How to Separate Horse Manure From Wood Chips

Most horse owners who keep horses in a stall are familiar with wood chips, often sold as wood shavings, as a bedding resource. Wood shavings are an inexpensive source for springy bedding that absorbs horse manure and urine. The process of separating horse manure from wood chips is known as picking or mucking. Daily picking of a horse stall helps to keep horses and the stalls looking neat and clean.

Things You'll Need

  • Wheel barrow
  • Mucking fork
  • Mucking bucket
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Instructions

    • 1

      Muck out a stall at least once a day. Experts recommend twice daily for the health of the horse, as well as to shorten each cleaning session.

    • 2

      Remove the horse from the stall while you separate the manure from the wood shavings. Horse owners call this "turning the horse out." Although you can muck out a stall while the horse is in it, the process is easier with an empty stall.

    • 3

      Position your wheel barrow to the door of the horse̵7;s stall, and place the mucking bucket in the stall over a clean, manure free patch of shavings.

    • 4

      Take your mucking fork and scoop up any large piles of horse droppings that you spot immediately. Place these droppings into the manure bucket.

    • 5

      Scoop up a pile of shavings from the corner of the horse stall. Shake them back and forth to shake off clean wood chips. The chips will sieve out from between the tines of the fork, leaving behind any manure.

    • 6

      Continue to pick up forkfuls of shavings, working back and forth across the stall. Then repeat the process in a front-to-back pattern to find any horse droppings that you may have missed. When your bucket becomes full, transfer the contents to the wheel barrow.