Instead of cruising along on autopilot, take a minute to walk through your barn chores and see them with fresh eyes. You’ll find ways to save money—as well as time!—with a few simple one-time tweaks to your current system.

Below are our top gizmos that will save you big over the long run.

15 Equestrian Hacks Amid Inflation

1. Cushion From the Cold

Make winter watering easier with insulated buckets and tanks. While tank and bucket heaters are nice, a single tank heater can increase your electricity bill by $30 a month!

For those of us living in northern states, insulated bucket holders, either purchased or homemade, make barn life easier. A little bit of insulation means no more swinging a rubber mallet at the side of the bucket to break up the ice every day.

Large, outdoor tanks can be set inside a heavily insulated box with a piece of floating hard insulation on the water surface. My 100-gallon tank in Maine stays amazingly ice-free most days in the winter. There are no extra electricity expenses (perfect for dealing with inflation!) and no extension cords crisscrossing the farm.

2. Magnetic Tool Strip

A hammer, leather punch, screwdriver, or knife: How many times do you find yourself needing to quickly grab a tool but end up digging around for long stretches to find one? You may have even given up and thrown money away on a replacement simply because you couldn’t find it when you needed it.

For less than $25, you can purchase a three-pack of heavy-duty magnetic strips. Designed to hold heavy metal objects, they can be mounted on the walls in the tack room or feed room to keep the tools you use most at hand.

3. Invest and Save

My best tool investment was a portable air compressor; small ones start at $100. Air compressors are worth their weight in gold, especially if you add up all the tires at your farm. Tallying up my truck, horse trailer, hay trailer, lawn mower, tractor, utility trailer and wheelbarrows, I have 26 tires on the farm, and at least one of them always needs air.

4. Cord Control

Keep your barn aisle neat with a wall-mounted extension cord reel. These cord reels keep power at the ready, yet neatly put away when not in use. This way, you don’t need to go looking through the tack room for the last place you saw an extension cord or deal with tangled, twisted cords, and you won’t have dangerous tripping hazards in the barn aisle.

5. Collect Rainwater

Here in the U.S., we have some regions that are desperate for rain, while others are wishing it would stop. Whatever the situation, we rarely take advantage of harnessing this natural resource.

Rainwater can easily fill your troughs, and you don’t need a fancy system. If you have buildings with metal roofs, just add a gutter and downspout directed to the water tank.

Numerous websites can help you calculate how much water can be collected based on the size of your roof and the amount of rainfall you receive. For example, my small run-in shed has a 24-square-foot by 16-square-foot roof. That’s 55,296 square inches. Multiply this by a 1-inch rainfall, and I can collect 55,296 cubic inches of water. Divide that by 231 (the number of cubic inches in a gallon), and the result is 239 gallons of water—not bad for a small run-in shed! This is actually more water than my trough can hold.

If you have horses in remote pastures with run-in sheds, you can add a storage tank to collect the water and a float valve to let it automatically fill the tank when the level drops.

Think about the time you save not having to lug water or drag out hoses as often, not to mention savings on your water bill. You can find plans online for building a simple rain barrel or a more complicated rainwater-catchment system.

6. In Hot Water

For less than $250, you can have hot water on demand in a system that is so portable, you can even take it to shows or to trail rides.

These portable systems can easily save you money over a permanent fixture (which runs at least $600-$1,000) if you’re not using it every day.

7. Clean Up Your Act

Washers and dryers at the barn are luxury items, but it sure is nice to not have to drag hairy blankets and sopping-wet towels into the house or off to the laundromat.

Thankfully, you don’t have to buy new, expensive machines to wash smelly blankets. My appliance repairman advised me to shop for used washers circa early 2000s; he said they last forever and repairs are inexpensive. Perfect for dealing with saddle pads and blankets! Check online classifieds like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace for used washers and dryers near you.

8. Take Note

For less than $10, you can turn any wall in your barn into a chalkboard. With some chalkboard paint and a few strokes of a paintbrush, you can create a fun board for writing notes, phone numbers and feeding schedules.

Compared to the cost and hassle of buying and mounting a dry-erase white board with markers that can dry up or permanently stick to the board, this old-school system won’t let you down.

9. Simplify Cross-tying

Get your cross-ties out of the aisles and put them in your stalls. Many barns now have cross-tie hardware in the stalls, or they designate the wash stall as a grooming area.

By eliminating cross-ties in the main barn aisle, there is less debris that needs to be continually swept up, and you’ll have more room for others to navigate around the barn when bringing horses in or out. You also don’t have horses in the way when doing routine barn chores like mucking or feeding.

