keeping stalls dry

Hey everyone,

I'm new here. I am wondering what everyone does to keep stalls dry. I've tried that Sweet PDZ stuff and I am going to try lime. What are the risks of using lime? And does anyone else have any ideas? How often do you all change bedding in your stalls?
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If your cleaning the stall daily and getting all the urine out you shouldn't really need to do anything else....???

Do you bed over dirt or do they have matts?

What type of wetness are you having a problem with? Urine or ground water?


I clean my stalls at least once per day (horses are not closed in them). I remove all the clumped wet spot and do sometimes use PDZ or Stall Dry.

If the stall floors are dirt its almost impossible too keep them dry.I had dirt floors in my stalls and my barn was always wet and stunk like pee. We hauled in a dump truck load of sand filled all the stalls then put down rubber mats. The stalls are easy too keep dry and no more stink and I save on the bedding don't need near as much on mats.

Yup, need to clean out urine spots daily. For a horse that's stalled half the day, I strip and rebed every week. I use lime on the dirt floor for horses who mark the same spot everytime. As long as you cover it with shavings and don't use a ton, there is no real risk to the horse.

The best way to keep the barn from getting wet is to turn the horses out . I only bring mine in to eat, then they go right back out. It makes stall cleaning much easier and the horses are a lot happier. I will stall board a horse if a client requests it, but I charge more, a LOT more, lol. Even in bad weather I leave the horses out. They have shelters, good cedar trees, and waterprood turnout blankets, plus plenty of hay to keep their bellies warm. They're much happier outside.

Doesn't matter what I do by the end of the night (on those nights I put my horses in) I have to trash almost all shavings from my qh stall. After that I let the mats dry for several hours before putting new shavings in. You gotta remove the urine spots - you can't just "dry" them.

I know some horses spill there water and that ruins the whole stall of shavings and its sucks when you have to strip all those shavings. Where I work some stalls have two buckets only filled half way so they don't spill there water as much. Its pretty cool. We also use a broom to really get to the wet spot up so you don't mix the clean stuff in the wet spot.

Hi all. We just leased a horse property for our two semi-retired showjumpers.

The "barn" is a run-in shed with 4 stalls. The covered part of the stall is 12' and then they have another 15' of uncovered area.
The horses are in at night for feeding and bed time and are let out in the morning after they eat. The stalls are closed during the day so they will use the 4 acre pasture.

My problem - The floor is packed dirt. The mare urinates huge amounts at night and her run reeks of ammonia. We use PDZ for the smell. But can't dry the wet spots. A soggy mixture of urine, poop, hay, and dirt. I try to shovel it all up but that seems impossible.

We've tried putting cat litter there (supposed to be absorbent) or adding sand to the spot. Nothing works.

Help Help Help. I HATE cleaning her stall.

What about a ground water problem?? My stall always gets a huge puddle under the shavings when it rains... to the point where my horse could step in it and her fetlock would be drenched.


What could help that?

Oh boy guys, I'm right here with you on the flooded stalls :(

My farm is located directly beside a rather large creek... and when it rains here, it pours... if we get anything more than an inch of rain, my four back stalls are full of water, and our pastures turn into lakes... here's a few photos of the pastures from the last big rain...



In case you are wondering, the creek is right behind the far fence... in front of that white house in the photo below.






Luckily our barn is located out of the flood zone, but the back four stalls are underground, making flooding a typical sight during rainy days... We usually add sawdust to help suck up the water, then dig it all out and douse the stall with Sweet PDZ. That usually works for us, but its no permanent fix.