Aubiose advise!!

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lunarmagic

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HELP!!! We are in the process of changing our horses onto aubiose bedding from wood pellets, we've had the rep out to talk us through it all and the theorie is great but we have a couple of horses that drag their legs round their beds and trash it all, it's impossible to keep the bed spotlessly clean, (it's important our beds are clean, we are a top level vet rehab yard and v high level dressage) so I'm wondering is it possible to keep the beds beautifully clean or do they darken up and get a bit dirty......any advise would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.
 
I had Aubiose, it was OK. The secret was t allow it to bed in. When changing over from shavings we did it one bank at a time, so it was never mixed. I was happy when the final shavings bank went onto the floor, then the next muck out we took all the shavings floor out so it was all Aubiose.

With shavings I bottom the bed every day as my horse is also a bed dragger. With Aubiose I only had to remove wet patches every 3/4 days. I found the way to keep it clean was to leave the clean sections undisturbed, so they were firm and did not mix up.

After a while I changed back to shavings, and now chopped Rape Straw as it is cheaper. I think if I had been OK with a mucky bed I would have stayed with Aubiose, as it was much easier, made less waste, and needed less bales, but the bales were a lot more expensive to buy, and for that "just made" look I needed more bales than was economic.
 
One of ours ate it and went down with colic so please be careful . ( we had the rep too). Now use shredded cardboard which i think is excellent. Absorbent , dust free and easy to do, but if you decide to try it don't buy the cheap one, doesn't work.
 
i love aubiose and now refuse to use anything else! i find it very easy to keep the bed clean as its such tiny flakes that they fall through a fork easily just leaving the poo. I also find the poo doesn't get as mixed up as in shavings and i only have to muck out the wet every 5/6 days.
 
Great thanks for advise, bit worrying about the colic thing though, sounds terrifying!! I think it would be fab if the poo's weren't dragged all around and in tiny bits all over the place but with one or two of ours that's just impossible, I have ocd issues and after mucking out I spent another 25 mins on my hands and knees picking the bits out by hand and as a groom with lots more to do that's just impractical!!
 
nfpony said:
i love aubiose and now refuse to use anything else! i find it very easy to keep the bed clean as its such tiny flakes that they fall through a fork easily just leaving the poo. I also find the poo doesn't get as mixed up as in shavings and i only have to muck out the wet every 5/6 days.
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Does your horse keep himself fairly clean and not mix all his poo's around, that's the bit im struggling with is picking all the bits out, think it's a fab idea but it takes me an age to muck out, just wondering if it's just not designed for horses that drag the feet around and mush it up?
 
i wouldn't say he's clean, it is often dragged around just not mushed up. i think you have to figure out the way it works best for you. is it mixed with leftover shavings at the mo? thats when i found it horrible to muck out with. also i don't spray it with water like they told us to and its fine.
 
We were mixing it with wood pellets but thought we'd give it a try on its own, guess we'll have to leave it another week and see how it goes.
 
I liked aubiose but if you want to keep the bed looking smart, the best way I found when my boy was on it was to make sure the bed is quite deep to start with, and covers most of the stable, so it moves around less, and then just skip out as frequently as possible so droppings don't get trampled in. I skip out with gloves and a bucket so I can get the really small bits that fall through a fork. I found it quite dusty without watering, and also that watering seems to sort of set the bed so it's more stable.
 
Watching with interest, I use fennington / burly bed and my mare drags her poo around the entire stable even with a deep bed. By morning there are 100's of tiny mushy poos spread everywhere.
 
I use it for my box walker. It works out about the same cost as straw for us in the long run because there is less that needs to come out , and looks lovely when fresh. BUT when she has a bad night, she will trample the poo all over the top of it like a giant poo may. It's too expensive to take out the full bed when she does that so I just take out the worst and then yes, it does look really grubby. However, she has had big thrush issues in the past winters, and despite the aubiose not looking the cleanest, the way it works with absorbing the moisture does really seem to have made a difference in reducing it this year.

For eating it, they recommended watering it in when you first lay it down, so I put some detol in the watering can for a dilute mix as recommended by some other bedding suppliers and watered in with that the first couple of times, andmine have never eaten it despite being very big on eating straw beds.
 
Mine used to eat it, the only way to stop her (tried spraying it) was to put the new underneath the old. In addition in winter it balled in her feet like snow does so you would find her on stilts. We had to change but it has worked for other people I know.
 
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