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