Best bedding for deep litter?

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SpanishNeddy

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I am currently using Eco Comfybed for my two horses. Now, I used this for a few years and never had an issue with it before now, in fact I loved it before. However, my beds are awful after a week of putting in 8 bales to make a bed up plus several more bales after. The stables are damp and I think the bedding is taking the moisture which is why the whole bed is so wet and horrid :(. Really annoying me as Ive spent a fortune making two whole beds up on it and have now used 20 bales! and they both look like I have used 1 bale and it needs to all come out!!!!!!!

So, it is not working anymore. Need to change bedding next weekend. What do other people use for deep litter? I work mon to fri and plan to take wet out every weekend and just 'skip' out daily.

Littlemax any good for this?

I dont like straw! :D

Thank you :)
 
It's not full deep litter if you take wet out at weekend... You shouldn't disturb the base but straw is defo best in my opinion works in cleanest or dirtiest of horses
 
You can't deep litter straw though can you? it proper smells in 1 day let alone leaving longer I would of thought.

Both mine will eat straw beds, they are spanish and in spain they get fed straw as their hay (if that makes sense!) :)
 
No doesn't smell if you do it properly:) it smells when you dig it out but all deep litter does!! All you do everyday is skip out the poos, reconstruct the banks, take any dirty out of the front and then top up with straw if necessary :) so much cheaper than shavings and you can split a small bale easier
 
After chatting with you the other day I put a little more thought into what bedding I would prefer for Monday to Friday deep litter. I have both of mine on miscanthus which makes a nice bed, doesn't move and I have 1 very clean and one very dirty horse and they are both fairly easy to muck out. They are deep littered but I scrape the top off to stop it getting too high and once a month or so I take out the majority of the wet.

Rio deep littered very well on a mix of shavings and Snowflake soft chip which turned into chip board underneath and I only had to take a bit off every 3 weeks or so but the majority of the bed stayed in there (was there for 4 months before yard move and it all coming out again) so I liked that bedding too but you do need to put in a bale or so a week and it doesn't look like it goes very far if you have very little bed in there but if you make a decent bed up first it tends to stay quite well!

Wood pellets - I don't really like them during the summer as you have to keep adding water to them to stop it getting dusty and I swear if you wet down the bed in the winter it will freeze but a lot of people do get on with wood pellets so might be worth trying.

hemcore would also be worth trying as its quite a heavy bedding

Bliss bedding is good for deep littering

also Easibed is good for deep littering

anyway i'll shut up now :) im sure there will be lots more suggestions!
 
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