me. It's environmentally unsound and in some places illegal to spread manure in the winter, but my horses are not stalled at all in the winter anyway so there's no stall waste to worry about. In some areas the ground can be too muddy or boggy for weeks on end to spread without tearing up your fields, but the majority of my pasture drains so well and has so much grass that I wouldn't worry about that.

So recently, after we emptied one bin, I removed the aeration pipes and backed the spreader into the bin, where it fit quite perfectly thank you very much. The lids even cover most of the spreader bed.

For some crazy reason the spreader hiding in the bin makes me think of a clownfish hiding in anemone.

I then had to rig a temporary ramp to allow dumping. A funny thing happened when I did some googling to come up with ideas of how to build the ramp...I found a Google Image from my own blog! I feel so famous!

That photo in the center looks familiar!

My husband had a stroke of genius, which was to repurpose a heavily constructed wooden gate that was just lying around unused (Reason #324 why I never throw anything away!). I cut it a bit shorter, attached the hinges to the back of the compost bin, added a 2"x2" to stop the wheelbarrow from rolling all the way in with me right behind it, and--voila, ramp!

When the ramp was done I bought 50 lbs of 21-0-0 ammonium sulfate for $13 and started my direct spreading trial. My two horses are in the barn full-time now due to an injury so it only took a week to fill the spreader to the point where stuff was starting to tumble off the sides when dumped in, which isn't as full as I can get it with the loader. At first temperatures were not in the active range, but as the spreader filled up I was pleased to see temps rise to 140+, high enough to kill weed seeds and parasites. I'm under no delusion that it all reaches that temperature, but neither does the manure in the pasture so I guess it's okay. When it was full I hooked the spreader up to the tractor, drove it out to a resting pasture, and in 10 minutes I had an empty spreader. Soooo much easier than emptying a compost bin!

So far I am thrilled with the labor/time savings, but I haven't totally decided to transition from composting to direct spreading for three reasons:

1) I worry that storing stuff in my spreader full-time would damage the bed. My spreader still looks pretty new because I spray it out scrupulously after every use. My neighbor told me that she's been mucking into a spreader for 30 years and has only had to replace it once though.

2) I would want to cover the spreader to maybe cut down on flies and keep the waste from getting too wet to stay hot long enough. I hate tarps so I would want to build a nice cover for it and that would be another time and money sink. I'm wondering if I could repurpose the compost bin lids though.

3) If I quit composting I would feel like I wasted the almost-$2,000 that I spent on the O2 Compost system and the materials for my bins. $2,000 divided by 36 months would mean that I spent $56 per month on my system, which is more than I was paying for manure removal previously. Perhaps I could recoup some of the costs by selling the pump, pipes, and disassembled bins, but I'm not sure how big a market there is for used "poop boxes" (probably not how I would advertise it on Craigslist!). Or to shift the balance I could factor in the value of my and my husband's bin-emptying labor, but when you have a hobby farm that's really not something you should get in the habit of doing or you might cry.

Since I'm trying to give my readers a complete picture of how aerated compost has worked for me, I thought I should share that I'm thinking about quitting it. To aid in my decision process, I welcome any comments about direct spreading!

Grid Systems for Erosion Control

Nature is a formidable opponent on any horse farm. Grass grows where you don't want it and doesn't grow where you do. Mice drown in your water buckets. Birds steal insulation from your walls to make their nests. Water is an especially strong force that collects in low areas or washes out your precious footing.

To limit damage caused by erosion, grids can be used under footing in all sorts of areas around the farm. In this post I'll talk about my experience using grids in two different areas, my dry lot and around my automatic waterers.

What are Grids?

The grids I'm talking about are rubber or plastic lattices that you lay on the ground and fill in with some type of footing. They help hold the footing in place despite the best efforts of water and horses' hooves (another formidable natural opponent!). People put them in their stalls instead of mats, in dry lots and runs, around gates, and even under their riding arenas.

