Ammonia! Warning TMI

[Wolfiefan]

My sister has a lovely gelding BUT when she goes to do his stable she always comes back stinking! The person she lives with has had to ask her to keep her coat in the car. It's on her boots, hair etc. Not sure how that happens! Any cure for ammonia stench?!
Yes I know washing will help!

What mucking out regime does she have? Straw, shavings, rubber mats? It sounds like she needs to remove the wet and air the stable a little more often. Wee will often pool in the dust and debris under rubber mats and fester.

Straw on mats I think but he is a stinky so and so and the regime never seems to make all that much difference. He's out all day and when I visit in the evening he has a clean and dry bed but by the morning...

She may need to lift the mats and clean underneath more often. It's not something that most people do very often.
Alternatively her horse might just need a detox. Global herbs sell a liquid called Restore, that you give to them for a while and that gives their systems a clear out and a boost. We often give it to stinky widdlers. It's very good.

Staw is the least absorbent and will be adding to the problem. She might be better off trying wood pellets.

There are also a number of products that limit amonia, e.g.
Siroco www.amsanimalhealth.com/stallfresh.htm
or Biofresh www.hyperdrug.co.uk/Biofresh/productinfo/BIOFRESH/

I'd tell her t get rid of the rubber mats and change his bedding.

I hate rubber mats with a passion they are not necessary if you give them a thick enough bed. They are so unhygienic, just imagine how much wee gets trapped under there. Yuk!

As a pp says straw is just not absorbent and it stinks unless you take all the wet out every day.

My mare is on nedz beds. We love it, it's really absorbent and easy to deep litter, theres no dust, it's really soft and bouncy, it's easy to muck out and she only needs one bag every 10-12 days.

I come back from the stables covered in mud and looking like worzel gummage but only smelling of hay.

Rubber mats correctly installed should not trap urine underneath. You either install them in a stable with a slope to the outside (fairly rare to find such a stable though) or you seal the seams so urine does not go through.

Gosh, I muck out some proper smelly buggers, and only my boots ever smell of eau de horse piss. Why does your friend's coat smell of wee?

Also, if the gelding is so smelly that your friend is somehow absorbing the smell from the air in the stable, perhaps he has urinary/kidney problems?

If there's that much ammonia in the air I'd be worried about the horse breathing it in tbh. With a very smelly horse you need to muck out to the floor every day, take out all the wet then put down some disinfectant and leave the floor to dry naturally. In the evening pull the bed back down and add more bedding if necessary.
It might not be the stable that's making her clothes reek though, it could be when she changes the rugs if they are getting smelly when the horse lies down in a wet patch (jute rugs used to be notorious for this!). She might not notice the smell in the stable but I bet if she took one of the rugs into her house she soon would. Even turnout rugs pong if you take them home to mend.

I used to work at a high end livery yard where this used to happen. The stables were converted from a victorian cattle yard and had rubber matting in places, but not properly fitted. Id say its probably the mats TBH. They will need taking up and pressure washing washing underneath.
My beasts are deep littered on Hemcore, Its great and doesnt smell at all.