How to stop bed eating! Advice please

Spyda

Spyda

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Any tips for stopping bed eating? My filly has started to stuff her straw bed. Cannot use alternative bedding as it is the only bedding permitted at our yard. She is offered ad-lib haylage - but is STILL consuming huge amounts of clean bedding in addition to it. I've tried mixing the clean in with the older stuff - doesn't work.
 
Is she getting enough fibre? SHe could be eating the straw due to this.

I would recommend diluted jeyes or a diluted dettol or similar type of liquid with a strong smell.
 
Ahhh, no - she gets two large-holed haynets filled with a combined weight of 24lb haylage when she comes in for the night. She'll eat all but about 5 or 6 lbs of these by morning. She's never left without access to ad-lib haylage, and I always tip out whatever she's left by morning and replace it with full nets of fresh haylage. The bed is just extra snacking!

She's always been kept on shavings/Megazorb/Bliss until now. She just likes eating straw; I brought her in at 6.30pm last night and just as soon as she walked through the stable door her head went down and she starting tucking into great mouthfuls of the fresh straw. Before I'd even gotten her through the door, taken her head collar off or she'd looked into her feed bucket!! She's plenty to eat in the field so it's not a case of starvation!!

The new batch of straw I started using yesterday isn't as nice as the last, and I am not sure I want her eating it frankly. I've no objection to a bit of bed picking - but what she's getting through is ridiculous.

She also gets two hard feeds per day, with 1Kg of HiFi in each - so it cannot be a lack of roughage. Her dam is in the next stable and the same freshly laid bed lasts her a good 4 or 5 days - whereas with the filly's lasts maybe 1 or 2 days before it's nothing but filth. I semi-deep litter. I've tried mixing the fresh straw into the old, but she just mines through it and makes an even bigger mess of her bed.

Grrrr.........
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I've heard of using dilute Jeyes before but know it is toxic to my ferrets, so wouldn't want to risk poisoning the filly if she decided to look at the new flavour as a form of condiment (wouldn't surprise me!
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When I put a new bale down, I pull some of the old bed through it. It grieves me to do this because I love to see star standing knee deep in clean straw, but it does stop her eating all the top of her bed.
 
Can you deep litter? This would mean that you'd only be adding 1 /2 sections of fresh straw per day max.

The other thing you could do is feed from the ground, haynet feeding puts them in an unnatural position and also the small hole haynets are quite hard work, so they could also be swapping to straw as its easier to eat.

Also I really wouldn't worry if you've got a nice batch of straw!
 
Full deep littering her doesn't work as she eats absolutely every scrap of the clean straw laid over the dirty each day, so ends up standing on the wet straw. I find semi-deep littering works as the bed underneath never gets that's dirty so at least she's never left standing on very wet urine soaked straw.

I've tried feeding from the floor but it is terribly wasteful. She just drags the haylage into her bed and poops and wees on much of it, before she has a chance to eat very much of it. Total waste.

I guess I'll try spraying the clean straw with something which tastes unpleasant. And roll on Spring, when she can start living out 24/7 again!
 
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