Introduction
According to Matt Davies Harmony Communities, everyone knows how important vaccines are for horses and maintain a calendar to always keep those shots up to date. However, the same can’t be said for barn hygiene. Let’s check out why you should continuously clean your horse barn.
The Discussion
- Mold – Your horse stall and barn will get mold if it’s not cleaned regularly. Mold spores will find a home and grow in a damp environment full of wet hay bits and wet shavings that look like muck. Horses leave gooey wet patches on wet hay and that provides plenty of nutrients for all kinds of filth including mold to grow.
- Urine stains and manure – As a horse owner, you must deal with smelly stains and patches on your horse. While they are easy to spot on gray horses, manure and urine stains make their presence known on horses of all colors. Apart from their disgusting appearance, manure and urine stains also damage the coat on your horse, attract flies and other insects and create a dull finish on your horse.
You can’t simply blast those stains away with a pressure washer since you’ll also remove valuable sebum in the process. Sebum keeps your horse shiny, waterproof, and stain-repellent. That’s why you need to keep the barns and the horse bedding in them clean regularly.
- Insects and rodents – Keeping a dirty barn and horse stalls are like putting up welcome signs for flies, insects, and all kinds of rodents. Manure and dropped pellets or feed may be disgusting to you and your horse. However, they are valuable and delicious nutrients for insects and rodents. Unfortunately, those rodents and insects also carry a lot of diseases and can cause allergic reactions like a sweet itch for both you and your horse. Cleaning your barn at least once a day helps avoid such problems.
- Fumes of ammonia – The smell of bitter ammonia is very strong and can burn your nose. Ammonia occurs when a horse’s urine breaks down. The toxic gas can damage the mucous membranes and enter your horse’s lungs. It’s even worse when your horse tries to eat something from the ground and its nose gets closer to the fumes. Cleaning your barn regularly and keeping it properly ventilated prevents such severe health problems.
- Skin issues – A filthy barn can also lead to lower leg skin infections on your horse. Treating those infections isn’t just tricky and expensive. Even after the treatment, they leave long-term consequences. So, if you’re lazy about cleaning your barn, you’ll have to pay dearly in many ways.
Conclusion
Matt Davies Harmony Communities suggests that you clean your barn at least once a day. If the horse barn and stalls aren’t kept clean. It can lead to all kinds of diseases and health problems in your horse. Every horse owner knows how costly each horse is and the last thing you want is for your horse to become ill.