There are a ton of brands available these days, such as Lighthoof, Hoof Grid, Stable Grid, and EcoGrid.

There are also brands that are not specific to equine uses, because grids like these are also used for general landscaping and road construction (for example, DuPont makes a bunch of different grids that look pretty similar to the products above). I'm always interested to see how more generic products compare to those marketed to horse owners, and whether there's a mark-up because "horse people are rich" (haha, maybe we were before we had horses!).

Grids for the Dry Lot

When planning my dry lot, erosion control was a definite concern. Most of my pasture has a slight slope, which helps water run off into the culvert below the pasture rather than collecting where it can cause mud pits. The problem is that the dry lot footing would also tend to flow downhill. We wanted the dry lot to have a slight slope for drainage, but I didn't want to put in a dry lot only to watch all my expensive footing migrate downhill.

The fabulous Dave Wisner of K&L Contracting suggested a grid system and mentioned that he had recently learned of a locally available system very similar to Lighthoof but not marketed for equine use. It cost less than equine-specific grids and he was willing to let me buy it at cost ($2/square foot) and install it for free, to see if he wanted to use it in future projects. I was happy to go for it.

My dry lot is pretty large (about 7,000 square feet), so putting the grid all over would have cost more than I wanted to spend. Dave decided to position it strategically across the slope of the dry lot, perpendicular to the flow of any rain runoff. He did one strip across the center of the dry lot, where it starts to slope more, and another strip near the gate. Conveniently, the center strip also covered the area in front of the Nelson autowaterer.

Here are a few photos of the grid (for more photos of my dry lot construction, see this post):

Here is the large strip of three grids that went across the center of the dry lot.

Close-up of the grid. You can see that it looks an awful lot like Lighthoof, pictured immediately below.

Photo from Lighthoof.com.

The dry lot has been there for 3.5 years now and I'm very happy I decided to use the grid. After a heavy rain I can see where water flowed across the surface of the dry lot, and where the grid slowed it down and kept it from causing erosion. There's been some washout near the gate, around the edges of the grid, so I think it would be pretty bad if the grid weren't there. These recent photos show how the dry lot has held up over time:

Right after heavy rain you can see where there would likely be gullies if not for the grids.

Erosion has exposed the edges of some of the grids. It may be time to add a bit more stonedust in some areas.

This is the upper portion of the dry lot that doesn't have grids but hasn't washed out because it is relatively flat.

If you are planning a dry lot with more than maybe a 1-2% grade, I would highly recommend splurging on grids to prevent frustrating and expensive erosion.

Here's an example of just how frustrating erosion can be. One place we should have put grid but didn't was on the sloped walkway that led up to the gate of the dry lot, and the erosion there was so bad that I later had it paved. I've never had any luck filling in washed-out areas. Even if you tamp the filler down, it's always softer than the area around it and gives water the path of least resistance, so after the next heavy rain you're back where you started--or worse, as the gully widens every time. For sloped pathways I definitely recommend grids or asphalt (note: run over the fresh asphalt with Bobcat tracks to roughen it up for traction--you do not want to be leading horses down sloping asphalt that's smooth like a driveway!).

This is about 8 months after the dry lot was built. I'd already tried filling the washed out areas numerous times, only to have them wash out again. This is when I decided I needed to pave the sloped part of the path.

This angle shows how deep and treacherous the washed-out gullies were. Not a great place to be leading horses!

The roughened asphalt ramp is so much safer and lower-maintenance!

Two years after paving, there is significant erosion at the end of the asphalt ramp. In retrospect, I should have extended the ramp to where the ground was more level.

In fall of 2020 I added three rows of Earth Horse Grid to the end of the ramp, hoping to make the path safer and forestall further erosion.

Here is the grid freshly filled with stonedust. We haven't had significant rain yet so I'm curious to see whether it helps with the erosion issue.

