Deep Litter

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Spacejet

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Good Afternoon All! :)

Thoughts on deep littering this winter?
I was thinking of deep littering during the week (removing all poo and layering fresh straw ontop) and either Saturday or Sunday remove all the wet bedding and do a 'full muck-out' and also disinfect the floor with my Biofresh Ammonia spray!
I was going to do this with straw but was thinking of maybe using shavings underneath as they are abit more absorbent?
She will always have a thick layer of clean ontop so would NOT be laying on wet bedding!

Does anyone else do this?
 
I do it but with a layer of miscanthus, and I only remove the wet - the compacted base layer is worth its weight in gold IMHO and it takes a while to get to that stage.
 
Yes I do exactly this, I was going to fully deep litter but was put off at the last moment. On a Wednesday I give them a little fresh sprinkling of straw to refresh the beds. It works out very well for me and is really time saving :) Just make sure you start off with a deep bed or it will end up looking quite dirty come the weekend.
 
If you are going to deep litter then save yourself heaps of valuable weekend time and do the job properly.

First prepare the stable floor by washing it clean, allow to dry and sprinkle a good layer of garden lime on the floor - this neutralises the ammonia that is produced when urine is exposed to air.

Then a nice thick layer of sawdust or shavings. Pack down as hard as you can. I like mine at least 6" in depth.

Then on goes a thick layer of straw, again well packed down, I make the banks of straw as it packs better than shavings.

Then daily (or as often as you can) remove all the droppings, we used to use rubber gloves, hands and a skip. Get hands under dung, and tip into skip, returning clean straw to the bed. Using hands stops you digging into the under bed.

Tidy the top and sprinkle a slice of clean straw onto the bed.

DO NOT dig up at the week end, leave the digging out to a nice fine day in spring. Instead enjoy valuable hands on & riding time with your horse.

This is a proper deep litter bed.
 
All of mine are on a big bed of shavings and I only do a full muck out once per week, only taking the manure out daily. I find you use too much bedding if you take the wet out everyday. They all use just 1 bale per week if out during the day, in at night.
 
Tnavas said:
If you are going to deep litter then save yourself heaps of valuable weekend time and do the job properly.

First prepare the stable floor by washing it clean, allow to dry and sprinkle a good layer of garden lime on the floor - this neutralises the ammonia that is produced when urine is exposed to air.

Then a nice thick layer of sawdust or shavings. Pack down as hard as you can. I like mine at least 6" in depth.

Then on goes a thick layer of straw, again well packed down, I make the banks of straw as it packs better than shavings.

Then daily (or as often as you can) remove all the droppings, we used to use rubber gloves, hands and a skip. Get hands under dung, and tip into skip, returning clean straw to the bed. Using hands stops you digging into the under bed.

Tidy the top and sprinkle a slice of clean straw onto the bed.

DO NOT dig up at the week end, leave the digging out to a nice fine day in spring. Instead enjoy valuable hands on & riding time with your horse.

This is a proper deep litter bed.
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This sounds amazing! I have been thinking recently of getting some rubber gloves for the mucking out, I think it would save a lot of wastage and possibly time too.
 
MillionDollar said:
Just to say I have done proper deep litter in the past on straw and shavings and I would never do it again! Semi-deep litter is much much better IMO.
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What was you reason for this? We deep littered around 50 horses each winter and never had a problem with any of the beds - horses were in them 24/7.

Often any problem lies with not preparing the initial bed well enough. The floor must be covered in Garden Lime, The Sawdust/shavings must be deep, same for the straw.

Beds can fail if you get to enthusiastic with the fork when picking up dung and disturbing the underbed.

We also deep littered year round on shavings, beds were between 6 - 10" deep and well packed. Easy and quick to do and that was before the advent of real shavings forks

MillionDollar - if you can leave in the wet the bale will last you a month.
 
I'm currently attempting this for the first time ever! I have a very mucky mare and full muck outs were making dirty shavings mix in with the clean and I was ending up with a full bed which just looked 'dirty' so far I've been going two weeks and not taken any wet up. Just covering the top with clean every day from the banks and then adding a new bale into the banks when they are looking a bit small. Early days but so far so good. Very very dry Snow White bed. Let's just hope I can hold out and not crack and end up digging lol!
 
georgiegirl said:
I'm currently attempting this for the first time ever! I have a very mucky mare and full muck outs were making dirty shavings mix in with the clean and I was ending up with a full bed which just looked 'dirty' so far I've been going two weeks and not taken any wet up. Just covering the top with clean every day from the banks and then adding a new bale into the banks when they are looking a bit small. Early days but so far so good. Very very dry Snow White bed. Let's just hope I can hold out and not crack and end up digging lol!
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Well done you! :D
 
Does deep littering work for every horse?

