Stud piles are mounds of manure left by rival stallions in the wild. Poo is used to mark territory, so when rivals come along, they poop on top of the other plants to leave their own mark, just like dogs do with urine.
What does this have to do with domestic horses? Well, it’s interesting that when I closely watched my semi-feral horses’ behavior during their first year with me, I saw that they naturally made poo piles or areas where they would go to the bathroom. This is interesting on many levels, including why they did it and where they chose to put them. We’ll talk about those later. For now, let me talk about what they showed me and how that made it easier to manage the manure…
They also picked a second place to poop inside the barn, but it wasn’t graveled and was off to the side. In the winter, this area turned into a huge mud pit, so it was simple to let them use it and watch what happened. At first, I put down rubber mats, but after a while, I gave up and let them poop as much as they wanted.
First, I noticed that the mud started to get lighter after a couple of feet of manure was spread down. Remember, a horse poops 50 pounds every day, so it doesn’t take long. After a few more feet were laid down, the horses began using it as a sleep spot. At first, we thought it looked gross, but then we noticed that it was much drier and warmer than the fields. And remember, because they didn’t urinate there, it didn’t smell bad either.
After seeing my wild horses choose where to poop, I thought, “What if I set up some poo areas in the gravel paddock to make it easier for me to pick up the manure?” I’m happy to say that it’s pretty easy to do, though it does take some time and practice. It’s SO worth it to have the manure left in neat piles instead of getting kicked all over the place as they walk through it or stand on it and grind it into the gravel.
As a responsible horse owner, ensuring your horse has regular and healthy bowel movements is an important part of maintaining their health and wellbeing However, horses can sometimes experience constipation or difficulty pooping for a variety of reasons When this happens, it’s crucial to understand the causes and know how to gently encourage your horse to poop.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about getting your horse to poop, from understanding normal poop habits to trying natural remedies With the right approach, you can support your horse’s digestive health and avoid potentially serious complications like colic.
What’s Considered Normal Pooping for Horses
To start, it’s helpful to understand what’s normal when it comes to your horse’s pooping habits. On average, a healthy horse should pass manure about 6-12 times per day. Their poop should have a semi-firm, moist consistency and medium brown color.
Signs that your horse is pooping normally include:
- Producing manure several times throughout the day
- Passing poop that is well-formed and moist
- Exhibiting comfort and ease passing manure
- Showing no signs of straining or discomfort
Monitoring your horse’s manure output and consistency provides insight into their digestive health. Any significant decrease in frequency or amount, very dry/hard feces, or difficulty pooping may indicate an issue requiring attention.
Common Causes of Constipation in Horses
When a horse can’t poop or strains to pass manure, it indicates constipation. Understanding the root causes of equine constipation can help you address it quickly and effectively. Common causes include:
- Dehydration – Insufficient water intake leads to hard, dry feces that are difficult to pass.
- Poor quality hay – Overly coarse, mature, or dusty hay is harder to digest.
- Inadequate chewing – Dental issues prevent thorough chewing, resulting in improperly digested particles.
- Lack of exercise – Reduced gastrointestinal motility causes buildup of manure.
- Medications – Some drugs like NSAIDs slow intestinal transit.
- Pain – Abdominal or rectal discomfort inhibits normal pooping.
- Sand accumulation – Ingested sand collects in the colon, causing impaction.
Ruling out these common culprits through close monitoring of your horse’s diet, hydration, exercise, and other factors can help you zero in on the cause of constipation.
Signs Your Horse is Constipated
Being alert to signs of constipation allows you to address it early before it leads to colic or other issues. Here are the most common indicators:
- Noticeable decrease in manure output
- Hard, dry, or small feces
- Straining or pushing with no results
- Stomping feet, swishing tail, or pacing while trying to poop
- Extended periods between bowel movements
- Increased lying down due to abdominal discomfort
- Reduced appetite or interest in food
- Mild colic symptoms like flank watching or kicking at belly
You know your horse best – any deviation from their normal pooping habits warrants a closer look. Don’t hesitate to call your veterinarian if your horse shows persistent or worsening signs of constipation.
Encouraging a Bowel Movement Naturally
In mild cases of constipation, simple at-home remedies can help get your horse’s manure moving again. Natural approaches include:
Prompt veterinary advice should be sought for constipated horses. Only attempt the below suggestions under guidance from an equine veterinarian.
- Increase exercise – Added movement stimulates intestinal activity. Turnout, handwalking, or light riding can help.
- Provide fresh, clean water – Ensure unlimited access to water to prevent dehydration.
- Add water to feed – Soak hay or grains to increase moisture intake.
- Offer bran mash – The fiber and moisture help soften manure.
- Add oil to feed – A couple tablespoons of oil lubricates dry feces.
- Feed soaked beet pulp – The pulp’s soluble fiber draws in water to facilitate pooping.
- Massage the abdomen – Very gentle massage can stimulate bowels. Avoid applying pressure on the abdomen.
- Administer probiotics – Supporting healthy gut flora may improve motility. Consult your vet on appropriate probiotic strains.
