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Stud Piles - Teaching Horses WHERE You Want Them to Poo | Listen To Your Horse
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Stud Piles – Teaching Horses WHERE You Want Them to Poo

Stud piles are mounds of manure left by rival stallions in the wild. Poo is used to mark territory and so when rivals come along – just as you see dogs doing with urine – they poo on top of the existing manure to leave their own mark.

What does this have to do with domestic horses? Well the interesting thing, is that by watching my semi-feral horses behaviour closely over their first year with me, I realized that they naturally were creating designated poo piles or areas. This is interesting on several levels (why they did it, and where they chose to locate them), and we’ll get into that later, but for now, let me explain what they showed me and how this then led to easier manure management…

Area near gravel paddock cleared of blackberry bushes
The horses self-selected this cleared blackberry patch as a poo area for themselves
The herd’s built-up poo area – they try to expand it, but I clear it if it’s on the gravel

They also chose a second poo area for themselves, inside the barn, but off to the side where it wasn’t graveled. This area became an absolute mud pit in winter so it was easy to let them have this area and just observe what happened. Initially I tried laying rubber mats down, but then I gave up and just let them poop in there as much as they wanted.

The side of the barn in the winter rainy months

The first thing I noticed, is that after a couple feet of manure was laid down – don’t forget, each horse poops 50 lbs per day, so doesn’t take long – the mud began to decrease. After a few more feet were laid down, the horses began using it as a sleep spot. At first we were kinda grossed out, but then we realized, wait a minute… it’s way drier than the fields and warmer too. And remember, because they didn’t urinate there, it didn’t smell bad either.

By the time summer rolled around, this poo area looked like this:

This area is now built up and stays pretty dry even through the winter – we often throw old hay here too

So after watching my wildies designate poo areas, I thought, well, what if I designate some poo areas in the gravel paddock to make manure pickup easier for me? YES I’m pleased to say, although it takes a bit of time and repetition, it’s fairly easy to do and SO worth it to have the manure left in tidy piles, rather than kicked all over the place as they walk through it, or stand on it and grind it into the gravel.

How To Teach Your Horses to Poo in Designated Areas

Step 1: Choose at Least 2-3 Poo Areas

Most important to realize is that you’re unlikely to get your horses to walk too far away from their food or lounging area to poo. You’ve gotta work with their natural behaviours (more on this below).

Locate poo areas away from main traffic, feeders, play areas etc. but not too far away. For me this was the edges of the paddock and one corner of the barn. You want to choose areas the horses will not stand or walk through, but rather, just poo and walk away. So in addition to the herd’s self-selected poo areas (pics above) I chose this edge of the paddock:

This is where I want them to poo in the paddock – well away from traffic areas and on high land so stays driest in the rain

And I chose this corner inside the big barn:

Barn poo spot – out of the way of traffic and horses eating at the slow feeders

Step 2: Leave at Least Three Manure Piles in Each Poo Area

Once your horses have learned where you want them to poo, for ongoing success, you must leave at least 3 piles of manure in each poo spot. Resist the temptation to remove all manure once they’re trained!

However, while you are still training your horses where to poo, leave a lot more poo to show them that THIS is the poo spot. If your horses are not understanding yet where to poo, then leave more poo in the chosen spot. You may need to pick up intact piles (the more ‘natural looking’ the poo, the better) from other locations and carefully deposit them in the desired poo area.

Leaving LOTS of poo so the new wildies really understand where the poo area is
After a few days, I clear the oldest manure, and leave the freshest.This is how much manure I leave (see the nice tidy piles?) to keep marking the poo area for them

Step 3: Tell your Horses to Poo There and Praise Them when they Do!

When you see a horse start to poo, point to the poo area, walk over and call to them, “Poo here darling, come over here sweetie.” Visualize (imagine) them walking over to you and pooing on that spot. Imagine it a few times as you call them over. Don’t worry that they are not doing what you ask! Just imagine/visualize what you want them to do and let go of the outcome. You may need to do this a few times with each horse, whereas some horses will get it the first time.

I did this with Kaliah as she was pooing in the middle of the walkway, she turned to watch me as she pooed. Then after she moved away, I went over and picked up her fresh poo and moved it to the spot I had asked her to poo. She watched me do that too. For her very next poo, she walked straight over to the poo area and defecated! I praised her lavishly. Remember that horses (and all animals) send and receive images, so if you imagine it, your horse can see it too.

