Straw only for foals. It’s the safest bedding. Otherwise, my herd is out 24/7.
We deep litter on straw and I find it fantastic. Easy to muck out. I like that the horses have something to munch on throughout the night when they have finished their hay. I read a paper that showed that horses bedded on straw have a much lower incidence of stereotypies - due to being able to ‘graze’ the whole time.
The farmer who rents one of our barns takes our muck heaps away to his cousin’s biogas plant, so we don’t have to pay a cent to have it disposed.
Also, cost is a huge factor. We paid about 5 € per round bale of straw (only had to pay for the baling and time). Whereas a 25kg bale of shavings costs 10 € - and to fill one box I’d need probably 10 bales of shavings plus maybe 2 or 3 bales per week to top up. Times that by 5 boxes and that gets very expensive. A 5 € round bale lasts us 3 weeks by comparison.
[QUOTE=downen;7996131]
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.[/QUOTE]
The racetracks management doesn t give a Fig about health…they have contracts out here (East) for mushroom compost…it’s about costs and $$$$ for them
[QUOTE=half*pass;8001293]
We deep litter on straw and I find it fantastic. Easy to muck out. I like that the horses have something to munch on throughout the night when they have finished their hay. I read a paper that showed that horses bedded on straw have a much lower incidence of stereotypies - due to being able to ‘graze’ the whole time.
The farmer who rents one of our barns takes our muck heaps away to his cousin’s biogas plant, so we don’t have to pay a cent to have it disposed.
Also, cost is a huge factor. We paid about 5 € per round bale of straw (only had to pay for the baling and time). Whereas a 25kg bale of shavings costs 10 € - and to fill one box I’d need probably 10 bales of shavings plus maybe 2 or 3 bales per week to top up. Times that by 5 boxes and that gets very expensive. A 5 € round bale lasts us 3 weeks by comparison.[/QUOTE]
how often do you strip the stall completely?
We did deep litter, stripped it down to the floor once a week.
The barn was a one-stop-shop: my uncle grew the straw (and oats) along with the hay, then in turn put the manure on the fields. it wasn’t ‘free’ but reasonable.
This time f year, they used the week old manure to heat up the manure bed for early spring planting.
Over 20 years ago (:eek: I still can’t believe how time flies) when I went to work for Joe Fargis, I had to learn to muck out straw stalls, and it gave me fits till one of the English grooms took pity on me and showed me how…correctly (i.e. deep yet flat in the middle, banked up on the sides) bedded straw (using decent straw, mind you) absorbs the pee perfectly well, is very inviting for the horses to lie down on, and is FAR cheaper to use than shavings in every location I’ve done a comparison for.
As Lord Helpus says, the technique and tools used for cleaning straw is totally different than for shavings. A correctly clean stall will be MUCH cleaner than a shavings stall, because unless you deep litter (which works out way better on straw) the stall is basically cleaned down to the mat every single day, with all the ‘clean’ separated from the dirty/wet pile, which scoops into a wheelbarrow with very few fork flips…
Finished with lime each day, and rebedded, there is nothing sweeter smelling than freshly cleaned straw stalls.
[QUOTE=Alagirl;8002529]
how often do you strip the stall completely?
We did deep litter, stripped it down to the floor once a week.
The barn was a one-stop-shop: my uncle grew the straw (and oats) along with the hay, then in turn put the manure on the fields. it wasn’t ‘free’ but reasonable.
This time f year, they used the week old manure to heat up the manure bed for early spring planting.[/QUOTE]
My horses are only stabled at night, so I pick out when doing the night check and then again in the morning when they go out. All manure comes out. A complete strip happens with every change of the season, so 4 times a year.
Whoops, double post.
[QUOTE=half*pass;8003068]
My horses are only stabled at night, so I pick out when doing the night check and then again in the morning when they go out. All manure comes out. A complete strip happens with every change of the season, so 4 times a year.[/QUOTE]
Thanks, I knew a guy who would strip the stalls like every 3 month or so…but not pick manure out. Let’s just say, it’s a good thing he had a bobcat! :lol:
I use straw as it is cheaper and warmer than shavings. I do have shavings which is put down on the pee spots when the stall is being cleaned. A little bit of shavings and a lot of straw. If straw stalls are cleaned properly, there is no urine odor.
[QUOTE=downen;7996131]
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.[/QUOTE]
That is actually incorrect. While straw may seem less dusty than shavings or sawdust at first glance, it actually contains a much higher concentration of mold spores and small particles. For that reason, it is not recommended for horses with respiratory issues.
http://cvm.msu.edu/research/research-labs/equine-pulmonary-laboratory/respiratory-diseases/heaves
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/vm142
http://veterinaryextension.colostate.edu/menu2/equine/treatingheaves-1.pdf
Straw is cleaner, cheaper, warmer, and dust free 
Straw is like $6-9 per bale around here (small squares), or it was the last time I bought some 3 years ago. That’s double the price of a small square bale of HAY around here.
I remember reading the study in Equus, years ago, about how horses lie down more on straw. If memory serves me correctly, they used 8 horses in the study. Great sample size.
Straw absorbs nothing, is often dusty, and is more work (even when you get the hang of mucking straw – it’s more trips out to the manure pile and back!) plus a bigger muck pile to deal with.
I would bed the outdoor shelter with straw if I could get it for a good price with minimal dust but it’s just not available around here.
[QUOTE=saultgirl;8015473]
Straw is like $6-9 per bale around here (small squares), or it was the last time I bought some 3 years ago. That’s double the price of a small square bale of HAY around here.
I remember reading the study in Equus, years ago, about how horses lie down more on straw. If memory serves me correctly, they used 8 horses in the study. Great sample size.
Straw absorbs nothing, is often dusty, and is more work (even when you get the hang of mucking straw – it’s more trips out to the manure pile and back!) plus a bigger muck pile to deal with.
I would bed the outdoor shelter with straw if I could get it for a good price with minimal dust but it’s just not available around here.[/QUOTE]
Totally agree with this. Straw is NOT cheaper than shavings here in the Midwest, ot by a LONG shot. We don’t grow wheat here - we grow corn and we just don’t have much of it around here. But I the experiences I have had with straw have not been good AT ALL. I found it non absorbent - I once tried to use it in a flooded stall; we had tons of snow that winter and when it melted, we had 4" of water in one of our stalls. It didn’t do diddly for absorbing that moisture.
