Wood pellet users - can you advise?

[stimpy]

I have been very happily using Ecobed cardboard for a few years but this year I have got a mare and her 7 month old foal sharing a stable and it's a nightmare. It's a 12 x 12 stable and the mare is 13:2 but with the two of them in there and the foal up and down like a fiddler's elbow all night the bed is trashed. I take 3 wheelbarrows out every day and am using a bale of cardboard every two days And that's with a 2/3 bed on rubber mats with small banks. It takes me around 20 minutes to turn poomageddon into a vaguely acceptable stable and that's a compromise, it's not as clean as I'd like but the poo is trampled into smaller bits that the squares of cardboard and there is a lot of wet bedding to take out. I plan to keep my other horses on ecobed for now and just switch the two girls' stable as this is the one that is a major problem.

Do you think that wood pellets would work in this situation? Would straw pellets be better?

If I switch should I use the existing ecobed to make the banks or should I bite the bullet and take it all out and use more bags of pellets to start the bed?

Thanks in advance for any advice you can pass on

 

[cm2581]

I'd be inclined to use straw and just take most out each day. Prob the easiest option!

 

[Maesfen]

Wood pellets would be fine for you and have the added bonus that they stay still on the floor, they don't move around so foal will always have a bed underneath him.
I would use 8 bags to start the bed, damp down a little and rake over; do not bother with banks as sometimes that encourages foals to get cast.
Foal might be a messer in that he moves around a lot but I'd be very surprised if he's very wet so I would just take out any droppings and rake the bed over so that it gets a solid base and the deeper the bed is the more economical it will be.
Two tips I think for wood pellets and they are always rake out any old hay out of the bed every day as otherwise it clumps up and seems to hold the damp so makes the bed seem damper. Also if you think the bed will go another day before you top up with new pellets you can bet your bottom dollar that the next day you'll wish you had done it the day before; that used to catch me out without fail the first year I used them!
I've found that even with foals, they take one mouthful and then spit them out while giving me a dirty look so when topping up you can just add the pellets without damping them.