The Horse Poop Paradox: Part 1 of 2

It’s the scene out of every little girl’s dream. Rolling hills over open pastures beneath a vivid blue sky and golden sun, surrounded by a wooden fence and dotted with horses happily grazing the day away or running free throughout an emerald paradise.

However, what most don’t think of is what goes into making that equine paradise into a reality- after all, it’s just grass right? The stuff growing wild in your yards and off the sides of highways. But as most horse owners and stablehands come to understand, the humble grass covering those pastures and hills is the ultimate key to a horse’s overall health. A healthy, clean pasture always equals a healthy, happy pony.

But why is this?

Perhaps the most obvious reason is that the pasture is a horse’s home. A pasture provides fresh grazing to fill their stomachs and is where your equine pals lay their heads down at night. Therefore, just as you keep your home clean, it’s equally important you keep your horse’s home clean, especially since their home doubles as their bathroom.

On average, a single healthy horse relieves themselves between 6 to 12 times daily. This accumulates to just over 8 tonnes of manure per year. And where there’s manure, there inevitably comes insects.

Worms, maggots, flies, and parasites all converge upon what your horse has left behind, feeding on the manure and making a home in the pile. This is the way of nature, and is the natural way to break down the manure and return it back to the soil.

So then why doesn’t it work the same way in the pasture?

The answer is that it does work the same way, your horse just doesn’t have the wide open spaces that wild horses do, and so the manure piles up faster than the insects can break it down. So, rather than moving on after they finish with a pile, they just move to the next pile of manure and therefore stay in the pasture, which means that your horse cannot escape them either. The wilds are endless, a pasture is not.

This also means that since the insects cannot do their job quickly enough, the grass beneath the pile cannot grow as effectively. As the sun beats down on the manure, it produces heat within the waste, which can burn the ground underneath it.

Therefore, the job now falls to you to help nature out a little and keep your pasture clean so it can remain healthy and the insects can move on and leave your horse alone. No piles of manure mean no insects sticking around, and it also means your grass will grow better.

But on the other hand, the best way to make your grass grow better is to use that same manure we just spoke about! That’s right, that manure that can cause such issues is also the best fertilizer you could ask for, if it’s allowed to break down properly.

So what are you to do with the manure then? Get rid of it, or use it to grow your grass? Well, why not do both?