Earth Horse Stall Grid System for Around the Waterer

In the spring of 2018 (when the corral behind the barn was about 3.5 years old) I noticed a low spot forming around my Bar Bar A waterer in the corral behind the barn. The horses were causing this by standing in the same spot every time they wanted to drink (and I have one really violent stomper who has created a noticeable low spot in his stall, despite the heavy mats and compacted base). Once a low spot like that starts to form, water starts collecting there, the area gets muddy from tiny bits of manure, hay, and stall waste flowing down into it, and it becomes a vicious cycle.

After filling the hole in with fresh stonedust only to watch it reappear within a week, I decided to invest in some grids. This time, needing to cover only a small area, I went to Emge Equine Services, a local supplier that sells stall systems, mats, pavers, and the Earth Horse Grid. Their grid is a rubber-like material that comes in interlocking 2'x2' squares. Each square cost $9.50 plus tax, so $2.52 per square foot. I did see some similar options online that were slightly lower-priced, but I would have to deal with shipping and I like to support local businesses.

I started with the side of the waterer that had the bigger hole and decided that a 4'x6' rectangle of grid would cover the space well. I wanted the top of the grid level with the top of the footing, which meant I had to build it up where the hole was deepest and dig down around the edges. The digging down part was quite labor-intensive because when stonedust compacts it is almost like concrete. I used a shovel with a pointy tip to chip away at it. I intentionally timed my project for after some significant rain, because I definitely wouldn't want to do that job when the stonedust is dry and hard!

Here's what the low spot looked like before:

This picture doesn't quite do it justice, but if you look at the fencepost to the left of the waterer you can see how much lower the footing in front of the waterer has gotten. Near the fence you can see mud that has started to form  (Yes, I have learned that mud can form from thin air! Well, not air exactly but little bits of organics like manure, hay, dirt, and stall bedding that are too small to pick up with a pitchfork and somehow eventually congeal into brown goop).

Here are some photos of the installation process:

Conveniently, the first 2'-wide section fit perfectly between the fence and the waterer. Here I have leveled an area for it, under the close supervision of Dominick the Donkey.

The first row of grids is in place and the donkey appears to approve.

I made the mistake of covering the first row before putting in the second, which meant I had to use a hoof pick to scrape and brush away the stonedust from the tabs that allow the grids to interlock. I felt like a paleontologist.

The tools I used for the job. I also used a jigsaw to trim one grid to fit around the waterer. Later when I had to trim a little more off, I realized that a pair of trauma shears could do the job too, but who doesn't enjoy using a jigsaw? 

The third row was the worst to prepare because the stonedust was so compacted that leveling the space was like chipping away at concrete. All six grids are in place now and I'm ready to take stonedust back over them. You can see (maybe) that I tried to maintain the slope of the dry lot, which carries water away from the barn.

This is the final outcome:

With the stonedust in place, you can't even tell the grids are there but hopefully they'll do their job invisibly.

"Something is different here but I don't know what..."

The grid has done its job and held up very well. In the below photo taken almost two years after installation, you can see that the area is still level and there is no mud. Pretty good outcome for $60 of materials and a few hours of labor! Confession: I still haven't gotten around to adding grid to the other side of the waterer. It doesn't seem to need it though and I do have some other uses in mind for the remaining pieces of grid.

You can see the edges of the grid, but no mud! (I added the barrel around the waterer because I had a horse that loved to stick his feet in it, dirtying the bowl and clogging up the filters with stonedust. Footsy horses go in the stall on the far side, and the near side is cut lower so that Dominick the Donkey can still drink.)

If I'd known then what I know now, I would have used grid for the runs behind the barn too, which have a significant slope. Between erosion and selective compaction from horses walking more in some areas than others, the corrals have turned wavy. Thankfully though there are no gullies deep enough to turn ankles like the ramp to the dry lot!