Reason for asking: I have a 16hh heavyweight who is messy in the stable. Very wet, and drags his feet as he wanders around the stable. End result seems to be that he mulches everything together, and the bed just won't stay still. Even when totally saturated and heavy, he still manages to move the base layer and the entire centre of the bed can be written off in one night.

Is there any way around this or are we resigned to a tiny bed, matting, and stinky rugs for the rest of his life?! :D
 
Stormynight said:
Does deep littering work for every horse?

Reason for asking: I have a 16hh heavyweight who is messy in the stable. Very wet, and drags his feet as he wanders around the stable. End result seems to be that he mulches everything together, and the bed just won't stay still. Even when totally saturated and heavy, he still manages to move the base layer and the entire centre of the bed can be written off in one night.

Is there any way around this or are we resigned to a tiny bed, matting, and stinky rugs for the rest of his life?! :D
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What are you using for bedding? Straw drains but is not very absorbent and shavings are very absorbent . You may need to make the shavings part 10" or so deep, compress well before adding the straw on top.
 
I have deep littered this year, I saved up and bought bales of duo bed in bulk. I have rubber matting down at the front so they have a deep littered bed and banks at the back and a thin layer brought forward. It's working Ok for my 3 boys but my mare is extremely wet so I'm basically mucking her out daily other wise the bedding becomes squelchy (not sure how to spell that word!) I've tried deep littering on straw but personally straw beds only look nice within the first 5 mins then the horses trash them. Tried straw and shavings but it got messy. Rape straw was great but couldn't get it in bulk so was no use. Will take all the bedding out and start a fresh when it gets warmer. At the minute I'm removing about 2 barrows of wet every weekend from them each so I don't end up with ponies ears touching the barn roof!
 
Tnavas said:
What are you using for bedding? Straw drains but is not very absorbent and shavings are very absorbent . You may need to make the shavings part 10" or so deep, compress well before adding the straw on top.
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He's on shavings. To give you an idea of how messy he is, he was in 24/7 for 2 weeks last month. We used 8 bales of shavings in those two weeks, and that was being very careful with what was thrown out. Best way to compress... literally squash down with a shavings fork? He doesn't dig, stress or boxwalk, but he seems to find concrete under the bed regardless of thickness. I used to semi deep litter my old boy very successfully, but I can't seem to get it right with the new one!
 
Stormynight said:
He's on shavings. To give you an idea of how messy he is, he was in 24/7 for 2 weeks last month. We used 8 bales of shavings in those two weeks, and that was being very careful with what was thrown out. Best way to compress... literally squash down with a shavings fork? He doesn't dig, stress or boxwalk, but he seems to find concrete under the bed regardless of thickness. I used to semi deep litter my old boy very successfully, but I can't seem to get it right with the new one!
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Deep littering on shavings alone needs really careful management until the bed has packed down enough - dirty horses are not great for shavings - are you able to get straw at all as the straw on top prevents the shavings being churned up.
 
Tnavas said:
Deep littering on shavings alone needs really careful management until the bed has packed down enough - dirty horses are not great for shavings - are you able to get straw at all as the straw on top prevents the shavings being churned up.
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Unfortunately not... yard rules state shavings only. Any tips on management or are mats & a small sacrificial bed the way forward?
 
just keep adding shavings, I fully deep litter on shavings and rarely remove the base - it will compact with wet but takes around 6 months. Best advice is to not touch the wet, only take out poo and freshen the banks and the rest you add fresh to as and when.
 
Tnavas said:
What are you using for bedding? Straw drains but is not very absorbent and shavings are very absorbent . You may need to make the shavings part 10" or so deep, compress well before adding the straw on top.
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Or it may be that deep littering doesn't work for your horse.

I have a very messy horse too and I know, without a shadow of doubt, that deep littering just wouldn't work because I could never get him past the dragging it round the stable stage . . .

Tnavas - it is possible that your sheer force of will isn't enough to "make it so" . . . ;.

P
 
SusieT said:
just keep adding shavings, I fully deep litter on shavings and rarely remove the base - it will compact with wet but takes around 6 months. Best advice is to not touch the wet, only take out poo and freshen the banks and the rest you add fresh to as and when.
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This was what we would do for the shavings beds. You just have to grin and bear the early days but once you get that solid base they are awesome. One yard I worked on never took up their shavings beds.
 
Tnavas said:
Deep littering on shavings alone needs really careful management until the bed has packed down enough - dirty horses are not great for shavings - are you able to get straw at all as the straw on top prevents the shavings being churned up.
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No it doesn't . . . I've tried shavings base/straw on top and ended up with a straw/shavings soup - and I am not mean with my beds.

P
 
PolarSkye said:
Tnavas - it is possible that your sheer force of will isn't enough to "make it so" . . . ;.

P
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A very unnecessary comment!

