Product Review: Equi-Tee Mfg Shake’n Fork

Welcome to EN’s Product Review series! Who doesn’t love shopping, especially when the object of your search is new gear for yourself or your horse? As an enthusiast of all products equine, I LOVE trying out new gear. Please join me as I narrate my personal journey of trying out all of the products featured. While I will make no recommendations, I hope you have fun reading about my many adventures of trying new products, and that hearing about my personal experiences helps you on your own quest for new gear. Go Shopping.

It was pretty cool to be able to scoop up a basket of waste from the stall floor and with the pull of a trigger, watch the fresh bedding fall through the tines like fluffy snow. Photo by Lorraine Peachey It was pretty cool to be able to scoop up a basket of waste from the stall floor and with the pull of a trigger, watch the fresh bedding fall through the tines like fluffy snow. Photo by Lorraine Peachey

With as many things as I have to do each and every day, I like to try to make life as simple as possible. And that means making tasks on my to-do list a little easier where possible. Which does not mean that I try cutting corners. On the contrary. I like to get everything accomplished that I set out to do each day. I just like to remove unnecessary steps that just seem to take up more time and make my life a little harder.

While I don’t always advocate the easy path as being the best one to follow, it is nice when the opportunity does arise to simplify a task. And when I say simplify, I’m looking to make a task faster, or just easier for me to do. It could be by doing something as simple as deciding to go out for lunch on certain days every day, so that I can forgo packing one in the morning.

Or maybe my great time saver is that I tend to wear boots all winter long, which keeps me from having to find two matching socks in the morning. Which also means that I don’t have to pair them in the first place, and instead just dump them out of the laundry basket and straight into their drawer. Because we all know about those gnomes that live in the dryer that steal socks, leaving only the mismatched ones.

Label on the Shake'n Fork from Equi-Tee Mfg - Photo by Lorraine Peachey

Label on the Shake’n Fork from Equi-Tee Mfg. Photo by Lorraine Peachey

Ok, so that might be a slightly silly example but you get the general idea. I try to apply the same logic in all areas of my life but especially with barn work. My personal mantra is to ‘work smarter, not harder.’ Sure, it’s a bit cliché…but some barn chores can be particularly physical. And while I’m sure that there will be wear and tear over the years as a result of this type of work, I’d rather try to minimize the impact.

In my opinion, it just makes logical sense to take a few minutes to hook up a hose to draw fresh buckets of water rather then carry 30 gallons or so of water in buckets. Just like it also would be infinitely preferable to take the time to load up my pickup with two weeks of hay to move down to the feed room on the end of my shed row rather then having to move a few bales every other day with a hand cart.

Mucking is an activity that can take a lot of time. Especially this time of the year, the weather can be pretty crummy, and I’m one of those slightly obsessive ‘horse moms.’ Meaning if the winter paddock is too icy, my horses do not get turned out. Or if it is too much of a sloppy muddy mess, they stay in their stalls. Safety is my number one priority, so I will gladly clean stalls and hand walk the boys.

The Shake'n Fork is basically a motorized version of the Flex'n Fork - it contains the same strong basket with built in tine flexibility - Photo by Lorraine Peachey

The Shake’n Fork is basically a motorized version of the Flex’n Fork; it contains the same strong basket with built in tine flexibility. Photo by Lorraine Peachey

But that doesn’t mean that I don’t get tired of cleaning up the stalls. It is something that takes time to get done correctly…especially on days when Ripley is in a ‘stall trashing’ mood. Or Mark just wants to have a ‘hay party.’ Yeah. And being someone who is as particular as I am, I certainly want to take the time to remove the waste completely, rake and fluff the pine pelleted bedding and add more if needed.

Something that I’ve always heard a lot about is the Shake’n Fork from Equi-Tee Mfg, and I while I felt like the concept was a super cool idea, I was interested to see just how much of a difference using one for mucking could actually make. And what better time of year to try it out then when I’m cleaning three stalls twice a day?

I need all of the help that I can get when I’m trying to get through my barn chores quickly and efficiently each morning…cue the Shake’n Fork. You might remember a while back reading all about my experience of trying out the Flex’n Fork and how much I enjoyed using the manure fork due to it’s flexible tines. Well, think of the Shake’n Fork as the Flex’n Fork’s even more efficient cousin.