Aerated Compost: Pallet Floor for Air Pipes

I'm excited to introduce something new to my blog: a guest post! Recently Ty and Sally Carlson posted an excellent, detailed comment on one of my previous aerated compost posts, sharing their experiences with the O2 system. They have built a pallet "floor" cleverly designed to improve aeration, and have generously allowed me to publish their comments on it here so that others can benefit. Most of this post was written by them, with my comments in italics.

Here is their comment on my previous post: 

Thank you for this post. We recently bought a small horse farm and my wife heard about O2Compost from Liberty Bell stables. I grew up on a dairy farm - it's critical to have a manure plan. I liked the idea of composting, read up on the material and my wife & I agreed. We decided to build 2 bins (we have 3 horses, planning on a 4th). A local handyman built two 4d x 6w x 4h bins and built simple low-cost flap-door-type lids with 1x4s & tarps.

I was an observer up to this part of the process as I was busy with my day job and moving from one house to the farm. We encountered a couple of start-up issues. My wife mis-remembered the settings for the blower (on for 30s every 30m). She initially set it for 30s every 30s and we succeeded in melting the impeller of the blower (replacement impeller is $12.84), plus you must scrape the melted remnants off the inside of the blower. Second is that you don't start the aeration until the bin is full. It wasn't a showstopper, but I sat down and actually read through the short manual cover-cover (which is pretty good and detailed).

We had the same observations as above - we can fill a bin in about 3 weeks, depending if we pick the manure in the pasture. We use fine pine bedding, we're not tossing in a lot of bedding material unnecessarily. The pile does compress once the bin is about half-way full, we can get close to month depending on when we pick the pasture. The challenge with two bins is that we need to start the aeration of the bin and the 30 day clock while we start filling the second bin.

We had tossed yard clippings into the bin as well, and with than and a pasture pick, we almost immediately got to half-full on bin 2 in a week (ack)! We weren't going to make that month - and bin 1 would not have completed active composting stage.

I built a third bin. Our handyman started, but I wanted the bins to be identical, and this third one was a bit shorter than the others. I dug down deeper to allow the bins to be the same size/height and completed the third bin just in time as the second one filled up. Our mistake early on was adding the grass clippings and other material before understanding the volume produced by the 3 horses.
A month later, the temps in bin 1 were down to 80F-100F, we had mushrooms growing on top and now bin 3 was nearly full. One useful note is that I took the "topping" layer off the finished bin (bin 1) and put it on the now-full bin 3. We unloaded bin 1. As noted in the original post, it's "cooked" but still in very recognizable forms. It has a musty, woodsy (but not unpleasant) smell. As it was mostly horse manure with some hay and bedding (fine pine sawdust) - it was relatively easy to unload.

The aeration pipes were a bit of a pain to work around. I'm trying something in bin 1 now that's based on the other (more commercial) systems. I've built what are basically 4" mini-pallets for the base of the bins (with the main supports perpendicular to the pipes to allow air flow under the load in the bin). The ground there is a bit muddy, so I think I will have a good seal around the edges of the bin (air won't escape under it), but I'm seeing if I get better/faster composting with more of the bin material exposed to airflow. It also addresses the note above as I have it built such that I use two 1x4 boards, one each covering the two PVC pipes in the bin - so I have a nice, level surface to remove the material. I lose a bit of bin capacity, but I'm seeing if that make the overall process a bit faster - both composting as well as removal. Finally, I'm incorporating a better lid-system - like the one above. In order to provide a buffer for the fourth horse, and more time in the bins in the 'curing' phase, I'm just completing a fourth bin. I have three blowers and am using the Valterra 4" gate valves to control routing of the airflow. As we clear the bins with existing compost, I will upgrade them w/ the 'pallet' floor and the improved lid-system.

Ty and Sally generously followed that up with an email that included photos of the ingenious pallet floor they have built for their bins. I'm quite jealous because working around my aeration pipes is the worst part of emptying the bins. The email and photos are copied below:

Greetings Libby,

I was actually going to recycle old pallets, but when I went looking, there were none to be found.  Now that I have purchased the wood, the co-op now has at least 20 free pallets stacked up <sigh>.

