Floating Fecal "Fun"

This past week the girls got to learn a very important skill when you are a horse owner. It involved getting right down and "dirty"-more so than brushing, picking out feet, scrubbing water troughs or scooping poop(well sort of-it did involve poop). You may be to 'afraid' to continue and if you have a weak stomach you may want to stop now. This is going to get a bit green, squishy and the smell just brings it all together but I can't 'really' share that with you on the computer.
Okay, how about some history/reasons for going into this. When horses ingest sand and rocks it can cause some major irritation-duh. Being that it is somewhat 'heavy' it has a tendancy to settle in the lower loops of bowel and not move through really well acting like sandpaper to the interior lining of the intestines-ouch!!! One of the first symptoms that you'll see when a horse is dealing with "sand colic" is diahrrea. Well, one of our horses has just that plus she has been passing quite a bit of sand and rocks(yes, I go look at the poop). Good news is that you can help horses get rid of the irritation with psyllium, lots of grass hay, exercise, and make sure that they are not eating on the ground. However, I have come to find out, this process can take quite a while-I've been dealing with it in this particular horse off and on for almost a year.(a bit frustrating).
So, why did I warn you about the contents of this post?? In order to know if your horse is still passing sand or the amount they are passing you need to look closely at where it eventually ends up-the pile of manure. It needs to be 'floated'.

I will explain as we go along......

Gloves are VERY important-even if they are a bit big, still use them.

A gallon sized zip-lock bag is important too.

By now you are getting the idea..

Its important to make sure that you take 'handfuls' of manure from the top of the pile-you don't want anything that has touched the ground-it gives you a false "reading".

That's it-good handfuls.

Don't worry-there's plenty to go around.

So now we have a bag of manure-now what?

We fill it up with water and start 'squishing' it up.

"It feels funny in between my fingers"

I'm not sure, but the thought of throwing that at me probably crossed her mind.

She's starting to look a bit disgusted-the smell gets umm.....really potent at this point.

Yep, this stinks!!! and her fingers where getting cold.

Okay, why, why, why???? By floating the manure the sand/rocks and heavy stuff settles to the bottom of the bag. After lots of squishing you start dumping out the stuff on top, add more water, mix it up and then dump again. Eventually, you are left with a fairly good idea of how much sand is being passed. Every pile can be different on the amount so you need to check a few to get an average.

GOOD NEWS!!--there was very little sand and the girls survived. They don't seem to damaged from the fumes and the fact that they where "playing" with poop. I faired well too-its tough taking pictures when your laughing at all of the eewww, it stinks, gross, eewwwww and on an on.

Marisa is still acting like a monkey and Jessie was back in the house in a flash to go play nintendo. All in all, it was a good 'experience'. I think that it is important that kids learn responsibility-in all sorts of areas of life.