Bedmax - banks vs flat bed

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LJD

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My mare has recently been diagnosed with COPD so I e had to put her on Bedmax however she is awfully messy as she Box walks despite being given ample stable distractions (treat ball, himalayan lick, swedes, hay obviously and so on).
I'm struggling to keep her bed clean and I confess that I have OCD 😯
I'm questioning if banks are necessary as she only drags them all down anyway. Does anyone else have flat beds?
 
I personally don't like bedmax-it seems to break down v quickly & goes a bit brown & sawdusty. I too like banks & lovely clean beds but am up against it with my messy mares! I currently use a white large flake shavings on one & equinola on the other. Think I might try a blend of the 2 but one of them troughs the equinolla so that's out!
 
This is a debate often aired out on hacks - banks or not and we are fairly well split on the yard - all are on shavings and we have some that give big deep banks and some who do a sprinkling with no banks or one huge one at the back. We have had horses cast in all types of banked beds so cannot decide if there is a better style to use.
 
I have banks with straw beds because I lift them daily. I have flat beds with shavings as I deep litter.

I would perhaps suggest putting down a sawdust/shavings mix and let her destroy it and create a base that won't move around then put good clean shavings on top and poo pick leaving the bed alone.

I do the above and I life the clean top layer weekly to thoroughly clean out the bed of any poos missed during the week and once every few months I skim the base to make sure it's not getting too thick.

This gives me 3/4 inches of base and 3/4 inches of good clean dry shavings and a nice bed for my veteran who also can cough when things are dusty.
 
LJD said:
My mare has recently been diagnosed with COPD so I e had to put her on Bedmax however she is awfully messy as she Box walks despite being given ample stable distractions (treat ball, himalayan lick, swedes, hay obviously and so on).
I'm struggling to keep her bed clean and I confess that I have OCD ��
I'm questioning if banks are necessary as she only drags them all down anyway. Does anyone else have flat beds?
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I use Bedmax for my boy and my late mate who had laminitis as it provides cushion, My boy pees in his banks but I still have them and skip out late night. I don't like shavings anymore as they are too dusty where as bedmax is great for COPD horses which my mare had Asthma. Would it be worth asking someone to skip her out late night (for a fee of cause), it cam make her bed a lot less messy in the morning.
 
My horse only goes out for two hours a day at the moment (which I'm happy about) so I asked the YO if she would leave his bed up and just put a small layer of shavings on the floor for him to wee on. He only ever lies down in the summer in the day when out all night and then I will be doing my bed myself.

This has saved on a huge amount of waste. We also took the decision to only take out the wet three times per week, which leaves him with a more solid floor (not allowed to use rubber mats as is natural earth) and saves on shavings. He has a dry top layer of shavings so its never a problem if he wants to lie down and his rugs never smell.

Dad has got my shavings free for the past 20 years but is now really struggling to get any as the timber yards are importing ready made wooden frames/windows and stuff isn't being milled so much now. I've managed to source 36 x 25KG shavings from somewhere for just over £7 per bale and they are fab. Two per week should be ample, in fact I'm hoping that I can stretch this to two every ten days if at all possible.
 
I dont think there is any evidence to suggest banks stop horses getting cast. I am fairly sure that I read somewhere that they would need to be several feet out from the edge of the stable to actually make a difference.

I dont have them anymore as was quicker / easier to muck out without them, but did take a while to get used to the lack of them. I still prefer the look of a stable with nice neat banks and a lovely thick bed though.
 
I used to have perfect beds with perfect banks. However, as I have got older I now don't bother with the banks, it saves so much time and energy and one of mine box-walked them all down as soon as she went in anyway! I also was told that they would need to be massive and very solid to actually stop a horse from getting cast.

I have one on straw and the other on Bedrap (which I find much more absorbent than normal shavings and less dusty) - both on deep litter in the week and dug out at the weekend.

They are 33 and 28 years old now - and neither of them have ever got cast.
 
MarilynM said:
I also was told that they would need to be massive and very solid to actually stop a horse from getting cast.
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My banks at the last yard where brilliant. They had been there for about four years, were clean and so solid you could put an axe through and you wouldn't get to the stable wall. My current yard owner likes us to rake up our banks weekly so they are never really very strong and my horse could never push off against them, he would just go straight through them!
 
My banks are solid...as has been described above! Very rarely touch them and horse uses them as a proverbial pillow, so he's happy and so am I as he doesn't dig them up or destroy them!
 
I was brought up to use banks and did so for many years. However since switching to wood pellets a few years ago I stopped using banks and have had no problems with horses getting cast.
 
I have a box walker who had a series of nosebleeds we think due to allergies so I moved him off wood pellets as they were dusty. I tried him on Bedmax as that is what one of my others is on very successfully and it was a nightmare. I now use Easibed, or Creature comfort which works very well. It forms a stable bed as long as it is deep enough and seems very free of dust. I use is as a mainly flat bed with small banks for aesthetic purposes! :)
 
I spent about 4 years with a straw bed and the banks were as solid as a rock. My horse used them as a prop to stand on and they never budged. Fast forward to using Unibed and they don't want to bank up, make tiny banks barely worth using although ultra absorbent. Think I'm going to use straw bankings and unibed in the base in the next stable as my current horse gets cuts on his hocks from scraping them along the wall
 
The only thing I use banks for is to store clean bedding - so when I put clean shavings in, I make one bank along the back wall . . . when I muck out each morning, I only take out the poo and try not to disturb the wee unless it is showing through and after about three or four days, I dig out the wee, pull down the banks to top up the bed and thereby stretch the bed to last for a good ten days, at which point I do a full muck out, leave the bed up for the floor to dry and then re-lay and add clean bedding. Works a treat - even with a restless, messy boy.

P
 
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