Horse Chores Burn Calories but You Still Need to Watch Your Diet
I always think I’m not very fit and don’t exercise enough. I try to squeeze more exercise into my day, but I’m basically lazy. I like walking, at a slow casual speed (much like my Fjord horse), or quiet trail riding. I enjoy caring for my horse though, and a lot of the hobby-farm work counts as exercise—like manure shoveling.
A horse produces about 50 pounds of manure a day, or seven to nine tons of manure per year. I shovel manure most days. My horses live in paddocks or sacrifice areas most of the time. My chunky-monkey horses only graze for an hour or two a day in the pasture. I don’t shovel the manure out of the large pasture, so, if we assume I clean up only two thirds of the manure production from two horses times eight tons (as I reach for the calculator…) the work output results in about 10.6 tons of manure shoveled per year. That’s a lot of weight-bearing and calorie-consuming activity for my late-life body!
One warm summer day I determined that I should calculate the calories burned from manure shoveling and then treat myself to ice cream, simply because I’d been craving ice cream. I found a website with a blog by Claire Dyett where she determined 10 minutes of stall mucking burned 76 calories, 30 minutes was 228, and hard mucking for an hour was 460 calories. Then I needed to figure out how many calories were in a hot-fudge sundae. A quick Google search showed a two-scoop sundae at Baskin Robins equals 530 calories. Hmm. The math wasn’t telling me what I wanted to hear. I would need to add some effort to my typical half-hour shoveling scenario (228 calories) to earn that delicious treat.
The same article explained that a slow trail ride burns 100 calories an hour, a fast-galloping ride is 240 calories per hour, and an energetic schooling session in the arena could burn 360 calories. Neither I nor my horse are overly energetic, so I calculated the slow trail ride rate. A 2-hour ride (200 calories) plus a half hour manure mucking session gives me 428 calories. Hmm. I looked for some other sources to see if I could find better numbers to support my goal to earn that ice cream sundae and found similar calorie counts for horse activities. By the time I haul my horse to the trailhead, saddle, ride, and return home, plus some manure shoveling, we’re getting into some pretty substantial time invested and I still haven’t quite earned my hot-fudge sundae.
Okay, what if I added a walk? One source says I can burn 100 to 200 calories with 30 minutes of brisk walking. Now we’re talking. So, I would need to do a slow 2-hour trail ride, a half hour of shoveling manure, and a half hour brisk walk (100 calories) for 528 total calories burned to mostly cancel out my 530-calorie treat. Of course, my walks often start out brisk and get slower as I go. And if I am dragging one of my mellow Fjord horses along with me, we are definitely not brisk. By the time I do all those activities, I won’t have time or energy to drive to the store for ice cream and chocolate sauce. I wonder if the whipped cream and cherry-on-top were included in the calorie count.
So, unfortunately, my newfound health plan of shoveling for exercise with a hot fudge sundae reward isn’t quite penciling out. It makes me tired just thinking about it. Instead of increasing the exercise time and effort, perhaps I need to decrease my caloric reward instead. Now I wonder how many calories are in a glass of wine. Red wine = 125 calories. Okay, the math works on that one! Excuse me while I dump a wheelbarrow load of manure and go find a corkscrew.
See this article in the May 2024 online edition:
May 2024
Michelle Eames’ first book, Riding Lessons: Things I Learned While Horsing Around, is a mostly humorous memoir that tells the story of Michelle’s journey with horses, and the numerous lessons the horses taught her. She describes her horsemanship adventures, mistakes, and mishaps with humor, humility, and even a bit of poetry.
Michelle lives on a hobby farm near Spokane, Washington. The farm includes two horses, two barn cats who want to be house cats, a few chickens, and a husband. When she isn’t writing, riding, or shoveling manure, Michelle spends her time gardening and repairing vintage sewing machines to keep them out of landfills.
Michelle writes about a broad range of topics, from biology to horsemanship to wildfires. Visit her blog and learn more about her writing at MichelleEames.com.
