Most absorbent bedding with rubber matting

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maxweg

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I'm wondering what bedding people use with rubber matting.
I only want to use enough bedding to soak up the wee and stop it smelling. I won't be deep littering as she's happy with the matting but she's a bit messy
I like Aubiose but it's rather costly does anyone have other suggestions
 
wood pellets IMO

I've tried almost everything else I can get my hands on and I just keep coming back to pellets. I loved aubiose when I had a dirt floor but now i'm on concrete + mats.
 
Agree, wood pellets ARE the most absorbent.

I have just switched over to Aubiose tho (my horse is on full box rest for a few months) and I'm finding it superb. I have mats and put a 3/4 bed with banks in too.
 
Another vote for wood pellets . I use a wood pellet bed with wood pellet/shaving banks , only because I like nice big fluffy banks . I'm anal about my bed, you could put a spirit level on my banks hehe. When you're looking for pellets , a lot of pellets are cheaper , only 5% vat , if to be used for pellet burners . Makes a difference price wise especially if buying in bulk . Some sellers state that the pellets are exactly the same so are suitable for bedding as well as burning .
 
Wood pellets here too, but you need enough bed for it to actually soak in. A small amount of any bedding will stink to high heaven.
 
Just to add: With a small bed of any type you wont be able to reduce smell. I use mats with a full bed now, but have previously tried various bedding types - some with a reduced amount put down, just enough in a corner for the horse to urinate. The unavoidable issue with limited bedding is that the horse will lie down on 'naked' dung piles and a wet floor/bed substrate. This results in a very dirty and smelly horse, and equally smelly rugs when these are worn in the stable. A reduced bed may possibly result in quicker muckouts (altho not IMO), but it certainly does nothing to reduce smell - makes it worse IME. Just a point to consider. xx
 
I've found that a bigger bed lasts longer and smells less that a token sprinkling over the matting. I mix bed max and a generic brand of fine shavings, fully muck out everyday and remove less than a wherlbarrow load. Add between 1 to 2 bags a week and it always looks great. I am considering aubiose tho as i believe that once you've made up the bed you just take droppings out daily and rake top layer then once per week remove wet adding half to one bag of aubiose to top up bed. There are cheaper and nicer less smelly ways to bed a horse down than leaving it on matting with just a sprinkling to wee on which will stink in no time.
 
Thanks everyone , I think I might stick with aubiose , I'm just not sure about the pellets and I think you are right I will need a thick bed to absorb and reduce smells , so now in contact with aubiose for the best deals��
 
Disagree with wood as most absorbent.... sorry! I thought that too before I found chopped rape straw!!! Literally the best thing since errr... wood pellets (I guess).

Though... I never will understand why people use rubber matting if they want something that absorbs well and doesn't smell? Urine just collects underneath the mats and goes slimy and horrible and the smell is so much worse. Much better to put down a thick bed and remove the wet. I do and after 3 bales to start off I only use 1 bale a week.
 
tallyho! said:
Disagree with wood as most absorbent.... sorry! I thought that too before I found chopped rape straw!!! Literally the best thing since errr... wood pellets (I guess).

Though... I never will understand why people use rubber matting if they want something that absorbs well and doesn't smell? Urine just collects underneath the mats and goes slimy and horrible and the smell is so much worse. Much better to put down a thick bed and remove the wet. I do and after 3 bales to start off I only use 1 bale a week.
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Re: mats, urine and smelly slime underneath - I must admit this hasn't been a problem in my experience. I have a stable floor lined throughout in heavy 6x3' rubber matting which my husband and I laid ourselves. We initially sealed the mats all round with silicon sealant to make the floor water tight. This worked well for the first year, after then the silicon started to peel away so I just removed it by pulling it up out of the gaps. Ideally we would have reapplied it BUT typically never did! Five years on I am using the same stable with the same mats down. Last winter I used a couple of bags of wood pellets in the centre of the stable (I have a gelding, so he generally urinates in the centre of the bed) and laid a straw bed with banks over the top. I semi-deep littered, leaving in the wet until the wood pellets were sodden and hard in the centre, when I would use a snow-shovel to lift the wet out and replace with fresh pellets. The straw bed on top was just skipped out daily. I never wash my stable out or lift my mats.