However, a few days later, Kaliah pooed in the walkway again, so we just repeated the same sequence:

Kaliah defecates in a walkway and then goes to eat at a slow feeder
I immediately pick up her poo with her watching – I am talking to her and visualizing what I want her to do when she poos
I carefully move her pile of poo (in an intact pile) to the designated poo area. I am imagining her pooing here and telling her this is what I want please.
I go back and make sure I clear all the small bits of poo as well – we want to remove the smell too!

Likewise, if you see any horse defecating in the chosen area, praise them lavishly for being so smart and doing such a great job. Let them know it is SO much easier for you if they poo there. Make sure you leave their fresh manure pile intact and remove the older piles instead. You see how “training” is actually just about clear communication?

Step 4: Move Intact Manure Piles to the Poo Area

As we discussed above, do this right after they poo and while they’re watching. Scoop up their fresh poo and move it carefully (in an intact pile) to the poo area. Praise them while you’re doing it: “Oh dear. Okay let’s move it. See? Good job, THIS is where the poop goes (visualize horse pooing there while you talk). Good job. Let’s poo here now, okay?” (visualize or imagine again the horse walking over and pooing in that spot).

Step 5: Clean Other Areas Daily – ONLY leave Manure in Poo Areas

If you live with your horses and can clear/move the manure more than once per day, perhaps your horses will train quicker. I live off-site so only clear manure once a day. It takes anywhere from a couple weeks to a couple months to teach horses where to poo. Also, some horses understand what you want more quickly than others.

If horses have lived in conditions where all their manure is cleared up every day, or twice per day, they can take longer to train than horses who have at least some areas (out in the field) where their manure is left alone.

Horses that have been kept in small enclosures are more prone to treading or kicking around their manure. Horses naturally don’t like to walk through their own manure, and if they are kept in large enough spaces (a few acres per horse), they won’t tread it around. So these horses that have been kept in small enclosures can take longer to train as well. Remember that a human’s idea of a ‘large space’ doesn’t usually match up to the horse’s idea!

Step 6: Expect Good Days & Bad Days

Much as we would love this training to be a straight progression to success, it usually isn’t! You will have brilliant days where you celebrate that they are finally trained and then you come back the next day and it looks like you’re back to square one! Just persevere and know that they will get it and it will be worth it.

Interestingly, if you change/cover the footing or pour fresh gravel, you’ll have to train them all over again. Horses orient more by smell, than by sight. So if you remove all the scents of their poo area, you have to start at Step 1 and re-train them. This may not take as long the second time round though.

Sometimes you’ll get a spot or walkway where the horses will just not stop pooing. The solution to this is to put a feeder there until you’ve broken the pattern. We had this problem at the barn entrance. I got a loose box and put alfalfa in it once a day (their favorite hay), so no one was going to soil that box! There is enough room on either side of the box for horses to walk through, so no risk of injury. Once they stopped pooing there, I moved the box with no recurrence. If it did recur, I would have just moved the box back and given them more time to understand what I wanted.

Hay box to discourage pooing at entrance to the big barn

Reminder: When you remove poo, do your best to clear all the poo – even the little bits. Horses have an incredibly strong sense of smell and they are perhaps more motivated by the smell of poo, then the appearance.

Trouble-Shooting Guide

If you’re doing everything as outlined above, but your horses are still crapping all over the place, here’s a checklist of things to watch out for and possibly correct:

#1 Your manure piles aren’t fresh or piled up – check that you are leaving the newest/freshest piles of manure to mark poo areas. Note I said, piles so make sure manure is in piles that look like they just came out of a horse’s butt.

There’s been plenty of manure left behind here, but it is kicked all over. This does not do a good job of signalling the horses to Poo Here!

This is a good amount of manure (on the right side of the post), but it is not in nice, tidy piles – so doesn’t do a good job of telling the horses to poo here

So the first thing you’d do is clean the area up and remove all the kicked-around poo:

First, remove all manure from the designated poo spot. You only want FRESH manure here.

