Bedding

[solomon]

It's getting near that time again. We are very lucky in the south and hopefully the horses will be turned out for a month or two more yet. When they do. Come in its decision time on what bedding to use. I fancy trying the wood pellets. Would appreciate advice on using these. I can't use straw due to Petes allergies. Need to avoid dustiness generally. Any tips ideas?

[fimacg]

wood pellets work best is put down on rubber matting.

I have used a few brands:
Aquamax - brilliant but very pricey
Verdo- OK but generally pellets too long and you end up turfing out half the decent bedding as it doesnt fall through the shaving fork
Puffin - currently using these and find them pretty good.

put down about 6 bags and sprinkle with water for the initial bed. When you muck out you will find you only need to skip out initially, best tip I was given for this bedding was not to mix it up too much. Wait for the wet patches to surface and remove them, but if you mix it you generally use more pellets than if you dont.

I use 1 bag a week for Brave and Chompy and 2 for Dexter.

[solomon]

Not dusty?

[racaille]

There is zero dust with the wood pellets Sol. But you do have to use them correctly. We used to use them on concrete in a deep litter system with minimal intervention - if you churn it up it defeats the object.

We would put down a reasonably thick layer of pellets, sprinkle with a little water (starts them breaking down) and then only poo pick. As the bedding gets wet the moisture stays on the bottom so we rarely dug that out (it forms part of the warm, soft bedding) unless it was really sopping. So we'd remove the poo (which sits neatly on top unless you have a really mucky mare as we did but even then it was easy enough to remove the poo) and pull the dry bedding in from the sides. Some people like banks at the sides but we found it worked best for us with it all pulled into the middle, the horses quickly redistributed it.

The we would do a full muck out every six to eight weeks. Since it composts really quickly (and makes wonderful compost) we were able to sell the stuff to gardeners and farmers - 50€ for a tractor trailer full.

[brigadier]

I use verdo and will message you seperately re money saving tip. I love pellets as there is zero dust and minimal work compared to shavings or straw etc but they dont look the nicest esp with dirty horses so you need to appreciate that. But echo Rac as to management. I buy 10k bags and use three for basil and ponies (in together) and 1 for mare per week, I did out Basils wet patch once weekly but the ponies and mare fortnightly. Basil is so often as he wees in once place only and you cant keep adding more as it becomes a mountain and he cant lie down.