Why do the big show barns seem to use straw instead of shavings (or other types of bedding)?
In the area where I live, the mushroom farmers will pay you to take your used straw but you have to pay to have used shavings hauled away. Plus I find straw much less dusty and faster to clean than shavings as well as warmer in winter.
I honestly think its personal preference.
I know that shavings are better for a horse that’s a pee fiend, it soaks up better. But straw is warmer and cheaper and when you clean the stall it takes less time as your just grabbing it all.
The take away cost/saving is good to know in your area too, like Tabula mentioned above.
I also think what your flooring in the stalls is counts…clay ground vs matted cement
I have not found straw absorbent for liquids. I have needed to put something else on the ground for soaking up liquids, like pellets under the straw. Takes longer to clean straw bedded stalls, forkfuls are heavier. Harder to find the poop if you have a horse who “mixes” his bedding. Straw makes a much bigger pile of bedding to remove, spread, than the same stalls, same horses, produce with the woody bedding products.
Since I spread stall bedding daily, I have not seen as much benefit with straw, it doesn’t stay in place like sawdust, shavings will on the soil. So the organic matter I need for my clay dirt, is minimal, quickly gone. The woody products act as a thin mulch layer on the ground, help slow rain run off, prevent soil drying as fast so plants stay “watered” for longer times. The microbial life in the soil do pull the woody particles down into the dirt, creating a more useful soil for all the growing stuff, eases root spread on those plants horses graze on.
My turf is greatly improved since I started doing daily spreading on the fields here. I get soil checked about every 3 years, so fertilizer applied is EXACTLY what the soil needs to keep the pastures very productive. I have limited acres, expect the horses to get their daily intake from grazing 12+ hours daily. Not need hay to keep them fed over the growing months, and it is working well for us.
Straw can have a much better absorbtion ability if you chop it, which makes for terrific bedding under animals. Chopped straw is easy to clean, sometimes dusty, but the liquid stops NOW. Piles up for warmth under animals. Just hard for me to do the chopping for a whole barn full of equines.
And storing the bales of straw takes a LOT of room and time handling it in purchase, loading, hauling home, unloading to put away. Sawdust or wood fiber we use, can be delivered and dumped into the storage bin outside, with much less time involved. We like the wood products, just easier to deal with, and no problems getting rid of it on the fields here year around.
Depends on what part of the country. I would say its pretty rare to see barns, big or small using straw for bedding in California any longer (besides the race track).
I know some self care barns I have boarded at strictly forbid straw as it makes the manure heap too bulky.
Benefits of straw, its cheaper (here at least), less dusty, easier to create a thick bed with.
I find it harder to clean (can pick piles easily), not as absorbent, much more work to clean a stall and remove etc.
My thinking is that they use if for the same reason they use it at racetracks: It’s better for the horses. Shavings are dusty and can cause airway problems, which is a big problem for any sort of performance horse. When I was a teen I boarded with a racehorse trainer who always used straw for that reason. There are no absorbtion issues with a thin layers of shavings spread underneath. I switched to straw years ago when shavings got to over $6 a bag. My horses now enjoy deep beds at an extremely low cost: I can bed a 12X12 stall with a $2.75 bale of clean, bright straw and one bag of shavings can last a few days for my four stalls, just spreading some lightly under the straw. Even the messy horses stay neater because the pee and poop filter down through the straw. It does take adjusting to cleaning it, but I don’t feel it takes any longer at this point. There is more bulk to it, so the manure pile grows faster, but we have 80 acres to spread on, so not an issue.
I move around a lot and have boarded at barns that use both. I think a lot depends on the part of the country you’re in. One of my barns in MD used straw because they could sell it to the mushroom farmers. In Germany, almost no one used shavings.
I MUCH prefer shavings (fine cut pine). I think straw-bedded stalls need something to absorb the urine and often are stinky as a result of the liquids just pooling under the straw. Just my opinion.
I think straw is the spawn of satan, but know others who feel the same way about shavings.
There was a study a while back, I’ll look for a link, which showed that horses lie down on straw significantly more than other types of bedding. So maybe that is part of the reason; getting a valuable animal who is stalled for many hours to lie down and sleep.
Edit to add: this article refers to the German study but doesn’t give citations:
http://equimed.com/news/general/research-shows-horses-prefer-straw-bedding
Some benefits for straw (the article addresses drawbacks also):
Results showed that all horses spent more time lying down when they were bedded on loose straw. They also spent more time sifting through the straw or otherwise investigating it than with other types of bedding.
The researchers noted that stalled horses face hours of boredom, and a bedding material that invites investigation and lying down might reduce the number of behaviors such as cribbing and weaving that may develop when horses are stabled for long periods.
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[QUOTE=mroades;7996341]
I think straw is the spawn of satan, but know others who feel the same way about shavings.[/QUOTE]
You have company. Nor am I fond of shavings except to look at. This barn uses spruce pellets, and they work well, and if handled properly don’t get dusty.
[QUOTE=mroades;7996341]
I think straw is the spawn of satan, but know others who feel the same way about shavings.[/QUOTE]
I’m one of those weird ones who despises shavings. Give me straw any day of the week!
But then again, I grew up in the mushroom capital of the world where everyone uses straw. It’s what I learned to bed and clean stalls with and what I’m used to.
