Rubber Matting - Pros and Cons - Also in NL

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Fizzimyst

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So, with four horses I'm thinking about winter and mucking out four boxes every day with a small child in tow and wanting to get some sleep.......

I'm thinking about rubber matting. Never used it but would like to know everyones thoughts on it.

Whats the best type, whats the worst, whats the cheapest, whats the good points, whats the bad points........
 
well I wouldn't be without mine. I have the horse comfort mayo mat ones which are 34mm of EVA..
Horse comfort mayo mats

They are not cheap but have more than made up their cost in both time and the ammount of shavings I use. they are much warmer than rubber and if you kneel on them you can feel just how cushioning they are for the joints.

I definitley use less shavings (one of mine was at a pros yard and they were about a bale a day of shavings he is that disgusting!!) I use about 1/2 a bale per week each on my mats.

I have had the equimats (green jigsaw ones) they were fine for the fisrt year or so but eventually the joints stretched and the muck just sat in the joints and were stinking. I have also used the hard rubber and they were fine for about 4 years until the rubber perished and the pee just went straight through and sat underneath! I have had my first lot of mats from horse comfort for 9 years now - they are guarnateed for 10 and you can't tell which of mine are 2 years old and which are 9!

this a picture of one of my stables just to show how much bedding i use with them!
P6160556.jpg


Hope that helps!
 
Do you really really need to stable your horses at all? I find a lot of people purely do it for their own peace of mind, but it'll save you SO much work if they live out! Mine all live out 24/7 all year round and that includes my Luso x TB who is hunter clipped during the winter. Modern rugs are so cosy nowadays. Ideally, if your yard allows it the perfect system I find is to open gates so they have access from the field directly into the yard and their stables (leave doors open). Works really well IMO.

I have rubber matting down in my stable (which is used in the above way, with door left open so they can come and go) and am hopefully getting some from a fellow HHOer to put in their other larger stable. I dont put any bedding down at all as I find with them coming and going it would get soaked very quickly. At the same time, I occassionally do stable them overnight if they have an event early next day and then simply put down a small square of bedding (shavings or wood chips) purely for them to pee on. I find they are happy to lie down on the matting itself. I think its wonderful stuff and couldnt live without it! The only con I find is that my way of very little bedding means big stable stains sometimes!!
 
I used rubber matting and a small corner of bedding for my disgusting horse. While I did save on savings, my horse lies down alot and got capped hocks from laying on the rubber mats. He also had to live in his turnout rug as a stable rug just soaked everything up and was stinking!

I've switched back to a thick deep littered shavings bed on top of the mats which works much better for him.
 
I use Stablelite - and have done since 1996 on various horses. They are very heavy soft rubber which allow pee to soak through and have lasted very well.

Our present clydie is a big girl and very piddly, she has megazorb over the back third of the stable about 2 - 3" deep. I take out the wet spot at the end of the week and poos daily. It is very quick and easy to do, even with Farra, to skip and tidy the bed is 5 mins and 10 mins at the weekend when taking out the wet.

I use a bag a week on her - far more than most people, but as said, she is a big girl compared to others. She does get some stable stains, but she did when on a conventional bed - she is 17 hands in a 12 x 12 stable and poos all over the place.

I am this year going to convert my second stable to Stablelite and megazorb. Stinky is very clean - poos at the back and piddles in one place, so he will be excellent on this system.

Pros - saves time, money on bedding and is warm and comfortable for the horse, particularly good for old or horses with joint problems as standing on soft surface. Excellent if you have a box walker.

Cons - my mats are extremely heavy - but they don't move and offer a lot of comfort due to their thickness. As they also let the pee go through, I take them up once a year and hose out the stable. A big and dirty job, but not bad if there are two of you. If you don't use much bedding, you can get dirty rugs, but some people use t/o rugs when they are in instead.

I could live without them with Stinky, but not for Farra - it would be 5 barrows a day and half a bag of shavings - life is too short to be doing that daily for six months of the year when she is in at night.

Avoid the really cheap ones if you can, I have seen some and they were thin and curled. Stablelite are not the cheapest - to do a 12 x 12 stable is about £450 but they last for years, are warm and soft, don't move or curl, you lay them like carpet tiles and you don't get puddles of pee sitting on the surface.
 
i got some old conveyor belting ( i was told ex airport?) & while it is not thick about 4 mm it does help stop the bedding (straw) sliding about, which helps a lot in the old cow shed stables i have which slope a little more than is ideal, i can tell the difference in warmth between standing on it and the bare floor, every little helps.

i found a place which sells lots of different types of used roll rubber, some as thick as 30mm but it is too heavy to shift!

i also use mine outside when i bath so to minimise the risk of slipping on wet concrete.
 
I have rubber mats - have had them for 7 years. Fantastic!! With my tidy mare I now only use a bale of shavings every 2-3 weeks. I am saving to get my filly some mats too.
 
I have stable comfort matting. This is basically soft crumb rubber filled mattress with a continuous piece of water proof rubber laid over it. It is sealed to the walls at the sides and to the floor at the door which means that no wet gets in under it like with some mats, so you never have to clean under. The matressing makes them really soft for the horses to lie on without any bedding. You just need to use enough bedding to soak up the wet. Mucking out is so quick then. Just lift up the droppings and the wet patch or if horse is messy sweep everything out every day.

Only problem with using a small amount of bedding is that some horses, usually geldings, don't like to pee on it because without the deep bed it splashes their legs. But you can always have a bit of a bed at the back as mentioned above. Leave the whole lot in for a while and take it all out every so often when it needs replacing.
 
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