Similar to cleaning your home, saving time on maintaining a horse stable involves daily maintenance, organization, and knowledge of time-saving tricks. Three ways you can vastly improve your efficiency in maintaining a horse stable are staying on top of daily chores, using a Total Productive Maintenance system and using tricks like adding extra water buckets.
Stay on Top of Daily Chores
It can be hard to remember to do everything. Some of the best ways to ensure everything is taken care of is to make a to-do list. Daily chores need to get done to keep your horses healthy and happy. If daily chores are taking too much time, you can find ways of finishing them faster. Tasks that you should do every day are muck the stalls, clean water buckets, feed the horses, and water the horses. To clean stalls more efficiently, clean each stall in the same way. Getting into a repetitive routine will make cleaning go faster. Clean from back to front or side to side based on your preference. You could even clean front to back as long as you stay consistent. Set a tarp outside the stall and pile waste onto it. Once it’s full, you can fold the corners in and place it in the wheelbarrow or directly carry it to your manure pile.
Create an Equipment Maintenance Schedule
There are many ways to create a maintenance schedule, and one of these approaches is called TPM, or Total Productive Maintenance. When done properly, TPM can bring accidents down to nearly zero, which can dramatically improve the overall safety and productivity of your barn. To correctly implement TPM, everyone involved with the horses needs to participate.
Educate everyone on the right way to handle equipment including tack and set a maintenance schedule for all of your equipment. You can hang up a calendar in the barn and write down what needs to be done on what day. Get rid of anything that isn’t necessary, so your stable isn’t cluttered. Also, keep everything organized in the barn. These are just some of the principles of TPM that help improve efficiency and safety.
Add an Extra Water Bucket to the Stalls
You can save time on watering your horses by installing two water buckets in each stall. In the paddocks, you can add more troughs as well. Set a routine where you fill all of the buckets in the morning and refill any as necessary in the afternoon. To save even more time on watering your horses, you can install an automatic watering system. There are less expensive options in which pipes are extended to the stall and a spigot is situated above the water bucket.
There are many tips and tricks for maintaining a horse stable efficiently. By staying on top of daily chores, following a total productive maintenance schedule and adding extra water buckets to the stalls, you can easily improve efficiency. You’ll find yourself spending less time on barn chores when you stay consistent and organized.
Another option for saving time you may want to consider is boarding some or all of your horses. Boarding can decrease maintenance and increase convenience for you.
Or avoid all of the headaches and let us care for you and your horse, check out our boarding services here Double Diamond Hill Ranch!
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