Oh well, these are treated boards, perhaps they will last longer.

The pallets themselves are just 2x4s and 1x4s, the overall interior dimension of the micro-bin is 43” x 72”. This is looking at the underside of the pallets, but you can see where the perforated pipes slot in, and the top section has an extra crossbeam which is where the perforated pipe stops – it adds a bit more support for the loose 1x4 that covers it.

This is a close-up of the left pallet section and the center pallet section before I installed them in the bin. I’ve added essentially lightening holes to make sure that air flows freely under the pallets and is not blocked by the extra crossbeams.  I put 3 x 1.5” holes in each of the pallet sections.

Here’s a close-up of the right pallet section.

Here are the pallets and the micro-bin.  The perforated pipes are 24” long. The pipes terminate 10” from the back of bin, that where the extra crossbeam is set (just shy of 10”). I use the Valterra 4” gate valves ($48.69 each (new) on Ebay). I want around the inside of the bin and placed muddy dirt along the bottom where it meets the ground to help create an air seal, so air doesn’t just pour out of a gap between the bin and the ground. I’ll do the same with the exterior to make sure there is a seal. Creating this lower plenum area does run the risk of the air just pouring out a gap in the structure.

Below is shown with the left and right pallets set in place. I cut the measurements by ¼” for the width of each section so there is room to place and remove them. The first section I did on the first bin I did I had a very snug fit – fine carpentry, but highly impractical. These are plenty snug, but are easy to remove.  You can see where the extra crossbeam sits – just at the end of the perforated pipes – provides support for the floating 1x4s which cover the pipes.

Now all pallets in…  You can see the crossbeams nearly/gently touching.  The pipes are held nicely in place as well, perforations are facing downward in the 5- and 7-O’Clock positions.

And with the floating boards in place. The boards fit nicely, have fairly consistent spacing, and all of the screwheads etc. are slightly recessed so shovels or loaders won’t get hung up on raised screwheads.  The front of the bin are 8 2x6s and one 2x9 at the top (in the front) to create a pitched roof for the water to run off the back.  I’m building the roof sections probably tomorrow – I like what you did with the supports and the line to open the doors. I’m planning on doing something similar.

I'm super impressed with this concept, and how lovely the Carlson's bins are. They have just started filling their first pallet-floor bin, and I am curious to hear in a few months how the floor affects the quality of the compost. Ty and Sally, please keep us updated!

You can read more about my experiences with the aerated compost system here:

Bin Construction
The Composting Process
Spreading
Is It Right For You?
3-Years of Composting (coming soon!)

Jump Pole Storage

I finally bought jump standards and poles last summer, and since then the poles have been sitting in a stack in the corner of the arena. It was unsightly and annoying, and prevented me from riding deeply into that one corner. It's also not great for the poles to sit on the damp ground.

Unsightly pile of jump poles (actually 8' landscape timbers because they're inexpensive, have rounded edges, and are the perfect length for a narrow arena).

Recently I decided to get off my butt and do something with them. This was another thing I'd been putting off because I wasn't sure of the best way to do it (which reminds me of the adage that the best is the enemy of the good). I've seen other people use ladder hooks, hose hangers, and other random things that aren't sturdy enough and eventually bend or break. You can see in the picture below that the lower-left ladder hook that I've used for only four trot poles (two on each pair of hooks) has bent, which made me not want to go that route again.

I considered making wooden brackets but instead I decided to buy the Bora Portamate Wood Organizer. I am quite impressed with how sturdy it is, especially for only $39, and it was also very easy to install. I mounted it on a section of the fence next to the arena by adding two spare fence boards horizontally (because the existing boards are too old and weathered to be trusted with much weight) and two 2x4s vertically.