Now that you’ve got the area clean, add fresh manure piles to signal the horses where to poo. So this means you clear away the old stuff and go get some fresh piles from elsewhere and move them here:

This is what you want, clear defined piles of fresher/newer manure

#2 You’re not leaving enough piles of manure to signal effectively – you need to leave more piles of fresh manure (the freshest, newest piles you can find).

Let me show you what went wrong here… You can see that two piles of manure were left at the side of the barn to signal that this is a poo area:

Only 2 piles were left to signal the horses to poo at the side of the barn

And 2 piles were also left at the back of the barn to signal another poo area over there.

Only 2 piles left in the poo area at the back of the barn, so they have pooed down the center of the barn instead, as the signal is not strong enough

However, this is not enough piles, and as you can see, the horses have also pooed down the center of the barn and not in either of the two designated poo areas!

I was away for the weekend and my barn help did not leave enough piles – it is very hard to leave piles of poo in place when you’re used to clearing everything! However, for the five days before I left, I had them pooing in the designated spots and leaving the center of the barn clear. So this is how quickly you can confuse them if things are not done correctly each and every time.

As soon as I returned, I made sure that at least 4 piles were left in each location – take a look and see how this gives a much stronger visual cue to the horses:

4 fresh manure piles left at the side of the barn

And at the back of the barn, I also left 4 piles, although when first teaching them, I used to leave 6 or 7 piles in this location – if it’s not really noticeable, make the signal stronger!

Piles left close enough together to signal the poo area, yet there is space in between for the horses to poop fresh piles as well

#3 Change in herd or weather – and sometimes you do everything right, every time, and you still arrive to a mess all over the place! Some days the horses are extra frisky, or squabbling and their poo pattern shows things got a bit crazy.

When the weather changes and we suddenly get lots of rain, this can also change the poo pattern because now the horses are in the sheltered areas 4-5 times longer than usual. Maybe we need to designate more poo areas as density increases?

Regardless, as I’ve pointed out before, some horses take a long time to train. But even if they only poo in the right spots 60 or 70% of the time, that is still WAY less work than kicked around, ground-in poo every single time! Or, even if it takes a year to train your herd, the payoff is still well worth the time invested.

Equine defecation behaviour

Since we’re on the subject of horse manure… I’ve often wondered why horses defecate all over their fields, when their innate intelligence means they will not eat where they shit. However, this is also extremely wise, since the larvae from the worm eggs in their manure attach themselves to grass stalks where they hope to be ingested again. If your horses do not have enough pasture for their needs and they also don’t have 24/7 hay available in slow feeders… then they may well eat this worm-infested grass from sheer hunger. But if their stomachs (which produce acid 24 hours a day) have enough forage to satiate them, then they will not touch the grass around the areas where they defecate.

Which brings us full circle back to the question of why do they poo all over the damn field? But when I consider this question from the perspective that ‘nature is a self-sustaining, regenerative loop’ I realize that what they are doing is fertilizing the field evenly. In the wild, horses will eat and fertilize an area, then move on to a new/fresh area. By the time they get back around to the manure-covered area, either the worms would be dead from the cold winter, or the manure kicked around and spread by other animals to dry in the sun, or dried/composted into soil. They are essentially doing what Will Harris does when he puts 1000 cows on a field with soil wrecked from monoculture crops and uses the cows’ dung and urine to regenerate the earth and create nourishing soil with a vibrant microbiota.

Manure nourishes the soil which increases plant nutritive content

Here’s another super interesting thing I noticed from watching my wildies: They never urinated where they defecated. In fact, they would pee far away from where they pooed, so the two were kept completely separate. Well guess what? When you separate urine and feces, it drastically reduces foul odor and the poo composts faster!

The other bizarre thing I noticed, is that they would locate their self-selected poo areas fairly close to where they ate! Now why the heck would they do that?? But remember we are trusting in the wisdom and experience of these animals… So I resisted my urge to remove or re-locate these poo areas and I left them alone and watched instead. This goes against every horsekeeping or manure management article you’ll ever read! They always tell you to locate manure piles well away from horses’ living or eating areas. Someone even noticed this in one of my YouTube videos and blasted me for piling shit near the horses’ feeder. It wasn’t me, honest!