We are having a discussion on how to deal with a mucky horse, with decades of experience of deep litter beds I think I am quite within my right to assist with different scenarios.

If you can't be pleasant, DON'T POST
 
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Tnavas said:
This was what we would do for the shavings beds. You just have to grin and bear the early days but once you get that solid base they are awesome. One yard I worked on never took up their shavings beds.
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Hmm. My boy will soak a bed through in a night. Quite literally. I went though a period of taking out the worst of the wet that rose to the surface, but leaving the base there and putting clean shavings on top in an attempt to start a deep litter bed - each night he churned it all together and the whole centre was soaked every morning. Although it saturated and became heavy, either it didn't "set" as such, or he was heavy enough to disturb it. After a couple of weeks I gave up and dug it all out... nearly 10 wheelbarrows worth.

PolarSkye said:
Or it may be that deep littering doesn't work for your horse.

I have a very messy horse too and I know, without a shadow of doubt, that deep littering just wouldn't work because I could never get him past the dragging it round the stable stage . . .
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PS, can I ask how you bed your horse nowadays, please? :)
 
I would like to deep litter but cant stop myself digging out the wet patches ! I am using shavings and have two wet horses. The bed seems to get soaking wet after a couple of nights o I cant resist removing it. Should I just grit my teeth and leave it ?
 
Penny Less said:
I would like to deep litter but cant stop myself digging out the wet patches ! I am using shavings and have two wet horses. The bed seems to get soaking wet after a couple of nights o I cant resist removing it. Should I just grit my teeth and leave it ?
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Be brave! Put another bale of shavings in, wear dark glasses so you can only see the poo piles. You might find a sprinkling of garden lime on the bed before adding new shavings will prevent any smell developing
 
Tnavas said:
A very unnecessary comment!

We are having a discussion on how to deal with a mucky horse, with decades of experience of deep litter beds I think I am quite within my right to assist with different scenarios.

If you can't be pleasant, DON'T POST
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Tnavas, I wasn't being unpleasant (I certainly wasn't intending to be) . . . I was merely pointing out that it's possible that YOUR way may not work for all horses . . . it is possible that you aren't right all of the time. I have my way of doing things because it suits my horse . . . but I fully accept that it doesn't suit every horse . . . you may not realize it, but you do come across sometimes as rather forceful and insistent . . . and just because something has worked for you, doesn't mean it will work for EVERY horse. Mine, for instance. Well . . . maybe I should amend that to say my horse AND me . . . because it's really about works best for both - or a compromise thereof. I could deep litter my boy and put up with a stinky, smelly, sloppy mess unless and until the bed stabilized, but I just can't . . . so I accept that he's a restless so and so, I accept that I can't stand sloppy smelly beds and I do what suits us both. Let's call it a compromise between me and my boy . . . and isn't that what it's all about?

P
 
Stormynight said:
Hmm. My boy will soak a bed through in a night. Quite literally. I went though a period of taking out the worst of the wet that rose to the surface, but leaving the base there and putting clean shavings on top in an attempt to start a deep litter bed - each night he churned it all together and the whole centre was soaked every morning. Although it saturated and became heavy, either it didn't "set" as such, or he was heavy enough to disturb it. After a couple of weeks I gave up and dug it all out... nearly 10 wheelbarrows worth.



PS, can I ask how you bed your horse nowadays, please? :)
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Hi . . . my boy is on deep straw . . . I do a full muck out every day . . . lift the whole bed and leave the floor to air (he is currently on concrete but I did this when he was on sealed rubber mats too), re-lay the bed with the "old" straw (still relatively clean because the wet and poo has been removed, but more "stable" because slightly damper than brand new straw), tamp down with fork/feet as appropriate to make stable and top up with clean straw as appropriate. The whole bed stays about two feet deep (including clean straw) with banks another foot higher. It is deep enough to stop him dragging it too much (unless he is particularly excited as he was tonight when a new horse arrived on the yard), and I do have to play "find the poo" in the morning, but when he was on shavings a completely clean (deep) bed would turn dark brown overnight due to the shredding action of his hooves and a mix of shavings and straw just turned into something really hard to muck out that was neither one thing nor the other - a straw fork left behind wet/mucky shavings and a shavings fork couldn't deal with the dirty straw.

P
 
PolarSkye I was answering/commenting on each persons post, hence the reason for including their post.

Not coming across as forceful etc but using my experience from working in the equine industry for decades.

As previously commented, if you don't have something nice to say, don't post. Your comment was unesessary and has reduced a post to bitching.
 
The wonders of an open forum, huh, PS? We can post whatever we like, and the only ones who can stop us? Admin :)

The closest thing to a deep litter meme I can find:

The%2BLitter%2BTray%2BIs%2BEmpty%2BAgain%2B-%2BSomeone%2BIs%2BStealing%2BMy%2BPoop.jpg
 
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