When the horses start living out in the spring I empty the stable of all the bedding and leave the mats bare over summer. When I lift the mats to check underneath they are fine! The most I'll have to deal with is the little bit of powdered wood pellet fibre that managed to work its way between the cracks over winter - always virtually nothing and this may, in some part, help prevent any excess liquid seaping further in under the mats by creating a barrier. That said, the wood pellets are pretty effective at quickly 'catching' the urine - and there isn't much of anything to leach under the mats providing the wet pellets are removed when they are 'at capacity.'

The reason I 'bed up' over mats is that when I tried the minimal bedding system with the mats my horses and their rugs were just AWFUL every morning; the horses were effectively laying down in their own faeces and it showed (and stunk.) The rugs and horses were caked in dried dung every morning and the stable stains were absolutely outstanding!! Not nice. I now bed up the rear 2/3 of my stable and am happy to have the bare mats at the front where my horse stands to eat from his Haybar and look over his door as they are warmer and kinder for his legs to stand on.

I have just switched to using Aubiose over my mats and am finding it extremely good. The Aubiose is a little more time consuming to muck out than the straw and pellets were in previous years, but my horse is in on box rest for a few months and I'm keen to keep the dust in his environment to a minimum. That said, shavings, hemp, Megazorb, Bliss, etc would all be similarly time consuming due to the laborious sifting out of small manure fragments twice a day due to my horse being confined and milling about churning the dung piles up.
 
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I've never had a problem with mats either when they've been fitted correctly.
My hay is at the rear along with her drinker so if I laid the bed 2/3 to the front?
how many bags of aubiose did you start with ?
 
maxweg said:
I've never had a problem with mats either when they've been fitted correctly.
My hay is at the rear along with her drinker so if I laid the bed 2/3 to the front?
how many bags of aubiose did you start with ?
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Just lay your bed where your horse tends to lay down, or can lay down comfortably and with enough room. I feed lightly soaked hay and feed this inside a haynet inside the Haybar and find this really works well to prevent hay being dragged into the bed. Any little bits are easy to pick out because they are a damp clump of hay rather than millions of lose strands!

I used 6 bags of Aubiose to set my initial bed over the mats; a 5" depth with moderate banks along the 3 wall sides. My stable is relatively small at 11x11ft square appx. Maybe add an extra bag if your stable is a standard 12x12" or a bit bigger.

I'm into my 3rd week with the Aubiose now (and my horse is on 24/7 box rest - so at max possible mess capacity!) and I've only just used the last half of another bag of Aubiose topping the bed up. At the moment I am using just under 1/2 bale of Aubiose a week to top the bed up once a week, so I'm hoping 2 bales per month will be all I need to keep the bed nice. And things can only get better once Mr can start being turned out again, reducing the amount of time he's pacing his box and mashing his poops into the substrate. I'm impressed so far.
 
Thanks , she's fairly new to me but comes in during the day at the moment then will turn around when winter sets in. 12 x12 stable , she's fed hay in a net only as used a haybar before and found them hard to clean as hay residue got caught in the bottom and got a bit " manky" imo!
I have found though that the hay gets on the floor and mixes with the bedding but if I don't lay a bed around that area then hopefully ?!
Just in the process of pricing a pallet delivery of Aubiose but that for the info/advice
 
maxweg said:
Thanks , she's fairly new to me but comes in during the day at the moment then will turn around when winter sets in. 12 x12 stable , she's fed hay in a net only as used a haybar before and found them hard to clean as hay residue got caught in the bottom and got a bit " manky" imo!
I have found though that the hay gets on the floor and mixes with the bedding but if I don't lay a bed around that area then hopefully ?!
Just in the process of pricing a pallet delivery of Aubiose but that for the info/advice
Click to expand...

With the Haybar they have to be installed off the ground at the bottom enough so you can get in under there to pull out any small fallen hay. Anything bigger I scoop out with the fork over the top and into my barrow. If the Haybar were fitted close to the floor though I imagine it wouldn't be very nice to keep the inside clean and a pain to get bits out from the very bottom.
 
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