One day I realized, as I drove to my barn, that all the horses I saw along the way were wearing fly masks. But at my barn, even eating right next to one of their 10×12-foot poo areas piled 18-inches high with manure… my horses were almost clear of flies! Wait, what?? They were munching away contentedly, with barely a fly in sight.

What do flies eat & who eats them?

When the horses went out into the fields, lots more flies swarmed their faces and concentrated around their eyes. But close to their slow feeders – which were all close to their poo areas, they were almost clear of flies. I discussed this with my optometrist father and he informed me that the horses’ eye fluid contains protein and this is what the flies are after. Oh.my.gosh. could it be that the horses were providing an alternate/better protein source for the flies (worm eggs etc in manure) so the flies chose to eat that, rather than trying to get the protein from their eye fluid? Dr. Ronald Hoffman MD says:

“Tears aren’t just salty water; the eye surface requires oils for lubrication, mucous for even distribution, and antibodies and special proteins to prevent infection.”

Flies are omnivores and can eat any wet or decaying plant or animal/protein matter. Turns out flies don’t have teeth, they have to suck up liquid matter through their proboscis and sponge-like mouth parts – so if something is solid, they vomit enzymes and digestive juices on it first, to turn it into a liquid they can ingest. I also noticed that the horses kept pooing on top of the same poo areas – this kept the pile moist and keeps the food source available to the flies for longer.

We also have a lot of birds (robins, sparrows, hummingbirds etc) around the barn and fields, untold spiders, and a bunch of wasp nests on my barn and shelter roof – so the flies have plenty of natural predators around. No doubt, this keeps the fly population in check, even though the horses have also provided them with an ideal breeding ground. Of course, winter also helps keep fly populations manageable.

I’m exploring the concept of, What happens when we let nature balance herself? I’m trying to watch and learn and interfere as little as possible. So even though my horses have only a tiny fraction of the land they would have/need in the wild to be self-sustaining, I’m looking for the ways I can work with their nature-based wisdom to provide a better environment – which, thankfully, usually means less work for me!

So, we have ended up with three big manure piles located right next to the shelters where they eat. Two were chosen by the horses and the third was chosen by me after watching where they located theirs! So my manure dump spot is right outside the back of the barn. Once a year, I have a bobcat come in and remove my manure pile (dumping it in the middle of a large blackberry thicket), digging it down into a pit again, which I then dump into all year long. I also have him scrape the horse-designated poo areas back down to ground level. However, this year, he didn’t need to remove any manure from the paddock poo area as it had converted itself into flat earth!

This poo area used to be two feet high and has converted itself into flat earth. As you can see, I’m still teaching the new wildies where to poo, but they’re getting better!

If anyone living in a hot climate (California, Arizona, etc) wants to experiment with this poo area-fly control concept, I would modify one thing. I suggest starting a poo area near an eating area and then sprinkling it with water once or twice a day (if needed) to keep it moist. If your horses don’t poo there, then move their poo piles to this area, but check on how quickly the manure dries out and add extra water as needed. I would be very interested to hear how and if it works in hot climates as well… since it works great here during the summer months, I would think so.

The other option that mimics this phenomenon is to hang those liquid fly traps around eating areas. I experimented with that one year (before my first herd of wildies arrived) and they work well too. I have to say though, they smell much worse than manure! You can hang them above your head height and then you only have to smell them when you dump them out.

Happy manure management! 🙂

Stud Piles – Teaching Horses WHERE You Want Them to Poo

12 thoughts on “Stud Piles – Teaching Horses WHERE You Want Them to Poo

  • July 8, 2018 at 2:24 pm
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    I love this article and the fact that I am not the only one who has been critically evaluating where horses deficate! I wrote a blog awhile back about the “Wisdom of Horse Poop.” (http://healing-horse.com/blog/archives/12-2016) But you’ve taken it farther than I did and in a different direction! Love this Jini!

    Reply
    • July 9, 2018 at 6:23 am
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      I love that article Sheryl and had forgotten about it, so thanks for posting the link! It reminds me how horrible it is when riding instructors don’t let horses stop to poo. Can you imagine your boss bursting into your washroom cubicle and yelling at you, “Keep moving! No need to stop to poo – If you were running in the wild, you would have no problem pooping while you ran!” Jeez.

      Reply
    • July 9, 2018 at 6:24 am
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      How’s your place coming along Barbara? Have you got stuff set up, or decided how many horses, or??