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First I had heard about horses laying down more in straw. Mine all lay down in their wood fiber or sawdust product used for bedding. They lay down during the day when stalled during summer days, they lay down at night during winter hours. They don’t seem to have any issue laying down at competitions when we take them away from home. Wood bedding is a few inches deep for good cushion to stand or lay on, certainly not up over the ankles in the stalls. Stalls are cleaned daily, rebedded with more sawdust as needed, no dirty bedding left in there.
If the woody bedding is dusty, I sprinkle it to reduce the dust. Even dampened it still is very absorbent. We don’t get extremely dry bedding, order it so it is less dried from the seller. Bagged shavings or sawdust always need sprinkling.
Might be a geographical thing, but straw around here is PLENTY dusty. You get dirty loading and unloading bales, you can see the dust in the air when bales get shook out for bedding. Lots of dirt on the floor when straw bales are finally gone. And this is all kinds of straw, wheat, rye, oat, are dusty bedding products to use in stalls.
Mine seem to get enough exercise outside that they are not acting bored or developing poor habits when stalled. No one is sorting their bedding, though some have eaten the straw bedding when we used it.
I’ve used both. Straw mainly for mares about to foal and until the babies are a week or two old. I find it to be a major PITA. It is pretty, though. Here it’s much more expensive than sawdust or shavings, which are nearly free if you want to go fetch from the sawmills. The only way I’d use straw on a regular basis is if I had a bedding chopper like they have for chopping and blowing bedding under dairy cattle.
Straw is very much a regional thing–I have never seen a barn, show or otherwise-bed on straw in the PNW. Maybe at the race track…maybe. Breeders use it for foaling, though. Too bulky to dispose of here, where most horse properties (both private and boarding) are too small to support big piles/spreading on fields. We have an abundance of trees so wood products are everywhere, therefore shavings and pellets are readily available at reasonable prices. Straw is quite expensive, compared to wood bedding. If a farm is near wheat country, then straw is more reasonable. I do know some shows (eventing) provide straw bedding, because they produce it (straw). In 30 years of horse owning/boarding/showing in the Portland/PNW area, I’ve never encountered straw.
All straw is not created equal, which might be why there are such different opinions on the use of straw v. shavings.
Straw is the hollow stems of fully mature grains like wheat, oats, barley and rice. It is a by-product of growing grains; it is what is left over after the tops have been harvested. When I lived in Ky I used oat straw; the bright yellow, clean and long stalk straw. What people in Ky call “stallion straw”, since it is what is used to bed down expensive stallions.
Straw from barley or rice tends to be browner and the stalks are not as strong, so it can quickly turn to chaff. (To make baling easier, even oat or wheat straw can be sold after it has been combined – I called it “baled chaff”.)
Yes, straw can be a little harder to muck because manure “hides” under the top layer. But I look at it from a horse’s perspective: If the manure is not sitting on top [as it can do with shavings] a horse is not forced to lie on his own poop.
Because of availability around here, I have to use shavings; I try to use the light and fluffy shavings because the poop tends to sink down below the top level. I know I end up using more because it is hard to sift through it so you tend to pick up a lot of shavings when you pick up manure and pee. I get grossed out seeing piles of manure in a stall, so I bed with 8" - 12" of shavings which make the the stalls also labor intensive to muck out.
Since I only have 5 horses, the time and cost is not that much more. I might think differently if I had a large boarding barn.
I still have a stash of straw which I take to horse shows. A stall can be bedded deeply with 1+ bales; it makes preparing a stall much easier and quicker, which matters when your horse is standing on the trailer, waiting to be unloaded.
Not a straw fan. All that digging down for pee spots. I find many miss doing a seriously good job of this.
[QUOTE=ThisTooShallPass;7999396]
You find digging down through all that straw easier for pee spots?[/QUOTE]
I am going to answer for TR ----- With a straw fork you do not have to dig down. You lift and toss, lift and toss. And when you get to the pee, you pull some dry straw over to the wet and roll and pull, roll and pull until the dry straw has sucked up whatever pee the wet straw has not absorbed.
Mucking straw is a whole different set of motions than mucking shavings. When I first moved to NC and had to switch to shavings, I had to ask for a lesson in mucking. I felt pathetic, but I could not get the hang of it on my own.
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Our boarding barn uses shavings topped with about 24 " of chopped straw. Works great…stalls are dry and always fluffy. They always look really clean too. They take a while to get used to mucking and there is a lot more bedding thrown out…but it breaks down and can be spread on fields easier than straight shavings.
I think it’s very much a regional thing. I’ve had horses in Ontario and Alberta, and have shown in Florida over the winters. I’ve never been at a barn that used straw, only shavings and flax.
There is a mill within an hour of my parents who will give them free 40yard bins of shavings, they just have to pay for the truck. That’s where most of the barns in the area get their bedding. If any of them wanted straw, flax, pellets, etc they would have to get it from somewhere 2-3 hours away.
The only place I see straw used locally is for mares and foals and it is swapped out for sawdust as soon as possible. I did use straw last winter when it dropped below zero and I couldn’t clean some stalls. Like the poop and pee was frozen to the ground. We threw straw over it, picked, threw more straw over, picked, etc. Eventually it climbed above freezing and the stalls were stripped.
