Mucking out shavings ('Ritz' style) with eventer Wayne Garrick

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How do you make a 'dry and dusty' subject such as mucking out come to life? You ask a 3* event rider, hunt groom (and hilarious Horse Hero blogger) to demonstrate the fine art! Wayne takes us through his three stages of mucking out a shavings bed to create 'Ritz' standard accommodation for his horses who, he says 'work hard enough for us, so it's the least we can do for them'. Watch and learn! You could become as anally obsessed as Wayne in his quest to produce the perfect bed!

Wayne Garrick's method of mucking out a shavings bed

Wayne suggests having a shavings bed on 'semi deep-litter', ie. keeping a shallow layer of saturated bed at the base (underneath the dry bedding) to offer extra protection, especially to large horses, when they lie down and get up. This, he says, avoids capped hocks and other injuries (even though his stables have rubber matting underneath the bed).

Wayne also recommends that rubber mats fit snuggly, to avoid pee getting underneath them which will make the stable smell!

Wayne suggests 3 stages to mucking out...

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Comments

Deirdre 13 Oct 2009 I have a tip worth trying - it doesn't work with all horses but some of them can actually be trained to stale in one corner of the stable only.... Get some mole/badger diggings (the earth they displace when burrowing) and place them in the corner of the stable you want the horse to use. Obviously choose one of the back wall corners. Do this for about 2 weeks until you find the horse becoming more and more likely to use that corner. Stallions do it more readily than others but any horse may have the potential to become a tidy pooper.

xxEllenxx 31 Aug 2009 This is fab!! I muck out between 5-8 boxes and each one has to be spotless!! I've become obsessive! Not happy until each horse has a perfect, clean bed.

Endurance forever! 7 Jun 2009 I muck my horses beds out the same way. I like to know they have a comfortable bed to sleep in. I know what you mean about the horses hidding the pooh, my two do it all the time! Hahahaha!

ilovemycob 6 May 2009 This is how I muck out too, I have to have it perfect. I'm obsessed! Hahaha.

Francesca 24 Feb 2009 Thank god! I thought I was the only one this anal about mucking out! My mum taught me this method when I was about 3. Almost 20 years on, I still level off my bankings so they are perfectly square, sift through every scrap of clean bedding to make sure there are no hidden "monsters" and sweep up the front in a perfect line. Then the first thing my mare does when she gets in is have a wee then spin round looking for food and ruin all my lovely work. Also I know a lot of people aren't too fond of using gloves to muck out but it saves a lot of bedding.