10. Reinventing the Wheelbarrow

When it comes to wheelbarrows, the design hasn’t changed in the past 100 years. You have your basic choices of a single- or dual-wheeled (I prefer the single because it turns corners easier), and plastic versus metal tray.

Until recently, you could only find basic wood stump handles that seem to be designed for ridiculously large hands. Finally, someone realized actual handles would go a long way toward making the wheelbarrow better. Even when fully loaded, this type doesn’t feel like a runaway train when going downhill because I can keep a firm grip on the handles.

11. Bright Ideas

If you’re guilty of leaving on lights after you’ve left the bathroom, tack room or feed room, install motion sensors and watch your electricity bill go down. This, combined with energy-efficient LED lights, is a money and aggravation saver. Exterior lighting on motion sensors also saves money. You may hear that motion sensors are unreliable, but if they are set up correctly, they work great. I’ve used them on my farm for more than 25 years.

No power in an outbuilding? A battery- or solar-operated motion-sensor LED light is the answer. The one in my hay barn has been operating on the same set of batteries for seven years.

12. Shelve It

Roll those grain bins out of the way. Shop for used kitchen cabinets with slide-out bases, or just add a countertop and mount your grain bins on barrel dollies, then roll them under the counter. You’ll wonder what you did without this additional work and storage space until now.

Metal trash cans are 100 percent rodent-proof, and being able to move them around allows you to keep the floors swept clean.

13. Open-Door Policy

Another old-school idea is to put solid board rails in doorways when barn doors are open. Fit the boards into slots so they can be dropped down easily for people, yet keep a loose horse from leaving the barn.

Good ventilation is key to your horses’ health, and these board rails will allow you to leave the doors open, even if you own an escape artist.

14. Save on Salt

Instead of buying small salt bricks or spools, buy a 50-pound block and place it in a corner of the stall. It will keep your horse happy and provide a source of salt for more than a year.

On a pound-per-pound basis, you will save $40 or more a year. As a side benefit, many horses that chew up the smaller bricks will just lick the larger block.

15. Nothing But Net

For years, I fed hay outside on the ground, but when horses had their fill, they wasted the remaining hay and trampled it into the dirt. (With today’s inflation-induced hay prices, this could easily add up to hundreds of dollars wasted per year.) Hanging hay nets reduces hay waste, but wrestling the hay into the nets each day is time consuming.

At a dressage farm that I visited, I noticed they had hay-net hoops. This was the best of both worlds—no more hay waste and no hassle putting the hay in the net.

Become an idea shopper! Hundreds of ideas like this abound at stables that you visit. Keep your eyes peeled and look for them. By sharing ideas and looking at the ways that other equestrians are doing things, we can all benefit—especially amid inflation.

Also Read: Beat Inflation at Horse Shows

This article about hacks for equestrians amid inflation appeared in the January/February 2023 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

The post Dealing with Inflation as an Equestrian appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.

Outdoor Shade Structure

Cost: $110 – $135 per structure

Need:
◆ Shade tarp
◆ Four 10-foot-long 4″x4″ pressure-treated posts
◆ Four bags of quick concrete
◆ Concrete-mixing receptacle like a wheelbarrow
◆ Posthole digger or posthole-digging shovel
◆ Heavy-duty zip ties

Providing shade to animals during the sunny summer months is important, and if trees and run-in sheds aren’t available, building a very simple shade structure is another option. Luckily, it doesn’t have to break the bank.

Harbor Freight sells mesh tarps ranging in size from 8’x10′ to 12’x 20′. These tarps have a close-knit weave that blocks approximately 60 percent of light, and can be doubled up if needed. The tarps cost $33 to $55.

Purchase four pressure-treated wood 4″x4″ posts with a minimum height of 10 feet from a hardware store, and dig four 2-foot-deep post holes in the appropriate configuration for the tarp. These posts cost approximately $17 each.

Drill ½-inch holes through the beams within 4 inches of the top for fastening the tarps with heavy-duty zip ties.

Mix quick concrete to slightly drier than package instructions, and cement the posts into the holes, checking for plum lines and even spacing.

Allow the concrete to set for 24 hours before using a ladder to secure the mesh tarp to the tops of the posts with heavy-duty zip ties. Be sure to watch the shade structure for any wear and tear, including holes in the tarp or failing zip ties.

Five-Gallon Bucket Safety

Cost: $5

Need:
◆ Electrical tape

Five-gallon buckets are used for all sorts of things around the barn, including storage, step-stools and their intended purpose—watering horses. Their universal nature is appreciated, but when used as water or feed buckets, the small hooks attaching the handle to the bucket can pose a hazard to a horse.

