Facts About Horse Manure

If you've got horses, you've got manure. Being interested in manure may seem odd or distasteful to some people. However, horse owners know they need to take an interest in their horse's manure, as the consistency and quantity is an indication of their horse’s health. Compaction colic can occur if a horse becomes constipated.1 Diarrhea can be a sign of a very nervous horse. It's not unusual to see when a horse is in the trailer or at a competition, or it can be a sign of illness that should not be ignored. So, a healthy pile of manure is not offensive to a horse owner. Rather, it's a very important indication that everything is working well in the horse's digestive system. Here are some horse manure facts you might not be aware of.

Quantity and Weight

Horses produce about eight piles of manure a day and about 50 pounds a day.2 That means one horse creates about nine tons of manure per year. This is why stall and pasture cleaning is essential to horse health. If manure is not cleaned up regularly, it makes the perfect environment for producing unhealthy ammonia fumes in stables, as well as a place for mold, bacteria, and parasites to thrive.

Horse manure should be a pile of roughly spherical shaped droppings. These are formed by the last portion of the large intestine squeezing the contents into ball-like shapes as it extracts water. If there is too much water and it is runny, this can indicate a health problem.