Readers Share Recycling Ideas to Cut Costs Around the Barn

Horse owners share their tips for reusing select items to save money around the barn.
Share
Favorite
Close

No account yet? Register

ADVERTISEMENT

Horse owners across the country share their tips, suggestions, and ideas for items that can be reused and recycled around a horse property to help save money. Remember, even though saving a few dollars is a nice treat, it’s crucial to ensure your horse’s health, welfare, and safety needs are adequately met and not hindered by penny pinching.

The frugal horseman’s mats
I’d love to have more conveyor belting. Used conveyor belting is either free or cheap and makes great mats for barn isle ways, wash racks, outside stall doors. You can get them from rock quarry companies, landscaping materials supply companies–anyplace with a conveyor belt.–Karina Heiting-Sogge, Maple Valley, Wash.

Arena drag
If you go to the gravel yard looking for used belting, see if they also have old, worn-out screens used for filtering gravel sizes. Sometimes these make nice arena drags or harrows. Ask the pit operator if they give away or sell those and be prepared to dig around in piles of scrap metal it find them; bring heavy gloves and wear sturdy shoes. Good luck and happy hunting!–Elizabeth Clark, Enumclaw, Wash.

Scrap wood for projects
My husband just remodeled an office building and we’ve found lots of uses for old wood pieces. For one thing, we built the sides of our compost bins. Even though it isn’t pressure treated, if it rots in a few years who cares? They’re free and replacing them will be easy. We also built a stall door for our pony from the scrap wood. We had some old hinges and all we had to purchase was a door latch. Now the little shorty can see out of his stall at night, and for only about $4.–Angie Nebeker, Snohomish County, Wash

Create a free account with TheHorse.com to view this content.

TheHorse.com is home to thousands of free articles about horse health care. In order to access some of our exclusive free content, you must be signed into TheHorse.com.

Start your free account today!

Already have an account?
and continue reading.

Share

Written by:

Alayne Blickle, a lifelong equestrian and ranch riding competitor, is the creator/director of Horses for Clean Water, an award-winning, internationally acclaimed environmental education program for horse owners. Well-known for her enthusiastic, down-to-earth approach, Blickle is an educator and photojournalist who has worked with horse and livestock owners since 1990 teaching manure composting, pasture management, mud and dust control, water conservation, chemical use reduction, firewise, and wildlife enhancement. She teaches and travels North America and writes for horse publications. Blickle and her husband raise and train their mustangs and quarter horses at their eco-sensitive guest ranch, Sweet Pepper Ranch, in sunny Nampa, Idaho.

Related Articles

Stay on top of the most recent Horse Health news with

FREE weekly newsletters from TheHorse.com

Sponsored Content

Weekly Poll

sponsored by:

How much time do you usually spend grooming your horse?
437 votes · 437 answers

Readers’ Most Popular

Sign In

Don’t have an account? Register for a FREE account here.

Need to update your account?

You need to be logged in to fill out this form

Create a free account with TheHorse.com!