Here you can see the horizontal and vertical supports. The fence is on a slope so I made sure to use a level!

The organizer is advertised to hold 600 lb so it should easily support my 15 jump poles, or even more if I need them.

The old ladder racks should do for hanging this gate.

Turns Out Two Donkeys are More Than Twice the Work

If there is a theme to this blog, it is the law of unintended consequences. By which I mean, every "improvement" I've made has presented new problems to solve. Acquiring a second donkey, which I wrote about in this post, has proven to be no exception. I've already encountered a few issues:

1) Donkey messes

One great thing about Dominick, my original donkey, is that he's quite tidy. He likes to poop mostly in one pile (a side-effect of his late gelding, I believe) and doesn't step in it on purpose. It's funny how when you start keeping your horses at home their stall habits and cleanliness suddenly go from something you never really thought about to a top priority and source of frustration.

On the other hand, my new donkey Lancelot's favorite pooping spot is "while walking." To make matters worse, the donkeys have several adorable-but-messy play sessions each day, during which they trample their manure, grind it into tiny pieces, and scatter it in all directions.

After a few weeks of cleaning shards of donkey poo out of all my expensive stonedust twice a day, I decided to move the donkeys into their own area that I wouldn't have to pick daily. Sorry donkeys, you've lost privileges!

I thought about fencing a whole new area for the donkeys, either beside the barn or in an open area near the pasture. Those spots would keep them near the horses to provide companionship and would have easy access to water and electricity. However, neither of those spots seemed large enough or flat enough, plus I wasn't sure I wanted to commit to spending money on new wood fencing yet.

To test the donkey paddock plan, I decided on the easiest and lowest-cost option: to use Horseguard electric fence to create a corridor in the pasture between the dry lot and the old run-in shed, an area of about 225'x25'. The donkeys now have shelter as well as plenty of room to run and play. It didn't require any permanent changes and I had already most of the materials I needed for the fence, which they respect very well. The one catch is that they don't have access to the Nelson waterer, and there's no nearby spigot or electricity, so when winter comes I'll have to figure out how to deal with providing water.

Twice a day I hang a fresh hay net on the wood fence. Underneath and in front of the hay net I placed some spare rubber mats to mitigate mud. Now the rubber mats and the shed are the only places I need to pick manure, and I don't feel like I have to clean every shard like I did with the stonedust. Every week or so I drag the rest of the paddock to break up the manure. They tend to poo along the path that they've already worn between the shed and the hay, so the grass along the exterior fence remains uncontaminated and good for nibbling.

It's a small enough area that Dominick no longer has to wear a grazing muzzle, which is good because Lance likes to use it as a handle. Which actually brings me to issue #2...

2) Donkey roughhousing

All of a sudden, after almost three months of peaceful coexistence, Dom started biting Lance's neck and throat hard enough to draw blood. Lance returned the favor, not quite as badly, on Dom's crest. I don't know why they were suddenly at each other's throats (literally) but the vet who runs the donkey rescue said it could be spring-hormone-related even though they're both geldings. I was able to observe them a few times and it mostly looked like mutual play. Although Lance didn't look super enthusiastic when Dom latched onto the side of his neck, as soon as they split up he'd come back for more.

The battle of the majestic mighty stallions.

I couldn't muzzle Dom because Lance would just use the halter/muzzle to drag Dom around, and I couldn't muzzle both of them because Lance is still scared of everything and would probably have a donkey heart attack.

The first time I turned Lance out back in January I left his halter on to make him easier to catch. Within an hour I had to go outside and save him from Dom, who was dragging him around by it. Donkeys are so naughty!

I've put toys out for them that they largely ignore, including a Jolly Ball, a damaged plastic gutter downspout extension, traffic cones, and our Christmas tree. Thankfully the worst of the wounding has died down now even though I still see them playing, so hopefully they've worked through whatever was going on there.

They look soooooooo innocent...