for those of you that buy shavings

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rainer

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Do you have a sawmill near you? Only my old boss goes to a sawmill where all the shavings go into a shed from a big pipe,she then fills empty feed bags with shavings and loads them into her horse box to take home :) all for free! When I helped we would get about 50 bags if not more lol (hated doing it you needed a mask!). But if you got a massive load you didn't need to go very often. Basically if I were you I would see if there's a sawmill nearby and ask if you can have the shavings,if not for free then probably cheaper than what you pay now. :) xxx
 
My sawmills charges £1 a bag. I mix sawdust and normal shavings 50/50 and it makes a great bed and keeps the cost of using shavings down. Even my pissy box walker is (relatively) clean on it!
 
Where my old boss got it from some of it was sawdust at the back of the shed and shavings at the front, she always wets it down in the stables and the horses have been fine with it even the tb. :) x
 
A friend used to collect free shavings/sawdust. Absolutely horrible stuff! I put some into her pony's stable once and felt dreadful afterwards, there was some hardwood in there and it is incredibly drying. I wouldn't use it for any of my animals, no matter how much money I needed to save.

Not a good idea imo.
 
Fair enough if you have found it not to be good, the shavings we had must be good quality lol like I said it wasn't dusty as we wet it and several horses were on it in the time I was there, she has about 13 horses,she breeds trakhners. Just think its worth a try :) x she has rubber matting too :)
 
I think that the resin is not good for feet, so on many levels I would rather not use shavings straight from the saw mill.
 
My partner works at a design factory as such and they own all the correct machinery and its mainly softwood which they deal with.Its lovely stuff that I get infact I am prepared to say better quality then some brands and no dust at all as goes through a number of extractors.Normally 6 bags gives one of mine huge banks and a decent bed to lay on and its all for free.I wouldnt use it if it were dusty as im quite fussy,but my lot literatly nose dive and hit the deck for a roll as soon as they come in.I dont think I would have my lot on anything else as its good quality,the flakes are also quite large. :)
 
I was once on a full livery at a yard that used saw dust from a mill. Livery was £100 a week and the "eventer" who ran the place thought I was a huge snob for insisting on buying in Hunters (which I paid for in addition to livery).

He soon changed his tune though and started using my Hunters on his boxes as well (luckily I found out not soon after and managed to move).

It was horrible stuff - the horses did not stop coughing on it and it covered everything in a thin white dust, got into your hair, clothes, eyelashes etc. aggh, never again. I would have no problem if the shavngs are dust extracted - that would be just the same as Hunters.
 
I'm not sure but I think it must have been dust extracted a bit as it was never THAT dusty that it made them cough and got everywhere etc once it was down and wetted it pretty much stayed where it was and was soft and managable, it was more good shavings than anything else and I don't think jo would have used it if she didn't approve of it as she has quite high standards of which I didn't always live up to! Hence why I left lol :p x
 
When we were stationed in North of Germany one of the ladies had an arrangement with local saw mill and we would turn up with a high sided trailer. She would put a pipe in and shavings piped into trailer with us stamping in down as hard as we could trailer covered with tarp and returned to yard with enough to do her for a month. Because it was stamped down when you dropped the ramp it was compacted enough to be cut off in slices.
 
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