Why does no one know how to stack a muck heap

[honeypot]

What is so difficult about emptying a wheelbarrow and then chucking the contents up the heap and squareing it off?
I am not talking children here or a big yard, just a private stable. It drives me nuts.
Does no one teach this anymore? Its helps make a smaller heap that rots down quicker, its tidy and most of all it takes up far less space and you do not end up with the heap half way across the yard.

[pencaedu]

I agree, a little daily maintenance makes so much difference. My daughter is lost if she can't put it on the banks, doesn't understand that the wheelbarrow tracks have to be maintained with straw to be able to get a wheelbarrow across them! My muck heap has only been removed once in 14 years, and that was to help our local farmer as fertiliser was in short supply.

[ribbonsminiatures]

Please do share your secrets??

[clifton]

my husband keeps mine ship shape which is a good job with six stables horses and ponies all year and getting local farmers to take it away is a real pain even though i pay them. i would like it removed every year or twice a year but it has been two years now since it was done and it is getting rather tall, resembing the derby bank at one end, my free range chickens love scratching around on it.

years ago somebody used it in a calendar they did with one of my cockerals stood crowing on the top of it.

[honeypot]

You make a muck oblong.It helps if it has solid sides but you can do it with out.
you start at the back, when you empty out your muck after youve done a couple of barrows you level the top off and spread it in a band about two to three feet wide. Every time you add manure to the band you continue thowing it up onto the band flattening the top and then squareing the edges. Sometimes it helps to walk along the band sideways this compresses the heap and makes its smaller.
when you can no longer throw up or climb onto the band of manure you start another band in front wide enough to walk on, when that get to a certain hieght you start to throw the muck up on to the muck behind all the time squaring and compressing the heap as you go. In the end you can end up with a heap 4-5 metres high in steps.
It looks neater with straw as the straw builds better but I have done it with most types of bedding with no solid sides to hold the 'block' together.
The main advantage apart from keeping it contained is you are effectively composting the heap so with any luck you end up with something that most allotment holders will kill for. In 20 years I have never paid to have my heap removed, some nice man come and takes it away for me.
The muck spreader has done it yet again today, she thinks she's helping me but actually it takes me longer to tidy up after her. I am going to find a tactfull way to tell her.

[brt]

I just dump mine and local farmer pushes it up when he drops my hay off. Verylazy.com !!

[pimms'o'clock (Jess)]

Arghhh does my head in!! Im 23 and have had it drummed into me from a young age how to keep a good muckheap! It only takes two minutes and means you don't have to spend an hour on it at weekend! On our yard people seem to just tip it then have a good whinge when its like a pyramid at the end of the week

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[sometime]

When I was on the livery yard it used to take me and my mate an hour everymorning to make the muck heap right after the liveries had mucked their horses out we could never work out why they found it so hard to fork up the muck from the barrow it wasnt as if it didnt start out properly done every day. Dont have a muck heap now the landowner takes all the poo away in a trailer which we back fill in a very similar way to making a muck heap

[NeverSayNever]

You have just hit one of my pet hates! Or to make it worse let a horse go on it and chuck it all around the floor. Makes my blood boil.

[katealice89]

i used to love doing the mick heap when i worked at the riding school it used to give me some 'me time'. people on our yard dont seem to know how good they have it as we have very large trailer and a lovely concrete ramp you just wheel and tip at back i really appriciate this muck heap after hours of chucking and flattening but others dont and just tip at front !!!

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[Deleted]

i love chucking up muck, keeps your feet warm in winter too

[owston]

Nov 25, 2012 22:45:25 GMT honeypot said:

What is so difficult about emptying a wheelbarrow and then chucking the contents up the heap and squareing it off?
I am not talking children here or a big yard, just a private stable. It drives me nuts.
Does no one teach this anymore? Its helps make a smaller heap that rots down quicker, its tidy and most of all it takes up far less space and you do not end up with the heap half way across the yard.

Quite agree honeypot. Come and have a look at ours in our field..... you would ;)be proud!! I tread it down every day too so it keeps the size down a bit and helps it to rot.....I was always taught, a tidy muck heap is a happy yard

[auntiebarb]

My friend has a livery yard with an amazing yard manager, her muck heap is so glorious, when I took a young friend there, she thought the muck heap was a thatched shed. The heap is combed every day after morning stables and looks wonderful. I think it is removed at the end of each winter.

