What bedding?????

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Rocky01

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Hi,

I'm moving onto Assisted DIY livery in a few weeks and can choose my own bedding. :D

My horses are going to be skipped out 5 days a week and mucked out fully on the weekend.

I've looked at the different types of bedding but am wondering what people have found really works for this type of set up. Neither horse is terrible but not perfect either. The only bedding types I can't/don't want to use are straw (allergies) and wood pellet bedding (Bad experience with it).

Also, just wondering what people think of Haybars and is rubber matting really valuable for barefoot horses if the bed is thick enough?

Anyway, any help would be really great.

Thanks,

Rox
 
I used to be a shavings person, I hate straw with a passion(mostly because most people on my yard don't have it deep enough and their beds stink)
Now I am a complete convert to Cushionbed.

http://www.giffords.biz/bed/bed1.htm

Doesn't move like shavings. I deep litter my bed with it too and its great, other people on the yard use it on mats, and they like it.
 
Thanks so much lauraanddolly, this is just the kind of reply I was hoping for.

Could I ask how much bedding everyone tends to go through as well?

Thanks again.
 
lauraanddolly, that bedding looks really good and its really cheap - I am on straw atm but hate it but it was all i had before i need to go to the local show - i might have to invest in some of that :) x
 
Cushionbed was very very popular when I worked at the tack shop (albeit 12 months ago!) and was only £6.10 for a bale - meant to be very absorbant, very non dusty and easy to work with.
I'm on straw with Kelly, but only because we can't use pellets because the chestnut mare Pebbles comes out in cuts and lumps :eek: and we can't afford to be using different beds for them both!! Kelly is horrendously dirty on shavings...we were going through bales a day :(
On straw, we are using (atm, Kelly is eating hers :() about 4 bales a week...I think Cushionbed would be less as you won't have to completely empty it so often :)
A lot of people on our yard have rubber mattings for older or barefoot horses and find it beneficial :)
 
I use shavings (Hunters) and started with 4 bales and have put one new bale down in 3 weeks, bearing in mind he's out overnight. He has mats and does move the one getting up and down. The shavings do move a lot but I think this is more due to him than the type of bedding they are.

The smell is gone (was on straw-yuk) and it's not as expensive as I thought. I am concerned that if I change bedding, he gets sensitive to it and comes up in little scabs.:(
 
I have to work with straw beds and i hate them! I find they dont absorb the wet very well and smell. I use shavings, always have really. I use 2-3 bales a week as mines stabled over night and during the day sometimes. When I first got my horse near 3yrs ago we paid £5 for a bale of shavings and now we pay £6.50 for a bale and theres less in them :eek:
 
Thanks everyone for the answers so far. I'm on the fence with shavings, please don't shoot me ;). What do people think about Aubiose, Easibed and Paper?

Thanks

Rox
 
We use paper, but we don't buy it - we shred our own, yes it can be time consuming, but once you get into the habit of shredding everything you can it is easy. The shredder paid for itself in a relatively short time. We also get shredded paper from work - I just nag about there not being any staples in it - and so far so good. It degrades really quickly and is easy to muck out - the only thing I would say is make sure it is cross-cut - the horse used to hate dragging long stands of it about. We have also used cardboard - again cut into small squares, it was just as easy to muck out and soaked up the wet really well - we used to buy it with another livery at the yard where we were and bought 30 bales at a time which worked out at 4.50 per bale - mind you that was over a year ago.

To be honest the best saving I made was having rubber mats - yes the initial outlay is expensive but IMHO worth every penny - we saved quite a lot on shavings at the time, as you only really need a bed where they are going to lay down.
 
I love paper but it wont work with a semi deep litter type system- It would just flatten and be soaked through. although you may find it so easy to muck out that removing the wet wont take long (i do a paper bed properly in the time it takes me to skip out shavings!)

Last Jan/Feb time i bought 60 bales of Giffords Cushion bed, It was on offer at £3.25 delivered per bale!!!!
I loved it and it smells fresh and is easy to muck out as it stays in place and poo sits on top.

