Bedding

[Miniv]

We also have rubber mats -- I love them! Consequently we don't need to use as much bedding. We prefer shavings. Cedar shavings are nice, but not readily available, so we usually get pine.

For foaling stalls, we bed with grass hay, not straw.

 

[wantminimore]

I have wood floors and have gone back and forth from shavings to Woody Pet. I would love to use Woody Pet all the time but I don't like it in the winter and any it leaves everything in the barn covered in dust. It does make stall cleaning so much faster though. Right now i'm using shavings and it's nearly impossible to use a fine tine fork to clean with so i'm using a regular fork and the stalls don't get as clean as I like them to be.

Leslie

 

[Windhaven]

I used sawdust for 25 + years and loved it, never had a problem with it. Easy to clean and when you put fresh down it smells great. I just didn't let my mares foal on it. I used straw for that. I too do not like straw because you have more waste and your manure pile grows twice as fast and it doesn't hold down the smell like sawdust does. When I use straw I also put down a thick bed of sawdust under the straw to help soak up the wet.

My first vote is sawdust and then the next is shavings.

 

[lilfolks]

My 2 cents to the subject for what it's worth. I have wooden floors in my barn with the thick rubber mats over them and I use shavings. I tried Woody Pet for a month and hated the stuff so went back to the shavings. I clean stalls once a day. For foaling I always use hay for a few days.

If for some reason, a mini is stalled during the day then I clean out twice a day. This works best for me and have had minis since 1986.

 

[whitney]

Windhaven were'd you get your sawdust? I live right around the corner from your place in Michigan.

 

[spellcasterminis]

I hate the straw, because it's hard to clean. I hate the sawdust, because it's dusty. We tried the corn cob bedding last year and I love it. Takes a few more bags to fill a stall, but no dust, easy to clean, and very absorbant. You do have to make sure they aren't eating a bunch of it thou.

 

[Sue S]

We used straw at first and my hubby hated it, now we are using shavings, he likes it alot better, the thing I don't like about it is when the horse lays down than gets up they are full of it, for foaling we use straw.

 

[Sanny]

Our stalls have sand and "ag-lime" base and then rubber mats. On top of the mats we use shavings and in our area we can get several different brands and types. I prefer the pine shavings that are more fine - closer to sawdust, because they are more absorbent. The other shavings are bigger curly cedar shavings that don't absorb as much. I usually buy "Pine Products" shavings.

There is a brand of shavings that I really like called "Devil's Tower", I think that have a great smell - strong pine and sort of eucalyptus aromatherapy smell. The problem is, the bags are closed with big metal staples and when I am bedding stalls I always worry that I or one of the kids will lose one of the staples and a horse will eat one or step on it.

We bed the back half of each stall and sweep the mats clean in the front half and put their hay there.

Each horse their own bathroom habits and I can walk into any stall and know what horse was in it based on where they pee and poop. I love the stallions, because they are neat freaks so their stalls are very easy to clean.

We have great straw in our area. Nice tight bales and the straw is very dry and shiny and almost looks chopped in short pieces even though it is pressed into bales and the smaller pieces make it easier to pick out stalls. I don't use it for bedding very often, but when I do, I still put shavings underneath to absorb the pee.

I've tried the pellets, I don't really like them because until they have broken down quite a bit I feel they are slippery and not very comfortable (according to the kids who decided to lay down in them and roll around to see if they were comfortable.)

Our co-op has bagged cardboard bedding that basically looks like brown cardboard chopped into tiny little pieces, but I've not tried it. I was a little skeptical about it though they claim people that have tried it love it.