Messy Bed

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Whoopit

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Oldham, Manchester. For my sins!
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My horse is grim. Every morning without fail his bed is a state. It's like he'll have a dump, tiddle all over it then jump up and down and all around, treading in as much straw as possible. Presumably repeat scenario all night.

I've tried a really thick bed and it's exactly the same. I flatly refuse to take over a bale of mucky stomped-all-over straw out everyday (for a start, I'd be broke in a month) so he has a really thin bed. Critisise that all you like, I don't care! Most of it hasn't actually been tiddled or pooed on, it's got to come out as he's walked muck into it :mad:

He is a 2.5yr old ex-racehorse (since August), I've never seen him box-walk and he has no stable vices at all. Two huge nets of haylage are gone every morning so i've always made the assumption that he stands & eats all night, but perhaps this is just not the case!

Pleeeeeeease tell me he'll grow out of this messy horrible infurating man-lifestyle?!!! :D
 
I feel your pain, its sooo annoying when they do that, don't they want a clean bed?
With his age i would have thought he'd grow out of it, my friends filly did, but then again, he may not, can you stick him on shavings? i found shavings easier to deal with with this sort of horse. But then that might just be me.
 
My mare is disgusting too i have just changed her from straw on to bedmax, she is marginally better but still pretty grim. I have watched her and she grabs a mouthful of hay then walks round her box to look out the door at what is going on outside, without really pixking her feet up properly so just drags the bedding around and churns it up. she actually buries her poos too so its great fun trying to locate them. i also feel your pain!!
 
I've had my TB since last October & used to have exactly the same problem, he was basically weeing & pooing on his bed & then eating the straw so walking it all in & i'd be left with a gross 'soup' everyday. The first thing I did was move where his bed was (i put in on the side rather than at the back of the stable) so that when he was eating hay, standing with his head out the stable door he would be pooing on the rubber matting rather than his bed so he had less poo to walk in on his bed. I then swopped him on to shavings (he had an operation & was on box rest for 4-5 month) & he has a thin bed & then swopped him back on to straw & he's now so clean, even poos in one place in his stable. Hope that helps...:)
 
The yard i'm at charges extra for you having shavings, even though they go on the same muck heap as the straw, bizarrely.

I think I may have to get rubber matting for him as it's driving me mad! The way his box is his bed is at the right hand side as you come through the door (as the rings are all on the left so have to hang his nets on that side) but he has a net at the back left and one at the door on the left.

And another annoying thing is, he likes playing in his water bucket!!! That's just his age, I realise, so that's not helping either!
 
Get a water bucket which sits on a bracket to the wall and clips on. At least then you don't have a bucket of water to help make a mess with.

My filly is disgusting. She gets half a bed at the back of her stable and the front is left as bare mats as she stands at the door pooing and weeing and being nosey all night! She is utterly gross but is slightly better this way as there is less bed for her to drag around and mess up. The more bed goes in the worse it gets!
 
Yeh at least if you have rubber matting you can have a cheap thin bed without worrying about your horse cutting itself to shreds on the floor (stupid thin skinned tb's)..
 
My mare is gross too so I changed to rubber matting with no bedding. The bedding in there was just wasted as I was sweeping it out everyday. Now I just sweep out the mess and wash it out with a bucket of water every day :)
 
i used to have a horrendously messy 17.2 tbx, & my friend has a bad 17hh tb. We found the best solution for these guys, both avid box walkers, was rubber matting & a sprinkle of shavings to soak up the wet & take it all out everyday. Mine used to lay down, so obviously his rugs were gross, but i just put a thin stable on top & regularly washed it, wasnt ideal but saved me a fortune on shavings. With this technique we used on average a bale of shavings every 10days per horse. We had both tried different beddings, but this worked best for us.
Good luck!
 
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