Picking Up the Poop

Well, Yonkers seems gloriously healthy again. Which also means that Yonkers is back to her ornery self. Now, any time we come near the fence, she charges at us and bats little Yeti and Yazoo out of the way with her horns.

Just when we were getting friendly with Yazoo, too.

It also didn't help when Zen got loose the other day and I ran screaming into the corral to make sure they didn't attack him. Brat!

So they're not too thrilled with me at the moment, and picking up the poop becomes more challenging. Until I get back in their good graces, I'm waiting till they wander out into their pasture and then muck out the corral.

Somebody has to do this job, so it may as well be me. After all, I'm sure standing in pure manure could harm their hooves.

Fortunately the job itself isn't too bad. Unlike human and predator poop, yak poop doesn't smell that bad to me. I guess I associate the smell with my fond memories of my pony and my aunt's horses and cows. On the annoying side, life might be easier if I had one of these:

instead of one of these:

The annoying thing with the shovel is that I end up picking up large amounts of dirt or hay along with the manure. That won't hurt my compost pile, but it does mean I fill buckets faster. Is there a correct method for mucking up a corral or stall? Advice in making this job easy would be appreciated, since my girls poop a lot!

For those of you who need to know, yak manure is much like cow manure. It comes out either in little round pellets (I'm thinking this might be baby Yeti) or bigger stuck-together piles. I prefer the piles, since they're much easier to get onto the shovel.

My garden will be happy come spring. Quantum's also working out an idea for an incinerator to burn yak and maybe even human, dog and cat manure and heat the house with it. Note that this furnace will be outdoors, with a pipe of non-poop smelling air coming in. Anything that makes this trailer warm will make me a happy camper!