Tillsyn av mindre hästgårdar i Sjöbo kommun

Sammanfattning: Sjöbo municipality in the southern parts of Sweden is well suited for keeping horses since the sandy soil and, for the region, cheap land makes it possible to provide good grassing for horses all year around. In this project nutrient leakage from horse farms was investigated by conducting inspection. The inspections focused on the small horse farms with three up to ten animal units and less than ten hectares of land. The project aimed to inform the horse owners about the regulations affecting them. The reason for the limitations in animal units is due to changes in the regulations if you have more or less animal units. The results from 33 inspections were compiled regarding to their environmental impact, such as: storage of manure, waste treatment routines and chemical storage. The results showed that the most common way to store manure is on a concrete foundation. Most of the horse farms lease machines and workers to take care of their farmland. The most common defect was the lack of a documented calculation for the storage space needed for the manure over the winter. Although, in all cases except one the storage space still had the correct volume. The most serious defect was that seven farms stored the manure directly on the ground. This can lead to nutrient leakage to the surrounding with impacts of the ecosystem as a result. The results indicated the import of conducting inspections on the smaller horse farms since the lack of knowledge on correct storage of manure and defects found during this project indicates that this is a problem. Once the farm been inspected and defects are corrected and new routines are implemented. The inspection intervals, which is four years, are enough. The focus should be to inspect farms that never before had an inspection.