Looking for more info on cardboard bedding. Anyone in Southern New Jersey use cardboard bedding? If so who is your supplier?
You have a link to the type of bedding you reference? I haven’t heard of cardboard bedding yet.
Years ago, I remember there being shredded newspaper bedding. I don’t know if that went away, but I haven’t seen or heard of it for years… I was always a bit leery of whether or not they would try eating some of that stuff. They put enough stuff in their mouths as it is, I would hate to inadvertantly feed them something processed that might not be good for them.
On a side note, I saw a device recently that would process your own wood into bedding, shavings actually. Big expense up front, but unending availability once you were up and running.
When we lived in Colorado, paper shavings were very popular. The paper had
been washed, so to speak. Believe it was old phone books and/or newspapers. Much preferred them to the pine shavings and they decomposed
rapidly. Used by several barns I boarded at. One BO said she used so she could get her manure hauled away–the folks that did that service wouldn’t take manure piles with pine shavings (too acidic).
Can’t find them here in Texas but they would be my choice if available.
I tried cardboard bedding from North Carolina. It was most definitely the worst bedding I’ve ever used. It smelled, it blew (I was still picking it out of my pastures a year later). I ended up giving the rest of my trial load away.
Google Equine cardboard bedding and you can find out all the info. It is hard to find suppliers…for those that I know that have used it they LOVE it. ZERO dust and composts quick, easy to pick out a stall and very absorbant if you have a heavy urine spot in your stall. The Equine hospitals are using it as well for it’s cleanliness aspect as well as no dust…I just found a supplier in PA but no website…I think they are Amish. I have heard about the paper bedding blowing around but not the cardboard bedding. A friend is boarding her horse at a private estate in PA that uses it due to one of the horses having COPD and they LOVE it. I hear it is costly but some things are worth it to me and this would be one of them.
Make sure it’s shredded into bite-sized pieces, not spaghetti. Spaghetti twizzles around their legs and hooves, and is a pita to muck out.
Shreddies, otoh, are a breeze. 
I tried cardboard bedding from a supplier in Lancaster (Pa). It was cut up cardboard in like 1/2" x 1/2" squares. It came in zippered woven type bags which would be returned and reused. I didn’t do the exact calculation but it was approx comparable to bales of shavings. What I didn’t like about it was since it isn’t really fine it wouldn’t soak up all the urine off the rubber mats. It decomposes quickly, is dust free, and is easy to muck thru. If it was convenient for me to get I would probably try using both cardboard and shavings to see how the combination worked.
If you get the Lancaster Farmer you can find ads in there.
I have the info for the PA Dealer.
Barnyard Products LLC. (no website)
David Stoltzfuss
1865 N Churchtown Rd.
East Earl, PA
717 445 9289
30x40 bag aprox 35 lbs recycled cardboard is 3.75 if purchased at store 4.50 if delivered (del is free up to certain dist. then priced per mile after)
30x40 bag aprox 35 lbs new cardboard is 4.75 if purchased at store 5.50 delivered.
I am in New Jersey so for me this is my best option.
Did 2.5 years working with stalls bedded with this exact cardboard from the Stoltzfusses.
There simply are not enough positive adjectives for how I feel about them.
Amazing stuff. I didn’t see the problem mentioned before about not soaking up all the wet spots. I have asthma so pretty much any barn is gonna set me off at some point, either with a lot of meds or with less meds. At the barn with cardboard I was able to go completely off my asthma meds and not have any problems.
It mucks a bit like a cat’s litter box without sand and clumping though. You only really had to:
Scoop the poop
Remove old/tromped on hay
clear wet spot.
Add more and voila… Done.
And given that the depth required isn’t that deep, you can see the “hidden” poop even with the most diligent hide and seek horses.
I wish this was used all across the states. And I know I have raved so much that a couple friends in Ca, VA and TX looked into possible ways to get some to them.
~Emily
Great to hear…I can’t wait to try it. I am orig. from PA and spent my childhood riding and playing in Valley Forge Park.
Too funny. I board around the corner from VF State Park!!
Emily
I’ve not used cardboard, but I do take home our office shreds from work and mix them in the stalls with my sawdust. I figure - why not? I know what’s being shredded (since I do most of it), and I would just cart it off to the recycling center anyway. I haven’t found any issues with it.
A friend I just visited near Middleburg, VA uses this and loves it. She orders it by the tractor trailer load, from the Amish.
Love it in the trailer. Hate it in stalls. It’s expensive and wasteful for any but the tidiest horses. I seriously love it in the trailer though - no dust, and not slippery like other beddings for allergy sufferers.
We did it once for a pony that was having a breathing issue. I didn’t love it, didn’t hate it. He was a slob, so it was a bit of a hunting party trying to sift through the stall, the poop just seemed to hide better than in shavings, don’t know why (though it always seemed to end up under the bedding, which did result in a cleaner pony, which was a plus. He loved to use piles as pillows). They were maybe 2" x 3/4" rectangles, so kinda hard to really sift.
It did create dust, but it was an odd, heavy type of dust that settled to the floor and did do a good job of absorbing and didn’t seem to really kick into the air to be breathed in. When I’d fully strip and sweep out the stall every few weeks it would kick up and get everywhere, but day to day, the dust wasn’t too bad.
It did have a different smell, not really unpleasant, just different. Though it did blow around some, it was not any more than flake shavings, so that was NBD. I remember someone bedding with shredded paper when they came in to a show at a farm I boarded as a kid and that sh!t got EVERYWHERE. We were finding it hanging from trees for a long long time afterwards. The cardboard was nothing like that.
I think for a stall churning slob like we had I would pass on using it again, but for a fairly neat beastie, I think it would be kind of a nice alternative. The lack of dust in regular conditions was nice.
