The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread
Casually looking through a Horse Magazine I came upon an advert on a Muck Vac Machine! My immediate curiosity took over and I began to read all about it.
By heck, this was indeed a horseman's dream machine! I contacted the company who sent me a list of existing customers to ring and hear their verdict of this brilliant invention.
Having four horses in a 5 acre paddock produces a lot of muck day and night. Bending over and gathering the inevitable, chucking it into a wheelbarrow and carting it to the muck-heap is in anybody's best interest but is not a barrel of fun and to make matters worse, it KILLS your back eventually.
I was keen to see this machine in action and visited a customer. On site was The Cub (a machine for up to 9 horses) hitched onto a quad bike. I use a 20 hp sit-on-mower since I needed more for my monies spent than a bike alone. I helped sucking up some muck in their field and found it thrilling that so much of the stuff was sucked up with a big hose. All of it disappeared into a hopper behind me and no morsel was left in the paddock as is often the case when you 'hand-pick' this stuff!
We all know that leaving horse muck in fields increases the worming population since horses pick up these little wrigglers when grazing. They pass through the intestine of those poor horses coming out the other end smiling and happy! I used to keep cows for the reason of keeping the worm population down since worms die in the intestine of cows but NOT in horses. Eventually your field would go 'horse-sick'! Spreading the stuff is no good either, the problem remains the same and worms live 48 hrs anyhow! So, yes, you get my drift, this was a God Sent machine.
Best of all was yet to come. Finishing with the vacuuming, we opened the hopper's door near a muck heap where the days 'takings' fell out in a big heap. Another hose was attached to the inside of the hopper and laid on the floor in front of the muck-heap. The father of the young girl whose machine it was and whose little 2 year old daughter sat behind the little muck-heap on a fence watching turned The Cub on. He began to vacuum up the dropped muck and blow me, YES, he spewed it out through the newly attached hose but with such force that the little 2 yr old was covered from head to foot in all this green sh...., arrrrrrgh. She screamed blue murder, obviously! Anyhow, her mother rescued her and wiped her free as best as she could of this horrible stuff and her father continued showing me how well this machine spews out the muck to wherever you want it to go e.g. neighbours garden compost heap, your own muck heap... wherever, Your Choice!
The muck comes out like flour and is wonderful to work with in your garden.
I bought such a machine as previously mentioned and love using it and clearing up after 4 horse's day and night droppings takes me 40 mins. in all i.e. from getting the machines out, hitching them up and putting them away again. It is a doddle, believe you me. You sit on your mower and vac with one hand all around your paddock until you picked up all and then you deposit it by spewing it out the other end!
This web-site will give you some idea/pics to see this fabulous machine: www.muckvacandblow.co.uk
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