Bedding

Daisy_Roots

Daisy_Roots

New Member
May 9, 2009
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Cumbria
Just a nosey thread really.

For those of us that use stables, what bedding do you use, what have you tried and how do you manage the bed?

Stable 1/ Has rubber mats with 4 bales of shavings on top. I pick out the droppings on a daily basis, but leave the wet, after about 3 weeks I put another bale of shavings in, about 3 weeks after that I take the lot out and start again. The wet tends to fall to a front corner of the stable, I'll put some shavings under the mats here to soak it up, I change these shavings every other week.

Stable 2/ No mats, because I've never got round to getting any :o. He's a very clean boy and tends to use one end as his toilet, as above, wet is left in and droppings removed daily. When I take his toilet end out, his bed shavings are moved to that end and new bed shavings put in.

I've tried wood chips, they were like an arena surface, really liked them, but they needed to be cleared more often than the shavings.

I've also used straw, but my current horse has a mild dust allergy, so that's no good.

And paper, I really liked this and it rotted down quickly on the muck heap, but where I live is very windy and I lost half the bed every time I opened the stable door :eek::D.
 
Up till last winter I just used shavings, as dust-free as I could get from the local WCF. Last winter Sam's floor was not draining properly (the floors are semi-permeable rolled ash from my parents' parkray stove) and there was a hollow that kept getting wet, and not from him! I put down hemp-core (?), a rubber mat on top and four or five bales of shavings for his bed.

All was well with this until I decided to freshen up the hemp-core and then I couldn't get the rubber mat to lie flat again. One incident of him tripping on it, raising the edge and having a panic attack over it and the mat was out and never put back in.

This year I'm reflooring his stable and might be trying some different chopped and dust-free straw, I'm investigating this this week. Or good old shavings again.
 
Old rubber mats you can use on the walls if you have a kicker and are worried about them putting a foot through/damaging themselves.

You can use them to store hay on as its easier to clean it up and keeps its off the ground.

You could put it in your tack room or horse box.

In gate entrances where it gets muddy.

You could also put it in the dog kennel as a bit of floor insulation!
 
W have 3 open barn stables. 2 are just gated barns with a concrete floor. These in the past have been on straw, but are currently inhabited in part by one of my horses who is allergic to straw, dry hay...anything pollen or dust related really lol. So we now have those 2 down on hemp.
The other barn stable doesn't have a concrete floor, but instead is an interesting fine gravel base, so drains naturally. This has my sister's TB in who doesn't have allergies, so thats down to a *thick* bed of straw.

Our other *proper* stables (which are only pony height and hence why the horses are in gated barns) are concrete floored, so they either have shavings or straw (depending on the pony, and which they are tidier on etc).

All our stables are deep littered, even my horse with the allergies is deep littered with hemp. I find it much less work, easy to keep on top of, not a problem allergy wise (provided you choose the right bedding) and more comfy for the horses. I was brought up with the basis of 'don't stable them unless you give them a bed you'd be willing to sleep in yourself!'...so thats what they get...and I have fallen asleep in them once or twice too ;) :o
 
shockblue said:
Old rubber mats you can use on the walls if you have a kicker and are worried about them putting a foot through/damaging themselves.

You can use them to store hay on as its easier to clean it up and keeps its off the ground.

You could put it in your tack room or horse box.

In gate entrances where it gets muddy.

You could also put it in the dog kennel as a bit of floor insulation!
Click to expand...

Great ideas, thanks! I have my hay stored on pallets that I got through my job (we get stuff delivered on them and the pallets are rarely taken back) and my tack/feed room is an old garden shed. I just emptied that out two weeks ago to give it a non-spring thorough clean and never thought about the mat for the floor, damn! :D
 
We rubber mat 2/3rds of the stable, bed 1/2 of the Rubber matting with Bedmax, skip out Poo daily, fork up and brush away wet, leave to dry during day and pull bed back at night, on a weekend top up bedding with fresh, use 1 bale a month for each of the ponies and 2 bales a month for the messy mare, but shes not in much.
 
EVA mats over the whole floor - one bale of sawdust over half the floor. 2 minutes to lift the poo and the wet bit, quick sweep up and sorted:D

Sawdust is £4 per bale and way more absorbent than anything else I have tried. Its sooo quick to muck out and there is barely any wasted.
 
We are currently using mats and shredded paper. Cross cut needs managing like shavings and is great, long cut like straw harder as it also clumps badly. Big advantage is it is free from local offices! Disadvantage is it is impossible to keep off yard and blows everywhere!!

We have had mats for years and have used most things, flax, straw, chopped straw, shavings, sawdust. I prefer shavings but they are so expensive at the moment.
 
I use wood pellets on rubber matting. TBH I dont like the wood pellets that much because it's a lot of hassle to put fresh bedding in but they're working out cheaper than shavings while I can go collect it. I'm starting a new job soon and dont think I'll be able to go collect anymore so I'll probably switch back to shavings and hope it doesnt start getting too expensive!
 
Good ol' traditional straw for us! A couple of stables have rubber mats and they have slightly thinner beds, but, otherwisw a nice thick straw bed every night. I prefer mucking out straw to anything else just get too bogged down with shavings trying to pick up every single little bit of dropping.
 
Both have eva matting and are both on straw - We did have rosie on shavings but the cost was getting ridiculous as she's a messy mare and even though they were supposed to be dust extracted, it was often more dusty than the farm straw we use now :)

We get through a bale a day between the pair of them and that's more to do with having guzzle guts so they eat it all :D
 
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