argh i hate winter!

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kombikids

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just had my livery bill - 100 a month for shavings alone - argh! its costs me more for my horse to poo than to feed it a month! me thinks i am asking father xmas for rubber matting this year! anyone know where to look for it is the ebay stuff normally ok? is it rather manky to buy second hand .. do ihave to go for 18mm rather than the 13mm? thanks for any help..
 
gosh yes def get rubber matting!

there are quite a few ebay sellers who do the 18mm one (which is what you should get) for under £30 a mat.

off the top of my head, midandmatman, carpetpac, if you look on ebay though there are loads to choose from!
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Can I be cheeky and ask how you are managing to go through £100 worth of shavings? I have the muckiest mare on my yard (really wet, mixes the poo into the shavings) but by deep littering and being really pedantic about removing all the poo daily, I get by on 1 and a little bit bales a week.

You must be using a bale almost every day?
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my yard has put them up to £7.10 a bale and they dont seem that full- might have to start sourcing them myself.. use 3 / 4 a week and she doesnt even have that much of a bed! take 2 wheelbarrows of poo and we out a day, she is the messiest horse i have ever had
 
Geez, that's expensive! I'd definitely look to source some yourself. Even brand stuff like Bedmax is less than that is it not? We pay £4.20/bale from YO for ours, seems much more of a bargain than I thought it was!

If your horse is super messy, rubber mats are good, but you are likely to have increased rug cleaning bills/muckier coat as no think bed to drain away the wee/cover the poo as well!
 
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my yard has put them up to £7.10 a bale and they dont seem that full- might have to start sourcing them myself.. use 3 / 4 a week and she doesnt even have that much of a bed! take 2 wheelbarrows of poo and we out a day, she is the messiest horse i have ever had

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Mine are that messy too, rubber matting with a sprinkling of bedding is your answer!
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st bernard - if you deep litter how often do you remove the whole bed - do you just pick up poo daily?

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My last beds were down for a year!

Just take poo out, and perhaps the very worst of the wet if you have a really wet horse, though try to let it form a base,, however my current horse is too big to deep litter, he digs the whole bed up just walking around.

IMO you cant beat rubber matting.
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I think you are paying way over the odds for shavings. We sell them at £6.50, but discount a lot if you have a pallet at a time, and that includes delivery and stacking!

But rubber is best, takes a while to get used to giving a small bed though.
 
As ours are only out 4hrs a day, I muck out in a morning and fork the bed up onto the bankings and leave her a small patch in the corner to wee on, then she can stand in and make a mess on the rubber matting! Then bring it back down at night and am managing on a bag week of shavings - ordered in by the yard, so don't go as far as the ones I used to use!
 
My horses are out during the day and in at night, so that's in for about 16 or 17 hours a day and I easily get by on less than a bale of shavings per horse per week. They are both deep littered and I take out every scrap of poo and the worst of the pee if necessary. The beds are warm and the stables always smell fresh. My mare is on concrete (she's rescued so even a stable is a luxury as far as she's concerned) and my veteran has rubber mats just at the front half of his stable. The mare is a truly messy madam but I still only take out 1 large double-wheeled barrow of muck out per day and that's the total for BOTH horses! I've just bought 2 bags of Hemcore to see if that's more absorbant - too early to say at the moment but it definitely gives a lighter wheelbarrow!!!
 
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My horses are out during the day and in at night, so that's in for about 16 or 17 hours a day and I easily get by on less than a bale of shavings per horse per week. They are both deep littered and I take out every scrap of poo and the worst of the pee if necessary. The beds are warm and the stables always smell fresh. My mare is on concrete.

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That's pretty much what I do. My girl is so mucky it takes me a good 30-40mins going through her entire bed to find all the poo, so deep littering is definitely not a "quick fix" for me!
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I like to be thorough when taking the poo out though as I want the bed to stay as fresh and clean as possible.

Because of my work hours, she's luckily only in 11hrs at night (8pm-7am), but still messy enough! Once every 6 weeks or so, I add a full bale is just to freshen the bed and skim off the parts where she favours weeing regularly.
 
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