Patience and gently encouraging your horse’s natural pooping instincts through diet, hydration, and light exercise is preferable to more invasive approaches. However, contact your vet promptly if you don’t see improvement within 12-24 hours.
When to Call the Vet About Constipation
Constipation can rapidly escalate into a dangerous situation for horses if left unaddressed. Call your veterinarian right away if your horse shows:
- Persistent signs of straining or discomfort when trying to poop
- No manure production for over 24 hours
- Colic symptoms like pawing, flank watching, repeatedly lying down
- Loss of appetite for over 12 hours
- Severe distension or swelling of the abdomen
- Dullness, lethargy, or depression
Veterinary assessment is required for recurring or severe constipation cases. Your vet will determine if there is an underlying cause requiring treatment, such as parasitism, infection, or sand accumulation. They may perform rectal exams, ultrasounds, or other diagnostic tests to evaluate the severity.
Based on your horse’s condition, your vet may recommend medical interventions like:
- Fluid therapy
- Laxatives or stool softeners
- Pain relieving medications
- Sand clearing agents
- Surgery in severe impaction cases
Severe constipation can quickly progress to dangerous impaction or colic. By spotting symptoms early and contacting your vet, you can get your horse the appropriate treatment to restore healthy pooping.
Preventing Constipation in Horses
An ounce of prevention is truly worth a pound of cure when it comes to equine constipation. Here are some proactive steps you can take:
- Provide continuous access to fresh, clean water
- Feed a high-quality diet with ample roughage
- Schedule regular dental exams to maintain proper chewing
- Ensure regular exercise through turnout, riding, etc.
- Monitor for signs of pain that could inhibit pooping
- Limit medications that slow GI motility
- Feed psyllium or other sources of soluble fiber
- Consider probiotics to support healthy digestion
- Practice good parasite control to prevent internal parasites
By being vigilant about your horse’s diet, exercise, hydration, and overall health, you can help minimize their risk of constipation and related issues. Pay close attention to changes in pooping habits and never hesitate to call your veterinarian if concerned. With prompt, proactive care, you can help your horse stay happy and “regular” for years to come.
How To Teach Your Horses to Poo in Designated Areas
Step 1: Choose at Least 2-3 Poo Areas
It’s important to know that you probably won’t be able to get your horses to poop too far from where they eat or relax. 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 need to pick places where the horses won’t stand or walk; they should just poop and leave. So in addition to the herd’s self-selected poo areas (pics above) I chose this edge of the paddock:
And I chose this corner inside the big barn:
Step 2: Leave at Least Three Manure Piles in Each Poo Area
To keep your horses going, you need to leave at least three piles of manure in each spot where you want them to poop. Resist the temptation to remove all manure once they’re trained!.
But while you’re teaching them where to poop, leave a lot more poo to show them that THIS is the place to poop. If your horses are not understanding yet where to poo, then leave more poo in the chosen spot. You might have to carefully move whole piles of poop from other places to the spot where you want them to go. The more “natural” the poop, the better.
Step 3: Tell your Horses to Poo There and Praise Them when they Do!
If you see a horse going to the bathroom, point to the area where it will happen, walk over, and call out, “Poo here, sweetheart. Come over here.” ” 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 aren’t doing what you want them to do. Just picture what you want them to do and let go of the result. You might have to do this a few times for each horse, but some will get it the first time.
Kaliah was pooping in the middle of the path when I did this with her. She looked at me while she pooped. After she left, I went over, picked up her fresh poop, and moved it to the place I told her to poop. She watched me do that too. For her next poop, she walked right over to the poop area and went! I gave her lots of praise. Always keep in mind that horses and all animals can send and receive s. If you can picture it, your horse can too.
However, a few days later, Kaliah pooed in the walkway again, so we just repeated the same sequence:
Also, if you see a horse pooping in the pick area, give them lots of praise 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
Maybe your horses will learn faster if you live with them and can move the manure more than once a day. 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 a place where all of their waste is picked up every day or twice a day, it may take longer to train them than horses who have at least some places (like the field) where their waste is left alone.
Horses that have been kept in small enclosures are more prone to treading or kicking around their manure. Horses don’t like walking through their own waste, and if you keep them in a big enough area (a few acres per horse), they won’t do it. 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
We wish that training would lead directly to success, but it doesn’t always work that way. There will be great days when you’re happy that they are finally trained, and then the next day it seems like you’re back at the beginning! Keep going, 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 get rid of all the smells in their poop area, you have to train them all over again from the beginning. 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 bought a loose box and put alfalfa in it every day because that’s their favorite hay. Their poop wasn’t going to get in that box because there’s room on both sides for them to walk through it. Once they stopped pooing there, I moved the box with no recurrence. In that case, I would have moved the box back and given them more time to figure out what I wanted.
Reminder: When you remove poo, do your best to clear all the poo – even the little bits. Horses have a very good sense of smell, and the smell of poop may be more appealing to them than the sight of it.