The only thing i found was that it was a bit dusty??? did anyone else think this? to the point that when i open a new bag there is a layer of very obvious dust on the top???
 
Yup, I found cushion bed really dusty too. It wasn't when I started on it, but towards the end of last winter the bags were awfully dusty & it kind of hung in the air for ages after I'd laid the bed :(

Then went onto straw to save money, with a layer of sawdust underneath to help absorb the wet (£1.80 for a big-ish bag delivered from the local saw mill :)). Works well, keeps the straw a lot fresher.

Thinking about other options for this winter though, the cost of straw round here has already gone up :o
 
Thanks everyone so far. Okay, so at the moment I'm ruling out Straw (allergies), Wood pellet bedding (had a bad experience), Paper and cardboard (even though I want to I can't see my friend mucking out every time I can't get up there whereas he has agreed to skip out) and Cushionbed (don't really want anything that could be noticeably dusty (allergies again).

Any more ideas please let me know.

Thanks

Rox
 
I know you said not wood pellets, but I would ask that you try a different brand, i've found they're brilliant, especially for a deep litter or semi deep litter system,

I also like megazorb, although a bag doesn't seem to go very far IMO.
otherwise you could try hemcore or aubiose, both very absorbant but expensive.
or theres miscanthus ( http://www.miscanthuspure.com/product.htm as an example). not tried it but is meant to be quite good.
 
What is megazorb like?

I know a lot of people like wood pellets but I'm really not sure. My horses are currently on them and the bed is always spreading over the floor (it's normally half the floor with rubber matting). The horses are always really dusty and greasy and it's always dusty in their stables (to the point that there is no clear air or water, I cough whenever I'm in there).
They're on part livery at the moment and one of the reasons I'm moving onto assisted DIY is the bedding, though not the only reason. If someone could recommend a make of them that isn't dusty even with the horses out during the day and in this heat bearing in mind that I can't wet the bed down every day I would be interested.

The beddings that seem to be winning at the moment are Aubiose and Easibed but I would really like to know if there are any others that I don't know much about, like the megazorb and the miscanthus.

Thanks again
 
I use Miscanthus and have done so for many years now: I had rubber matting down so you don't need to use very much, less is definately more in my experience. What I do is put clean stuff down from the middle outwards, i.e. skip out and remove wet stuff, then brush or fork anything else (slightly soiled but not too wet) to the sides to make a nice anti-cast shape to the bed. How much do I use? Gosh, hard one, sorry no idea.

The advantage of Miscanthus is that you really don't use very much of it so I find it really economical and mega easy. Someone said to me that if your horse gets feathermites then straw isn't the best thing you can use coz it can harbour them apparently.

I've tried paper (yuck! very heavy when wet and very time-consuming); sawdust (went clumpy when wet and used a lot); & cardboard (ditto for paper).

It will cost a tad extra to fix up a bed with Miscanthus, but once you've done it, especially with rubber matting underneath, it really is superb IMO.
 
I've done flax, straw, cardboard, bliss + shavings mix and shavings :p

Think my favourite would be cardboard... it was easy to muck out and cheaper than shavings. You use less bedding on deep litter flax/bliss, but it is v expensive per bale. If you have a relatively tidy horse it would work well. Though it does get very heavy when wet. Don't really like straw... Shavings are fine, and make a nice bed if you have a clean horse, but having got through 3/4 bales a week with my big mare, it is expensive!!!
 
QR - I've tried most bedding option through work and my own horse and have now settled on rubber mats at the front as he is active and Snowflake Softbed at the back, I use a bale a week and it cost me just £5 more than if I had the as much as you can use straw deal the livery yard offers. It is clean and efficient and not dusty at all. We trialled miscanthus as work and it did not trail well at all - v. slippy and musty smelling (and yes we did use it as per manufacturers guidelines. Thumbs up for Nedz Bedz or Aubiose or Bliss. Paper is good too but found it was best when mucked out every other day rather than the routine you described.
 
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