Itchy horses can rub their faces on the small hooks and damage a nostril, eyelid or catch long hair in the tight space. To remedy this, buy some electrical tape from a local hardware store and wrap the electrical tape tightly around each of the two hooks on a five-gallon bucket. The tape will make the hook less accessible, and the stretchy nature of electrical tape means it will grip more tightly as it is applied.

As a safety bonus, make sure all double-ended snaps are facing toward the wall when the bucket is hung. This means there is less opportunity for scratching horses to snag anything on the clip.

Safer Grain Storage

Cost: $50-100

Need:
◆ Deep freezer or heavy-duty bin
◆ Clear tape to hang feed tags

Storing grain in a consistent environment can be difficult, especially if the feed room is more rustic. No matter the location, keeping pests and mold out of the grain bin is critical for your horse’s health.

A classic grain storage hack for your barn is using an unplugged deep freezer to store the feed. Freezers are insulated, durable and seal to keep animals out. Plus, they don’t have to freeze things to keep grain safe. They’re frequently available on local sites such as Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist for less than $100. Any other type of other tight-sealing, heavy-duty storage boxes that you already own or can find for second-hand purchase will work, too.

As a bonus hack for your barn, save all feed tags and tape them to the grain bin for reference while feeding that bag. The white tags located on the bottom of grain bags list the lot number of grain and sometimes “best by” dates.

Should something go wrong with the grain, knowing which lot the grain came from is vital for feed companies.

Metered Fly Spray

Cost: $25 each

Need:
◆ Automatic bathroom scent sprayer
◆ Batteries
◆ Canister of metered fly spray

Flies are a constant hassle of horse ownership, and controlling them can feel like a never-ending task. Employing fly boots and misting horses daily with the bottle is nice, but automatic fly-spray systems in barns take fly control to the next level.

Although metered fly-spray devices are available at feed stores for around $50 each, you can save by making them from battery-powered bathroom scent sprayers. You’ll need to make sure the device matches with the brand of metered fly spray you purchase. With some leg work, an automatic and adjustable fly spray system perfect for your barn and run-in sheds is within reach.

Muddy Spot Remedy

Cost: $0-50

Need:
◆ Shovel
◆ Organic material to fill

A muddy spot at a gate or barn door is not only irritating; it can also pose a danger to horses. Mud can be slippery and promote thrush-causing bacteria growth. Try this hack for a muddy barn area.

The first step to helping a muddy spot is to see if a small ditch can be dug to direct any pooling water away from the area. The width and depth of the ditch will vary with the size of the issue, but should measure at least 6 inches wide and several inches deep. Using some elbow grease and a digging shovel, dig a channel away from the muddy spot.

If digging an escape route for water isn’t possible, adding product to a muddy spot can help too. Some of the common options are woodchips, gravel and sand. Local tree-care businesses often have woodchips from jobs for free, as long as you pick them up yourself.

Gravel and sand are also widely available at local landscaping shops. Or buy by the yard, and not by the bag, at a hardware store.

Whatever material used, add to the problem area when it is dry and get a nice, sloped base draining toward the lowest point. When it becomes muddy, add material as needed until the mud is subdued. Eventually, the place will be built up with fill material and less water will be able to pool there.

DIY Corner Feeder

Cost: $30 each

Need:
◆ One 55-gallon plastic barrel
◆ Drill with ¼-inch drill bit
◆ Jigsaw
◆ Coarse sandpaper
◆ Cleaning supplies
◆ Heavy-duty zip ties
◆ Wall eyelets

Feeding horses with their heads in a downward position is the most natural and has been proven to put less strain on their bodies. There are several large, plastic corner feeders on the market, but they start at $100 and climb in price from there.

Make a budget-friendly corner feeder for grain and hay using a 55-gallon plastic barrel. These can be purchased second-hand on Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist or from local businesses (make sure they only ever held food-grade materials) for approximately $20 each.

Once the barrel is home, measure and mark where it will be cut. Cutting one in half will yield two corner feeders, although the top portion will not be as suitable for feeding grain due to the grooves from the lid.

After measuring, drill a hole into the line of division and use a jigsaw to cut around the barrel as it lays on its side. Jigsaws can be purchased for about $30 or rented for about $15.

Once cut, thoroughly wash the barrel with hot water, dish soap and diluted bleach. Sand the rough plastic edge with a coarse sandpaper. Drill at least two small holes in the barrel near the top to secure it to the wall.

Using eyelets screwed into the wall, secure the feeder to the corner with heavy-duty zip ties and trim them short.

Making life easier around the barn is a constant journey, but one horses deserve and owners will be thankful for. These hacks should improve life around the barn for your horse, so give them a try.

This article about DIY barn hacks appeared in the September 2022 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

The post DIY Barn Hacks appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.