      Reply
  • July 9, 2018 at 4:50 pm
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    So I guess there are a few of us Poop people out here. I obsess over poop counting and checking and observing. I use poop to gauge health and worms and weight. If I have to much then I know it’s to much food. My boys were really/are fat so I had to make sure I was monitoring the situation and counting poop helps. I have tried stud piles but they just didn’t work for me…for a lot of reasons. So I pick up my poop every morning from there night time 3 acres and the surrounding 3 acres and leave the rest of the acreage as it falls. I compost and spread the poop I pick up and have moved my pile 3 times in four years. So cool, how it just disappears after time and weather. A lot of the theories in your blog are very interesting….like the stuff about the flies? I only had to use fly masks this year for about a month and now they are fine. Only a few on there eyes instead of swarms . I have been feeding ACV …w/the Mother….and I think it’s helped. My herd is up from 3 to 5 …so I am more in the poop now then ever…can’t imagine 11…..
    like I said you are rubbing off on me…cause my number keeps growing✌🏼❤️🐴

    Reply
    • July 10, 2018 at 3:59 am
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      Ugh the ongoing manure clearance chore! That is the primary reason I wish I had enough land (and in a climate that is either hot enough or cold enough to kill the eggs/larvae) for the horses to just fertilize the soil as nature intended and I would only have to clear stuff in feeding areas. How long does it take you to clear 6 acres of poo?? We only clear their paddock/barn areas daily and then do the immediate field once a week or so. With 11 it now takes 2 hours just to do poo and hay (stock the slow feeders). In the winter it will take 3 hours per day. Yikes!! I try to get teens in to do the fields in the summer, and in the winter I just leave it as we can’t even get a wheelbarrow out there. I have 2 scheduled helpers now, but we all feel we need to add one more, at least, for the winter months. If they were not trained to poo in the designated areas, it would easily take 30-40% longer to clear the poo! So hopefully the wildies continue to improve and learn.

      Reply
      • July 10, 2018 at 1:45 pm
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        Even now with 5 horses……….6 acres takes me about 1/2 hour but I have an electric golf cart and poo dump trailer (just splurged and bought a bigger one…( funny how my gifts to myself have so changed since having horses…I am so happy and grateful with my new luxury poop cart) so it really speeds up the process. Also it really is part of my morning routine and I actually like it🤔…it is a way for me to roam and see the property each day and of course since there is always different places they poop it always takes me on a different path. I check fences and pick up any nails or odd bits of trash and pull weeds they don’t eat. I usually get to see a snake or some kind of interesting creature along my way. It’s kind of my me time and I just kind of meditate and think as I go along. ✌🏼❤️🐴

        Reply
        • July 11, 2018 at 7:43 am
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          Ah yes… the things you can do when you do NOT have to cope with 18 inches of mud for most of the year!! Are you composting? I was dreaming about a side steer/Bobcat but then I realized it is way cheaper for me to just hire the guy the 3 times/year I need one 🙂

          Reply
  • July 11, 2018 at 6:05 pm
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    This is absolutely fascinating.

    Reply
  • August 8, 2020 at 2:29 pm
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    This is brilliant. I got a new, fresh round bale and it is stored inside a run in shed. My two horses have decided to poop while they eat. In one end and out the other. Occasionally, the gelding pees right there, too. The ground is rubber mats. Sometimes they go elsewhere to poop. Any ideas to get them to leave the shed? Thanks.

    Reply
    • August 8, 2020 at 10:55 pm
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      Actually Kathy, I’m sorry to say, but your horses are doing EXACTLY what instinct/body wisdom has programmed them to do to regenerate the land and create a rich ecosystem in the earth to support maximum forage growth! Check out this post, where Kesia is doing what you’ve described – intentionally – to regenerate her land:

      https://listentoyourhorse.com/regenerating-stressed-pasture/

      So… can you move the round bale onto pasture? And place it on a different spot each time? Maybe your horses will work well with a portable shelter, so you can move it around to re-build your soil?

      Reply
  • May 4, 2021 at 9:12 pm
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    I would edit this article everywhere replacing “poop” with “leave droppings” —
    No reason to employ foul language for a generously informative and intelligent article!
    😀

    Reply

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