advice please! Cheapest bedding?

S

spacefaer

Well-Known Member
Joined
3 March 2009
Messages
5,969
Location
Shropshire
Visit site
I want to put a horse with a dust allergy on dust free bedding - what's the best and cheapest for concrete flooring?

I like the look of the wood pellets - has anyone any experience of them on concrete?

Anyone know about cardboard bedding?

All advice appreciated!
 
Mine are deep littered with wood pellets on concrete, works a treat and is really cheap, especially for the bigger ones that tend to go through shavings bed down to the floor easily - pellets give much better bed that stays put and gives support.
 
uceo bedding shavings with eucolyptus oil on them i dont know where you are but i am in shropshire and around here it is around£5.80 but there is always medi bed as well!
 
You can get them from several places - Corley Biowood and Liverpool Wood Pellets to name but two - they deliver to anywhere in the country and there are others - if you do a search in here, the old New Lounge and Stable Yard you will find loads of threads about them, where to get them, how to use them etc.

They work out at around £2.50 a bag - can be cheaper depending on how much you buy etc

I love them and use them for one very clean horse and one very dirty horse and it makes mucking out quick and easy (15 mins for both beds!) and sooooooooo much cheaper than shavings.
 
Third the wood pellets I love them. so easy to do, however due to the fact I am on concrete I need a few extra bags to start the bed off with as my boy is big. But we seem to have got the balance now.
I brought mine from Corley Biowood and they were great on customer service and delivery
smile.gif
 
Someone on our yard is keeping their horse on wood pellets. The bed is the most dusty I have ever come across. Mixing urine soaked bedding into clean just makes it a damper, filthy bed I my opinion. I can't see that it's healthy for a horse to be breathing in ammonia. I was always brought up to believe that sawdust, which is essentially what wood pellets are, just compacted, is the worst bedding to keep a horse on. Not only that, but many of these pellets are actually produced for wood burners so may contain all sorts of resins and chemicals, not a nice thought!
 
[ QUOTE ]
Someone on our yard is keeping their horse on wood pellets. The bed is the most dusty I have ever come across. Mixing urine soaked bedding into clean just makes it a damper, filthy bed I my opinion. I can't see that it's healthy for a horse to be breathing in ammonia. I was always brought up to believe that sawdust, which is essentially what wood pellets are, just compacted, is the worst bedding to keep a horse on. Not only that, but many of these pellets are actually produced for wood burners so may contain all sorts of resins and chemicals, not a nice thought!

[/ QUOTE ]

All I can say is that it may have more to do with their stable management than the pellets. My beds are not dusty, don't smell and I don't mix old damp bed in with new - I take it out. If used properly it by the far the most economical and clean bed available if for whatever reason you can not use straw, as I can't.

If you took the time to read the suppliers websites you would see the peelets do not contain any of the chemicals you mentioned.
 
Cardboard has to be the most awful bedding ever, it stinks and someone who tried it on our yard ended up with a coughing horse after a couple of weeks. seems to breed mould spores. I used to bed on paper, which was great when the weather was dry, but as soon as the weather turned damp, the bed would go to nothing overnight. I use good quality shavings, have done for 20 years, the only other bedding I would use is straw and hemp.
 
Actually, the lady who keeps her horse on it is very good with her management, almost to the point of being obsessional about it. The bed is still dusty, the horse has the dust stuck around his nostrils and eyes every day. I haven't read the websites, I'm not interested in using sawdust as bedding. Oh, and the pellets she has, from an equestrian supplier, are for woodburning stoves, it says so on the packaging. Do you really think that the wood industry is going to go to the trouble of screening what to them is a waste product, just for the small amount of use from the horse industry?
 
And if you think they are allowed to include chemicals and resins into pellets which are made to be burnt, potentially giving off toxic fumes not to mention the flammable properties of most chemicals you are wrong - not to mention the rules and regulation required for smokeless fuels etc.
 
[ QUOTE ]
I want to put a horse with a dust allergy on dust free bedding - what's the best and cheapest for concrete flooring?



[/ QUOTE ]

The first thing to do is to get rubber mats - the saving on bedding alone (never mind mucking out time) will pay for the mats in 6-12 months (depending on what bedding you use and how much you have to pay for it!)

For economical -but still GOOD -mats, I'd recommend the M8 mats from Fieldguard - see http://www.fieldguard.com/stable_mats.html - although I also have the M3 and M4.

I have tried virtually EVERY type of bedding on the market, I think, and come back to shredded paper - currently from http://www.hossbed.com/
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top