Ok, so you have got all the gear you think you need and you have it all set up. Bedding is an important thing to think about. Everyone will have a difference of opinion about what is best. You have to decide what to do for the best for your horse. Don’t buy the cheapest if it doesn’t work. If you can’t afford decent bedding which works well then you have to question if you can afford a horse in the first place.
I started off with rubber mats and shavings. I did this because when I was doing my Stable Management course that’s what my instructor had and when we were practising mucking out I found it quite easy to handle.
I had 3/4 of the stable covered in rubber matting (EVA – thinner type of matting, a bit like play mats for children with a jigsaw edge). This matting was light, easy to move around and would be easy to lift to keep clean. I don’t have any drainage in my stable as such as it used to be a workshop which was converted and the lady who put the stables in didn’t think to put any in. *Sigh*
On top of this I had 2 or 3 bales of shavings. Now there are all types of shavings, from your local wood yard, Hunters, Snowflake, you name it it’s out there. I opted for Snowflake as it was compacted and you got a fair amount in a bale. It’s around the £6 a bale mark but you can shop around and if you want to buy a pallet then it works out cheaper if you have the room for storage. Remember the delivery charges as well will bump it up if you can’t go and collect it yourself.
Anyhow, so Rubber mats down and 3 bales of shavings. Brilliant. Looked really neat. So here’s where Bart is like Goldilocks.
The bed was quite thick and with the rubber matting was less harsh on his feet. Well that was the thought. Went in the next day and it was a complete nightmare.
Bart is a big horse and so it is obvious that there is going to be a fair amount of urine and faeces. The shavings were everywhere and he was wearing most of it – and he was using his poo as a pillow – why do they do this?! Anyhow, it was wet, but not too bad, so I mucked out and put it all back together with a little fresh shavings on top.
Bono was okay with the shavings, however, as he liked to roll he looked like he had walked through a shavings factory every morning, and you would groom him and as soon as your back was turned he would roll again. *Sigh*
Another night went by, and did the same. After this though I noticed there was a pool of pee in front of the stable. What was happening was the pee was getting underneath the matting, so although you were cleaning the mats on top, it was going underneath and collecting there. I had to pull everything up and clean underneath and let me tell you, if you haven’t done this before, it’s disgusting. I washed all the matting down with a hosepipe etc, dried them off and put them back. Instead of putting them back with the shavings on top, I put the rubber matting along the other side and put the shavings on top of the concrete. This was better as at least the pee wouldn’t pool underneath, but unless you kept it really thick, because he was so ‘wet’, it would be a complete mess and would be soggy and horrible when it came to mucking him out in the morning. It wasn’t only unpleasant for him to sleep in, it also means that they are standing in urine and poo soaked bedding, which can cause problems with their feet. Mostly thrush. I know, as he had it, despite me cleaning his feet everyday. I bought some ‘Stockholm Tar’, cleaned and dried his feet daily and sprayed this on which cleared it up quickly, but of course would not solve the issue. So what next? Goldilocks was going to have to try and different bed.
I opted for straw. I wasn’t particularly keen on this idea as the thought of deep littering didn’t really appeal to me, plus I didn’t think it would help with the wet. I got some straw from our neighbour & farmer, just 10 bales to begin with because I didn’t know if it would work or not, and at £1.50/£2 a bale its a lot cheaper than the shavings option.
I made a big deep bed and it looked great. The next morning it was everywhere, the poo had dropped in through the straw and underneath it hadn’t soaked up the pee well so it was soggy and took a long time to clean and muck out. Bono had also been changed to straw, and he was ok, and it seemed to work ok, and again he was covered in straw in his mane and tail, but that’s just what he does! The straw does go a long way and it is cheap, but I still wasn’t happy with using it with Bart as it wasn’t soaking up anything, so in order to use it up I have kept Bono on it and decided that Goldilocks needed to try something else.
I went to our local Countryside store, Mole, and spoke to a lovely girl called Alice. She has her own horses, and I told her what a nightmare I was going through, and she could see I was almost having a nervous breakdown because of it! Anyhow, she used to have a mare with cushings who used to wee a lot, so she used wood chip. She showed me a couple of options, but the one we opted for was Snowflake. She said it tends to stay and not get kicked about, and that when they pee and poo it sits on the top, so you can take the dry stuff around it away and just pick up the wet bits. Sounded ideal. Right lets start with 6 bales of that please. It’s about the same price as the shavings, so wasn’t going to be costing much more, and to be honest if it worked then I would be really happy he was sleeping on a dry bed. Although he mostly stood up to sleep, I knew he laid down, as did Bono, and that his feet would be also dry too.
Got home and unloaded. I put 3 bales down to begin with. The next morning it was awesome. I walked in, and wasn’t overwhelmed by the smell of urine, and the poo was just sitting on the top, and you could move the dry bits away and pick up the wet. I only took out one barrow full which was mostly poo and wee with hardly any wood chip. Now in comparison I was taking about 3 – 4 barrows out of shavings and 3-4 barrows of straw. Hurrah!!
This was working well. Let me tell you a trick though. Don’t get complacent and top it up! If you take out a barrow a day, you are going to be taking out the wood chip with it too, so you need to top it up. I forgot this fact in the first week and by the end of the week I looked like I was back to square one with the shavings again. I was getting really upset because how could you let him stay in something so ghastly?. I had a look on the website and it states on there that you need to start with 3 bales and keep it topped up, so I took all the bad stuff out and went out, got some more, stuck 3 bales in there and made it really thick. I am talking a good 4″ thick. The next morning was back to being bliss again. I think we cracked it.
You can’t afford to be too OCD with their bedding, although admittedly I am. I like to have a bank around the edge, and the wood chip to be level. I flick up the chip around the edge, using the fork to ‘straighten’ it out around the edges, and then using the back of the fork, I run this over the wood chip to make it level. He doesn’t kick it around too much as it’s thick and doesn’t move as easily as the shavings.
There are other types of bedding, there are so many different types of straw, recycled paper, hemp, cardboard, just all sorts out there, and each horse is different so you need to think about what is best for them and what works for them in the first instance. If it is easier to use then this is a bonus.
In the first few weeks it used to take me an hour to give them breakfast, muck out two stables, fill the hay nets, water, sweep up, fill up the trough, put the electric fencing on etc, but I have it down to the fine art of an hour. I know that I could do it quicker than that too, but to be honest, because I have my illness and this makes me in a muck sweat anyway, I don’t see the point in trying to kill myself to do it quicker as it isn’t a race. After I have to have a cuppa and a snooze otherwise I will be bad the rest of the day!
The other tip is that if they are out for the day, then when you muck them out in the morning, use the fork to chuck all the bedding in a pile(s) at the back and brush everything off the floor and then using diluted Jeyes Fluid in a spray bottle, spray a layer of it on the floor. When the floor dries out, not only will it have less germs, but it won’t smell so bad either. When you come to raking it all back before you bring them in then you know it’s all dry and fresher underneath which makes it nicer for both them and you.
Mucking out isn’t the best job in the world, but there is a satisfaction in making their bed nice and tidy for when they come in. You have to think what would it be like for you if you were them and came in to rest and were standing in poo and wee? If you think that’s ok, I don’t want to know, but would suggest that 99.9% would think ‘Ewwwwwww’.
So hopefully this has given you some help in deciding which bed your Goldilocks is going to sleep in.
Next time: Pulling your brave pants up and going it alone…….
trialsandtribulationsofafirsthorse 