Even if you do all of the things above and your horses are still crapping everywhere, here are some things to look out for and maybe fix:
#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. Keep in mind that I said “piles,” so make sure the manure is in piles that look like they came straight from a horse’s behind.
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!.
So the first thing you’d do is clean the area up and remove all the kicked-around poo:
Now that you’ve got the area clean, add fresh manure piles to signal the horses where to poo. This means you should get rid of the old stuff and bring in new piles from somewhere else:
#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).
So let me show you what went wrong: two piles of manure were left by the side of the barn to show that this is a poop area:
Two piles were also left at the back of the barn to show that there was another place to poop.
But these piles aren’t enough. Also, you can see that the horses have pooped in the middle of the barn instead of one of the two designated areas!
My barn help didn’t leave enough piles because they were used to picking up all the poop. It’s hard to leave piles of poop where they are when you’re used to picking everything up! But for the five days before I left, I made sure they went to the bathroom in the right place and left the middle of the barn empty. This is how quickly you can make them confused if you don’t do things right every time.
When I got back, I made sure that there were at least four piles in each spot. Take a look and see how this gives the horses a much stronger visual cue:
Plus, I left 4 piles at the back of the barn. When I first started teaching them, I used to leave 6 or 7 piles there. If the signal isn’t strong enough, make it stronger!
#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.
It can change the poop pattern when the weather changes and it rains a lot all of a sudden. This is because the horses are in the safe 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 poop in the right places 20% or 30% of the time, that’s still WAY less work than getting kicked around and having to ground-in poop every time! Or, even if it takes a year to train your herd, the payoff is still well worth the time.
Since we’re talking about horse manure, I’ve often wondered why horses poop all over their fields when they are smart enough to know they won’t eat where they poop. But this is also very smart because the worm eggs in their manure hatch into larvae that stick to grass stalks and wait to be eaten again. If your horses don’t have enough pasture or hay that is always available in slow feeders, they may eat this worm-infested grass out of hunger. That being said, if they have enough food, their stomachs (which make acid 24 hours a day) will not touch the grass near where they poop.
That brings us back to the original question: why do they poop all over the field? But when I think about it from the point of view that “nature is a self-sustaining, regenerative loop,” I see that what they are doing is evenly fertilizing the field. In the wild, horses will eat and fertilize an area, then move on to a new/fresh area. The worms will have died from the cold winter by the time they get back to the area where manure was spread out. The manure will have also been kicked around and spread by other animals to dry in the sun or break down into soil. They are doing a lot of the same things that Will Harris does when he puts 1000 cows on a field that has been damaged by monoculture crops and uses the cows’ dung and urine to heal the land and make healthy soil with lots of living things in it.
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!
Another strange thing I noticed was that they would choose poo areas that were close to where they ate. Why would they do that? But remember, we are trusting the animals’ wisdom and experience, so I resisted the urge to move or remove these poo areas and instead watched them. It is always said in horsekeeping and manure management articles that manure piles should be placed far away from where horses eat or live. Someone even saw this on one of my YouTube videos and slammed me for dumping trash near the horses’ feeder. It wasn’t me, honest!.
When I was driving to my barn one day, I noticed that every horse I saw had a fly mask on. But at my barn, where my horses ate, even next to one of their 10×12-foot poop areas that was 18 inches high with manure, there were almost no flies! What? They were happily munching. There wasn’t a fly in sight.
Horse pooping
FAQ
What do you give a horse that can’t poop?
What is a natural laxative for horses?
What is the easiest way to pick up horse poop?
Can a horse poop be used on a farm?
Plus, horse poop presents a number of practical uses. So before you toss out that heaping pile of horse hooey, try to consider the different areas on your farm that might benefit from your horse’s daily doodie. Keeping tabs on your horse’s manure can help spot a potential health problem.
What should one do if they are having trouble pooping?
If one has difficulty pooping, otherwise known as constipation, this can be prevented or treated by increasing dietary fibre and fluid, doing regular exercise, trying abdominal massage, and taking laxatives.
How do you feed a horse poop?
Make sure your horse is consuming plenty of water. To boost water intake, consider soaking his hay or offering him wet beet pulp or a bran mash for a couple of days. A perfect pile of poop is moist, but not too wet, with formed fecal balls making up the pile.
How long does it take a horse to poop?
Fact: it takes a horse about 36 to 72 hours to turn whatever it eats into poop aka horse apples. The whole process starts when the horse takes food into its mouth. As the animal chews, the horse’s saliva starts to break down the food matter. This initial step works to turn feed, grains, or roughage into more manageable, digestible particles.
Why do horses poop?
In some situations, pooping has a social function. When he’s in a herd, your horse will pass a pile to send a message to his herd mates that says, “I’m here.” In turn, his buddies may poop right back to say, “Me, too.” Stallions will pass manure to mark territory, and may even poop on top of other horses’ piles.
How do you get rid of horse poop at home?
If you feel that you can manage the problem at home, you may try to increase water intake and offer wet beet pump or bran mash to improve digestion and regularity. Aside from colors, the textures of your horse’s manure may help you get a better understanding of what’s going on inside its body.