Bedding/litter woes

some horses are just rank......my 2yo colt is on shavings(rubber mats with a normal thickness bed on top plus banks) and every single day the centre of his bed is a churned up sludgey mix :(

if i took out all the wet and poo i would be putting down 4+ bales a week so i simply take out the worst, rake it level, put half a bag of new in on a tues, half in on sat, and turn a blind eye to it.

its reasonably dry in the middle once ive re-arranged it, but its all brown, full of tiny bits of poo and hay and looks a ruddy mess.............previous horse had an immaculate white bed on 1 bag a week :(

boo hiss to filthy mingers!
 
I'd suggest your stable isn't laid out correctly, is that a pile of haylage under the water drinker? The only time I ever see anything remotely like your stable is when something has upset mine and someone has kindly thrown hay over the door. Hay and wood pellet beds don't mix as you've found out, the hay acts as a conductor for the wet and the whole lot is rank. If your yard manager can't manage to net the hay, make up some nets for her in advance. Move the bed to the back to 2/3 of the stable and put a tie ring near the door so she can view while eating. Unfortunately with the water drinker, you're always going to have a path from door to drinker back to door. If it were my stable, I'd disconnect the water drinker and add a bucket to the bare concrete at the front of the stable. Get a garden rake, the metal pronged fan type, and rake the haylage out of the bed. Embrace the brown as that will eventually become a solid base as long as you don't take all wet out every week. Use the garden rake to level and cover the wet over.
 
The haylage wasn't put under the water drinker, that is where Tartine moved it to. It would be "delivered" to the other corner directly opposite the drinker.

I did make up haynets last year, then was told to stop, as we don't have the storage space to have full nets lying around - plus the farm dog pees on them. The haynet is hung on the front bars:

Tartinehaynet.jpg


If I put a bucket in the stable it is going to get covered in hay - I only have 1.75m of front wall space when the door is open. The waterers are heated, which is a necessity here, when winter temps drop often drop below -10C for weeks on end. it is that side of the stable (from the manger to the waterer directly opposite) which is the cleanest part. The wet side is opposite the door where she stands looking out of the door / eating hay.

I'll buy a metal garden rake to see if that makes life any easier (I currently have a scarifying rake, and a plastic garden rake and neither do a brilliant job :/ )

But seriously, I have to take the wet out, outherwise the bed stinks of ammonia (and squleches). The base is solid, but as I said, as there is no drainage, there is only so much the pellets can absorb before they are saturated.

Thanks to everyone for your input. I do appreciate all of your ideas/thoughts. I'm not being deliberatly negative, but being on livery in France, is a little different (and can by very frustrating) compared to the UK. I work really long hours, and couldn't actually have my ponies if they weren't on livery, so we all (me mostly I assume!) put up with a lot ;)
 
can she have her hay in a big plastic trug? would stop a lot of the mess.

is she moving the hay and dunking it in the water thus adding to the wetness? if so, clip the trug to the wall away from the water.
 
Ahh I see. I think she is getting way too much hay from your photo, that purple net would be enough for a 13.2 let alone the other net and the enormous pile on the floor. She may be similar to mine, it seems that if she gets too much she feels the need to pull it out and scatter it about because she has no appetite for it once she's full. Her neighbours get her leftovers as otherwise I'd be faced with a stable like yours.
 
Is she dipping haylage in the waterer? I suppose that's what I was thinking with her dragging it back there and if she was going between the two that the square bed might suit.
 
I used to use pellets but it was ridiculous the amount we needed to maintain a decent bed. I don't know if this would be an option where you are but we now buy "sawdust" which is ground wood (basically the raw ingredient of pellets and what they break down into) by the tonne bag. It's a million times cheaper and it means we can keep the beds to the standard we want with our wet gelding.
 
you start with how many bags?!!

we start a fresh bed in october with 9 bags each stable, of which 2 are activated. We leave the bed as undisturbed as possible - literally taking out the poo, and any bits that go squelchy with the wet. We add 1 to 2 bags (unactivated) per week. Means that 1 ton lasts us about a year.

Tom box walks and spreads his haylage about too - we put it in a haybar type arrangement (dad made me a box for each stable out of old scaffolding boards) and that makes loads of difference but doesn't prevent it entirely, so we take out the worst and leave the bits and pieces that fall through the fork.
 
Thanks to whoever it was suggesting to use a garden rake side-to-side it worked a treat!

So this is what I got to this afternoon:
IMG_1796.jpg


IMG_1797.jpg


This is mucked out btw...

I managed to rake up all of the hay and took out a layer of the worst from the top.

Once I added some new (mainly unactivated) pellets I had a very happy pony!

IMG_1798.jpg


IMG_1799.jpg
 
Blimey, your yard are dreadful mucker outers, there's still nuggets in there. Mine doesn't look that bad before I start in the morning. Another tip is a garden riddle, the pellets fall through and your left with bits of poo and hay.
 
There's a wealth of difference if they're used to doing straw beds as I guess it doesn't matter if hay is left in but pellets are a whole different concept.
 
For half of the week we only have one person doing 24 boxes (we only have a max of 2 people doing boxes). Mine always looks the worst because you just can't hide it if there are bits left over. I know my box is mainly done by hand or with a hay fork rather than with a shavings fork/rake. But yes, the amount of poo left after mucking out doesn't help with the whole "messy bed" situation.
 
Definitely if you are only poo picking (all I do in the week, only clear out at weekends) it makes a huge difference to fork out/up the banks so the poo rolls to the bottom and you can clear it all, rather than it slowly turning the bed brown.
 
I've got to disagree with ester, you should only be disturbing a wood pellet bed the bare minimum so no forking up/through. Mine has been down for 5 years, I've rarely lifted the wet but do skim off a couple of inches when necessary. The bed is solid with 2 inches of loose on top and a shavings fork is perfectly adequate for doing a good job every morning.
 
do you not shake it up to get rid of the droppings on top. I am only talking very top layer here where droppings are left not lifting it! I tend to do it on the banks as F poos at the back but if in the middle I would just shake it through a shavings fork.
 
No wonder the bed is not clean if one person is mucking out 24 stables everyday,seriously that bed does not look mucked out and it will never look clean if half the droppings are left in everyday, your fighting a loosing battle really with whatever bedding you use if its not cleaned out properly everyday, my livery is a bit like that takes her 5 minutes to muck out a large straw bed, its a solid mess around the edges full of poo, and she wonders why it never looks that great, I mucked out for a last week and was horrified once I started to dig down it was filthy.
 
Oh of course I do the droppings, wood pellets if properly "set" doesn't allow for poos to be buried hence I don't disturb anything other than the top layer and brush back what my horse has trampled forward. I don't do banks as I find wood pellets just roll back down.
 
Ah, Mine is a mixed bed, I think it was just my description that was awry, essentially effort made to remove all the poo!

Equally I am not sure that 24 stables is that many to do well if only picking out poo.
 
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