How Often Should I Clean My Horse’s Stall? [On Avg Once a Day]

The cleaner your horse’s stall is, the better he will do. Horses are not naturally built to stay in stalls for hours at a time; on the contrary, wild horses travel for miles and graze constantly, and rarely stay in one place for long periods of time. Your horse will never have the advantage of being in his own urine or feces.

So how often should I clean my horse’s stall? Horse’s stalls should be cleaned every day, and 6 times a week at the minimum.

More detailed answer would be that it depends on how often and how long your horses are in stalls.

Table Of Contents

Why is it important to clean your horse’s stall ?

Keeping the stables as clean as possible is good for your horse. Urine contains ammonia. Standing in wet bedding or puddles weakens the structure of the horse’s hooves and can lead to lameness problems. Standing in feces usually has the same effect, but not as quickly. Most horse keepers clean occupied stables at least once a day as a basic hygiene measure, removing feces and replacing urine-saturated bedding.

How often do people really clean horse stalls ?

This is how we do it:

Every morning the horses are grained and turned out to pasture. That’s the perfect time to clean the stalls and they are left empty until dusk which is when we take the horses back in for their bedtime grain. We repeat this simple process every day.

How often you clean your horse’s stall will depend on horse’s habits and how he spends his days.

I think this would be a good chance to show different options horse owners have when it comes to cleaning their stall.

One cleaning a day

If you are in horse training, oftentimes your trainer will take care of cleaning the stall. If your horses are only in at night (and they spend their time outside) so they only need to clean the stall once a day. Weather can play a big role here. If the weather is nice, sometimes they’ll stay out at night too and then we don’t need to clean it.

Should I also replace horse’s shavings when cleaning?

Their shavings are usually replaced as needed. For example, my horse gets tons of shavings replaced each week and since the shavings in the middle of the stall are not used that often, they simply get pushed to the edge and new ones are being poured in the middle. It is possible that your horse likes to get dirty often so their entire stall has to be completely stripped every week.

Cleaning every time you feed your horse

Some people pick their stalls every time they go out to feed. This is simply practical if you have many horses and you need to wait for your slowest eating horse to be finished. Then you can use that time to replace the shavings and clean the stall.

Cleaning two times a day

There are people who have many horses and multiple stalls. If the horses are spending too much time in the stall then you would need to clean 2 times a day. An example could be that the horses are closed in the stall every night and usually most of the day. This would definitely require more cleaning, at least 2 times a day. The best time of the day to clean the stall is in the mornings and once before the end of the day. Other times, your horse can be injured and needs to spend the whole day in the stall.

Clean only when it is dirty

Cleaning your horse stall only when it is dirty is a viable solution. It is certainly possible to follow this plan especially if your horses are out on pasture a lot. Obviously, the less time they spend in the stall, the less time you will spend cleaning. Horses like to spend time outside, so make use of it. If you have good conditions to keep them outside, then do so. Your horses will thank you and you won’t need to clean as much.

Every other day

If you are combining boarding and cleaning yourself, then you might find yourself cleaning it every other day. This is another example where boarding a horse from time to time can help you free up some of your time. This can come handy if you have a really busy time at work or your horse is simply too needy or high maintenance. Don’t feel bad if you sometimes need to send them away for a couple of days. It’s like a spa weekend for horses.

What if my horse cannot be turned out?

Some show and breeding stables do not turn their horses out; horses are viewed as investments and turnout as a risk. Injured or sick horses may require a complete rest in the barn to encourage healing and prevent the horse from being injured.

For a horse that cannot be turned out, you should clean the stall at a minimum frequency of once in the morning and once at night.

Ideally, you will keep the stall as clean as possible. Remove feces or urine as soon as it appears. If a horse has an open wound, flies and bacteria attracted to and caused by the feces can cause additional health problems. You can’t clean your stall too often.

How to clean an occupied stall?

Cleaning a barn with a horse in it can be a little more challenging than cleaning one without the horse in it. However, it may be necessary if you find yourself in a situation where you can’t get the horse out of the stall or if you have nowhere to put the horse while you clean your stall.

As long as the horse is respectful of your space, you should have no problem cleaning around him. Place hay in the corner of the stall where you would like the horse to stand and begin cleaning. Move the horse as needed. If the horse kicks or is otherwise dangerous, remove it from the stall before cleaning.

How often should I refresh the bedding completely?

Sometimes it’s not just enough to remove the poop and the pie and fix their shavings. And especially if they poop a lot, then it is important to give it a good scrub.

If your horses spend every day in their stall, then you need to consider totally refreshing their bedding once or twice a week.

What is the fastest way to clean a horse stall?

Cleaning a horse barn can be fairly easy and can be done much faster once you have refined your routine. This is something you will have to figure out through trial and error. However, to clean your stalls efficiently, make sure you have the right tools for the job, and by doing things faster, bigger can be better.

So what is the fastest way to clean a horse stall? The fastest way to clean a horse stall is to use the tools that will help you clean it in the quickest way possible. Those tools are:

  • Two-wheeled wheelbarrow: double the size of the
  • Wide shovel
  • Shaving fork to pick up and move shavings/hay
  • Wide-faced barn broom
  • Lyme (use as needed)

These are just the basics and you can add or subtract from this as needed. The bigger the wheelbarrow the better for the most part. For us we got our first guest who is a friend of ours and she gave use to her dual wheelbarrow. Now we can literally fit twice as much manure in the wheelbarrow, the only drawback, of course, is that it is twice as heavy to pull.

How to clean horse stalls less often?

Cleaning your horse stall definitely requires some time on your end. So how to clean horse stalls less often? If you want to clean your stall less often, then perhaps you might want to let horses run outside more or if the weather is nice, they could sleep outside.

Use a boarding service

There are many horse boarding services that you can use that offer full treatment for your horse. This includes the cleaning service as well.