Elephant Grass bedding?

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Bert&Maud

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I'm looking for an alternative to hemp as it's become so expensive. A friend told me that someone on her yard has started to use elephant grass, but doesn't know yet how it is performing. Has anyone else used it? What's its absorbency like, and does it rot down well.
 
a lady at my yard switched from aubiose to elephant grass, and thought that it was very comparable. not much difference in absorbency, and much much cheaper
worth a try i would have thought
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We have it. It sucks. We use only a sprinkling on top of rubber matting but its appaling. no absorbancy, sharp, gets everywhere. Hate it. Only benifit is no dust. One of the grooms did try it at home with his TB mare and she ended up getting sore soles because of it!
 
No it is rubbish, it is no way in comparison with Hemp. We trialled it at work and found it to be dusty and slippy despite watering it as described. It seemed very harsh and smelt like musty straw. We all hated mucking it out, thankfully we are back on Bedmax now.
 
We sell loads of it, more than shavings, but people are very cost concious around us, and at under £6.00 a bale it is fairly cheap. We use it for the poultry!

Just started stocking Bliss, seems to be popular so far, no ust either which is lovely!
 
Don't know about it's performance but I'm afraid I've written it off on eco grounds. Yes it sounds ideal ie fast growing and sustainable, but it's the same issue as with biofuels - ploughing up natural habitats or using land grown for food (biofuels are one of the reason food prices are going up - although I know this is a massively complex issue!). It's one of the reasons I'm sticking with cardboard bedding - it's a waste product. And after I've used it for bedding, I compost it or mulch beds with it.
 
Ooo I'm guessing the eco issues are similar to those associated with vast fields of oilseed rape for bio fuels? Got any more, if I can think of eco reasons to get rid of it might get my way as national trust has got this dumb psdo-environment policy.

On a similar note anyone who uses the ecover lines of washing up liquid, washing powder etc they're acctually worse for the environment than the non "eco" products. Mainly because they come diluted so theres much more water used in production leading to more fuel used for transportation and in production making the sum cost environmentally worse. Normal chemical products come concentrated so alot less energy is used, a fact that one company has used recently in its ad campaigns!
 
With the greatest of respect, is it really eco friendly to keep a horse purely for leisure? It produces Methane which is a greenhouse gas, eats cereals which could be used for human food and is lugged around the countryside to shows etc by a 4x4 or lorry.

Getting back onto the topic of miscanthus, it is grown on marginal ground which is not cost effective for growing food crops on. If it was suitalbe for growing wheat it would be happiuly growing it right now as it would be far more profitable.
 
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