To prepare the Shake'n Fork for use, you must first unlock the trigger mechanism. This is super easy, and only requires inserting the end of a paper clip into a pin hole on the side of the handle...which was even included in the box! - Photo by Lorraine Peachey

To prepare the Shake’n Fork for use, you must first unlock the trigger mechanism. This is super easy and only requires inserting the end of a paper clip into a pin hole on the side of the handle…which was even included in the box! Photo by Lorraine Peachey

The Shake’n Fork is basically a motorized version of the Flex’n Fork; it contains the same strong basket with built in tine flexibility. However, the inclusion of a lithium ion battery pack and trigger mechanism allows the user of the Shake’n Fork to automatically shift the clean bedding out from the stall waste. Which saves both time and bedding (and less wasted bedding means less wasted money!).

As with the Flex’n Fork, the Shake’n Fork basket is available in either 5/8″ spacing for the tines, or 5/16″ spacing. The trigger also has a variable speed to it, which means that it only runs as hard as necessary to shift the bedding out of the waste so that the manure doesn’t get shaken to bits and fall back to the stall floor. It also features an angled handle, which is so much nicer for my wrists during use.

When the Shake’n Fork arrived, I was definitely excited. I found that after assembly, there is one more step that you must take in order to make the Shake’n Fork operational, and that is that you must unlock the trigger mechanism. This is super easy and only requires inserting the end of a paper clip into a pin hole on the side of the handle…and guess what? A paper clip was even included in the box, so I had just what I needed already to get up and running!

The battery seems to last a good long time...and when I need to, I bring it in, plug in the charger into the port at the end of the handle, and let the battery replenish - Photo by Lorraine Peachey

The battery seems to last a good long time…and when I need to, I bring it in, plug the charger into the port at the end of the handle and let the battery replenish. Photo by Lorraine Peachey

The first time that I scooped up a full basket with the Shake’n Fork, I was vastly entertained. Seriously. It was pretty cool to be able to scoop up a basket of waste from the stall floor and with the pull of a trigger watch the fresh bedding fall through the tines like fluffy snow. The 5/8″ spaced basket is absolutely wonderful to use with my pine pelleted bedding, as the pellets are nicely shifted out of the bedding.

What was really interesting was the learning curve that I went through when I first started using the Shake’n Fork. I’ve conditioned myself over time to manually shake and sift bedding out while mucking. So I’d scoop and automatically bounce the basket as I pulled it back. I don’t think I ever really realized that I did this before, but it became obviously that I did it with Every. Single. Scoop.

Because the Shake’n Fork is auto-shifting with the use of it’s super handy trigger mechanism, I had to break the habit. After all, work smarter, not harder…remember? Why bounce the contents of the basket all around when I don’t really need to? It’s simply a waste of time and energy. Not to mention the fact that I can never shift out all of the bedding pellets manually!

The inclusion of a lithium ion battery pack and trigger mechanism allow the user of the Shake'n Fork to automatically shift the clean bedding out from the stall waste - Photo by Lorraine Peachey

The inclusion of a lithium ion battery pack and trigger mechanism allow the user of the Shake’n Fork to automatically shift the clean bedding out from the stall waste. Photo by Lorraine Peachey

I find that using the Shake’n Fork helps immensely, especially when I’m on the second round of stall cleaning during a day. It saves time, most certainly, but it also saves me effort and makes stall cleaning easier on me while helping to preserve my energy for water bucket carrying (it’s winter…the hose freezes). The battery seems to last a good long time…and when I need to, I bring it in, plug the charger into the port at the end of the handle and let the battery replenish.

Something else to note: we’ve had a pretty chilly winter here in southeastern PA. Not anything close to some other parts of the country, but we have had temperatures consistently in the teens and twenties that occasionally have been dipping down into the single digits for a day now and then. Even on those single digit days, I left the Shake’n Fork in my unheated feed room of my shed row and did not notice any impact on the battery.

The moral of the story is the Shake’n Fork does have a learning curve – I know, you actually have to learn how to put less effort into mucking! I feel like it is a manure fork that definitely saves me time, by helping me get my barn work done faster, and effort, so that I’m not overworking myself. And also money, because I’m not wasting quite as much bedding. Which are all wins for me.

The Shake’n Fork from Equi-tee Mfg is available for purchase for $199.00, and you can find it here. It is also available as part of a value pack that pairs it with a Flex’n Fork, which is available for $269.00, and includes FREE SHIPPING – which you can find here.

Go Faster, Easier & More Entertaining Mucking.  Go Equi-Tee Mfg.  Go Eventing.