Managing mucky Shaving beds

[ellis9905]

So have recently moved yards and switched over to shavings bed... Lucky as all the stables have lovely thick decent rubber matted floors.

Now one pony is very clean and I can just remove a couple piles of poo each morning and that's job done.... The other is a complete nightmare!! I look over the stable door each morning and just don't know where to start!!!

I was under the impression that with decent rubber matting you need hardly any shavings down??

I know it doesn't look so nice but am contemplating abandoning a big bed and trying a sprinkling of bedding that can then be totally removed each morning- does anyone else keep a shavings bed like this??

as the other owners have the horses on massive big shavings bed ... So big you step up onto them!!

 

[CPayne]

I have thick rubber mats and one horse just has a pile of shavings at one end, poos and wees there, nice and tidy. The other horse sounds like yours, mess everywhere, and he has a thin dusting over the whole stable with a pile at one end for wees. The thin dusting just helps to absorb the moisture in the poos. They both learnt to wee in the pile of shavings within a couple of days, although I knew one mare who never seemed to learn! The only thing I find is that their rugs do get dirtier on the outside from lying on the poo, however still cheaper to clean rugs a couple of times a season than use a bale of shavings a day, and the horses don't care if their rugs are dirty. Good luck.

 

[Toby_Zaphod]

Our two were on shavings for years, one was pretty clean & the other was a nightmare. Every morning we'd look into his stable & it was horrendous, poo everywhere & he is a grey & used the poo as a pillow. It was hard work & time consuming to clean him up & muck out & the shavings used were expensive

A few months ago we changed to wood pellets, we weren't sure how it was going to go but we couldn't keep on with the issues we were having every morning & which got worse if we had to keep them in. Anyway we set up the beds with the pellets & since then have found the horses so much cleaner, quick to muck out & we have saved so much time. It takes us less than half the time to much out now than it used to. I don't keep records of spending but I believe it's been cheaper than the shavings as well.

As I said I was very sceptical about changing to pellets but have been very pleased & I should have done it a long time ago. It's certainly worth trying.

We use Corley Bio as they are very near to us so delivery is quick & easy.

 

[Slightlyconfused]

One of mine is a nightmare on shavings, we tried the thin bed but he just box walked it into mulch so I did a really think bed and deep littered it, we are on rubber matting too, for a month just took poo out, fluffed up bed and banks and topped up with on bale a week to keep the top dry. After a month I put snout three/inches of good shavings on the banks and leveled out the base then put bed back down again. It comes up everyday as he box walks his poo about do I have to go find it but I don't touch the base, he goes through one bale a week and is a lot cleaner.

Some times mahoosive beds are better with some dirty horses