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Catherine’s Pony Paddock Cleaned Four Times Faster By Australian Manufacturer

May 6, 2009 - Catherine Crosado, owner of Duncree Shetland Pony Stud - located 40 minutes south of Christchurch in New Zealand - used to spend around three hours of each day picking up pony manure - until she invested in an Australian made Greystone Maxi Vac, powered by a Honda engine.

“The Maxi Vac has cut my clean up time to 40 minutes! The hours I was out in the paddocks with a shovel and bucket I can now spend doing other things,” said Ms Crosado.

“Manure used to be the bane of my existence. I have 27 Shetland ponies, and if I didn’t get out there every day it just got out of hand. Now I have a bit more freedom, if it’s raining then I’ll just leave it for a day and it doesn’t really matter.”

Horses don’t like to graze near their own manure, so it’s important to keep their paddock clean.

“The Maxi Vac sucks everything up; it doesn’t matter if it’s runny or dry. It sucks all the parasites and eggs from the grass, which is fantastic because I don’t like to use chemicals on my property.”

Catherine leaves all the manure in a pile, and every six months a truck picks it up to take to local Rolleston prison gardens that supply vegetables to prisons around New Zealand.

“We can fit about four cubic metres of manure in the truck, and my ponies’ record so far is 11 truckloads. The local garden club takes scoops here and there as well.”

When Catherine first bought her Maxi-Vac it came equipped with a two-stroke engine, which she wasn’t happy with.

“The two-stroke was dirty and revolting, mixing the fuel was really smelly and it wore out quickly. It was so noisy that I was afraid to start it up on Sunday mornings, for fear it would wake the neighbours.”

“Then Greystone announced that they were switching to Honda’s four-stroke engines. When I saw one of my friends using a Honda I realised that I needed one too.”

“I’m really pleased with the Honda engine; it has so much more power and less vibration. Manure used to get blocked in the hose a lot with the two-stroke because it wasn’t powerful enough, but that never happens with the Honda. It sucks so hard that if I set it to full power it sucks itself to the ground!”

“I thought the ponies would be scared of the Maxi-Vac, but they like it. They usually stand in front of the exhaust because they like the smell of manure. They love it on hot days. They follow it around for the cool breeze it shoots out, their hair blows back and they look all windswept and beautiful!”

“I’ve started to wear a hard hat when I’m using the Maxi Vac, I get so into it that I forget to look up and hit my head on branches.”

“I really can’t say enough about Greystone, their after sales service is really good,” said Ms Crosado.

“Everything we sell now is powered by Honda; the two-stroke engines gave us nothing but problems,” said David Oberhofer, owner of Greystone Australia.

“Since we’ve switched to Honda our sales have almost doubled. Our customers are mostly women with hobby horses, who don’t like noisy two-stroke engines and hate mixing fuel, and the engines weren’t lasting,” said Mr Oberhofer.

“People with horses are starting to catch on to Greystone, and realising that it’s just too difficult to clean manure any other way. We’ve sold more vacs internationally this year than we did for the entirety of 2008. We just had an order for 75 machines the other day, going to Europe.”

“We’re in the early stages of what I think will be our biggest selling machine yet. We’ll be releasing it all over the world before Christmas, for the domestic market. It’s for suburban backyards, and will clean up after dogs and gardens.”

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