[greasedweasel]

I think we need a best muckheap friendly contest, with photos!!

[NeverSayNever]

Dec 5, 2012 13:25:58 GMT greasedweasel said:

I think we need a best muckheap friendly contest, with photos!!

LOL

[Karen, garrettponies]

I'm a bit OCD when it comes to keeping the yard and muck tidy. I cant bear it just being dumped any old how. I invested in a really jiggered old tipping trailer for my muck so I can dump it in one of the fields to be spread. Even the muck on the trailer is tidy.

Asked my neighbour to tip it for me today as my little tractor would have a) skidded on the ice and then b) sunk in the mud. Bless him he took it and dumped it on his own muck heap!! Thats service ;D

[mollymalone]

Untidy muck heaps drive me mad!!
We make ours like explained further up in an oblong style. I find it easier and smaller without straw, and keep just one of mine on straw and the others on shavings, which make a nice muckheap.
During the week in the winter when its dark it can be hard to shovel manure and bedding tidily so I do a good tidy up at the weekend.
To get rid of it, we have some gardners and allottment owners coming in to take sacks away, some I sack up myself and leave outside for people to take, and then a farmer comes about once a year and takes away what he wants for free.
I think if you havent had to keep a muck heap tidy then you dont appreciate the time and effort it takes!

[jump4joy]

Absolutely agree with muck heap rules' but I was always taught, to look after the corners properly first and foremost and the rest would fall in to place, then make steps (I had a very high muck heep years ago) by throwing up ( not physically vomiting although after 'doing the muck heap you could feel like it through exhaustion ;-) ) so that people collecting manure could get to the 'rotten at the bottom' first. Nothing finer on a cold winter's morning doing the muck heep but it had to be done by 12am ( even with 26 in). I worked on a stud/come racing/showing/hunting/eventing etc. yard and the muck heep had to be done, squared, raked by 12am. No gym passed needed then, arms, legs, bum and tummy toned to perfection, courtesy of 'doing the muck heap'. There is an art to it and when you go on a yard and see the muck heap has been done properly, you know that the horses are done properly too!!

[catkin]

This is a very good point. In fact, one of my current aims is to teach my children how to stack our muck heap. Watch out, here I come!

[lips36]

This thread made me laugh:-))) our muck heap is all I can say unorganised terrible but what more can u expect from a DIY yard on a old farm with about 25 horses. Thank god the farmer take it away about every 2/3 weeks.

[halfpass]

I think a muck heap can tell you a lot about how a yard is run

[gallopingfairy]

Hehe just read all these posts and enjoyed every one of them. Luckily I have my horse at home. You would be mortified if you saw my muckheap, I just pile it all in my wood and burn it every few days or once a week. However I have seen people obsessed with the muck heap and what would be acceptable to reasonable people to this one individual it was never good enough. So then they would dump all their muck at the bottom so everyone else had to fork it up!! Who was the real problem here.........

[bomerang]

i`m feeling very smug and lucky! we have an old potato picker belt which we tip the manure onto and it takes it straight to the container which the farmer then takes for fertilizer, so simple and easy and after years and years of being at this yard i still love it and still see it as a luxury!!

[mara]

Nothing more satisfying than a properly stacked muckheap & properly banked beds.

Skills sadly dying out.

[christine1056]

Muck heap on our yard is the bane of my life...........the adults all can keep it tidy but the kids, OMG! Telling them to sort the muck heap is like plaiting straw, got so bad hte other week YO had them all lioned up and gave them a lesson on muck heap making and maintenance...........us lot all stood there with mugs of coffee laughing out socks off at their efforts, but they did it and whats more they have maintained it, give it another month and it will be back to creeping slowly across the yard.

Likewise bankings, oneof the kids was watching me do my horses bed the other day, asked why I was giving her bankings, told her that its something I have always done right from having my first pony when I was three years old...........was taught to do bankings and would never dream of laying bed without them, her reply 'oh I just scatter it all level, and leave it' apparently bankings are 'old fashioned and not needed'

[welshiegirl]

i agree... we have to have ours pushed back every week, yes its a big yard but people enjoy tipping it right at the front in a stupid place