I am a barn manager, and I have never really had success using the deep litter/deep bedding method. Does anyone with a boarding stable use this method? What are your experiences? Does it save time? Does the barn smell? Do you muck all the way to the floor to get out urine? I was told that in the deep litter/deep bedding method that you shouldn’t muck all the way to the floor, bank the lightly soiled bedded against the wall, and put down a thin layer of bedding on the floor. I don’t quite understand if you don’t muck all the way to the floor to get all the urine out how the barn doesn’t smell, or have a horrendous fly problem. Would love to hear from barn managers with lots of stalls to manage on this one! Thanks!
I have had success with it, although it does depend on the horse. I always muck all the way to the floor, and if you have matts it helps if you use a shovel and broom to get as many urine soaled particles as possible. If possible, I use sweet PDZ or stall dry to dry the matts after removing the urine spots. When I add new bedding I usually bank the new bedding, but I like to keep a nice thick bed across the stall.
I found that it saved time for me, with the horses in my barn, and it reduced the amount of flies. I noticed that with a thick layer of bedding, the enitre urine spot gets absorbed and you don’t have puddles sitting around that attract flies and are a pain to clean. The horses stayed cleaner, because they didnt end up sleeping in a pee-puddle. Many of them discovered the trick of kicking shavings onto their poop so they didnt have to sleep in that either.
There are lots of ways to use deep bedding.
For my one horse on pellets, I muck out her wet corner once a week or so. There is absolutely no smell, but I have access to an awesome product (which of course at this point isn’t publicly available, sorry) to kill smell. Likely any smell killer would work if used in sufficient quantity.
Turds are picked at least 1x day, usually twice.
If the wet corner has any visible moisture on the top, I sift turds on top of that so that slightly used bedding covers it up.
About 1x week I clear the slightly used but dry bedding off the wet corner and then dig out all the thoroughly soaked bedding down near the floor. This is done by taking a chunk of full thickness bedding and quickly flipping it over. I then take the wettest stuff that was down by the floor and chuck in into the wheelbarrow.
After that is done, I mix what is left on the floor in that corner with a healthy dose of anti-stinky stuff. Then the rest of the stall is sifted with the most used looking bedding going into that corner. Another dose of anti-stinky stuff gets mixed in with that layer.
Any super nice looking bedding gets re-distributed to the rest of the stall and clean bedding goes in with that.
This is really the most awesome method in the world for keeping my pig of a horse on clean, deep bedding. Any other method puts me in the poor house or leaves her stall looking disgusting.
That said, if I had to do a whole barn that way, I’d want a schedule that rotated through the barn so the full dig didn’t happen in every stall on the same day each week. That would suck it. It takes time, and when the used bedding is truly saturated, it is heavy. 4 would be about the maximum I’d want to give the full weekly treatment to on any given day.
I am not a fan of deep bedding, clean our stalls out daily down to the mats. We use wood fiber, which is kind of like wood mulch, for our bedding and keeping horses dry when they lay down.
It just kind of “Icks me out” thinking of all the stuff down in that deep bedding my horse is standing and laying down in, even if picked dry and poop removed daily. There is ALWAYS some mess if all bedding is not removed, stall allowed to dry, in my opinion. Each of us has our “can’t accept that practice” horsekeeping standards! Ha Ha
I am quite familiar with deep litter bedding from my childhood, Grampa just added more straw to the sheep pens, cow shed, pig barn, all winter for keeping animals off the mucky bedding. Did seem pretty dry on top, no sick or dead animals from keeping them that way. He drove the front end loader thru the sheds to scrape them clean come Spring, spread the litter bedding on the fields.
His horse stalls got cleaned daily to the floor, all new bedding each day, I was doing that!
OP might do a search using “deep litter” and find other recent and older posts on this topic to see what folks said.
Deep littering was great all winter.
Then spring arrived.
I wanted to move rather than clean the barn.
I have yet to see a horse (that lays down) in a stall where bedding is completely removed daily not be covered in piss stains. That’s a whole lot more unhealthy than bedding that’s wet at the bottom and dry on top.
Yeah, full on deep litter where you leave it for months should only be done if you can get a Bobcat or loader tractor in to clean out twice a year - and have the depth of stall to accommodate all the bedding.
I guess what I do to some stalls is what ya’ll are calling “deep bedding”.
If a horse is fairly consistent with it’s urination spot - using the same area in the stall to pee every time, then I strip that wet area to the matts daily. “Old” bedding gets cycled into the “pee spot” and new fresh bedding is added to the rest of the stall as needed. Every single poo ball is picked daily, I will search high and low for them all. I am not a bedding banker, I keep a level bed in the stall.
If the horse sprinkles a little here and a little there all over the freaking stall, then I bed that horse more deeply, and do not disturb the bedding except to strip it once every 7-10 days. I save what bedding I can when I strip, but anything wet/dirty gets tossed. Poo gets picked daily, very carefully skimming the top layer of bedding so as not to disturb the wet areas building up below. I DO NOT go searching for turds in the “deep bedding” stalls. I try to air out the wet matts for a few hours when I strip the stalls, but that isn’t always possible. Regardless, there is no smell or visible nastiness with the method I use.
I have found the above method more financially and time economical for the “sprinklers” vs. searching for and digging out every single little wet spot daily, and contaminating the “clean” bedding in the process.
Not sure how deep litter can work properly in a stall with mats since it traps the wet. It works great on dirt floors.
I decided to try it when I had a load of shavings delivered and not enough room in my bin. So I put the rest of the shavings in the stall. It was bedded with about a foot of natural wood shavings from the lumber mill (not kiln dried).
Between the dirt floor and the deep bedding there were no wet spots to be dug out. It just disappeared. I picked the poops daily and tossed in a layer of fresh shavings weekly. The bottom shavings decomposed into the floor and became part of the floor itself. It compacted down so the horses weren’t standing up to the ceiling either. I never did dig out the stalls, they didn’t stink and the horse’s feet were great and no urine on their bodies. I would even ask the vet and farrier if the barn smelled ok (never told them why) and they all agreed it smelled fine.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a “sprinkler” type, so this method generally works for me. I’ve had some to take care of that are just gross in their stalls, so the wet area can be a bit large, but it’s still more or less contained. There’s just more bedding turnover for these guys, and sometimes you need to leave the wet spot open for a bit to dry out. Still doesn’t often call for a complete strip, and the older but clean bedding moves from the sides to the wet area, and fresh goes back out around. I do tend to bank in the corners, but I don’t bank as high as some.
Current horse likes to poop around the perimeter of his stall, so I don’t bank his very much. Even so, it is bedded deeper around the edges, so these “banks” need to be turned daily to be sure you get all the flattened poop balls from the under layers.
In my experience, there is less grossness and stink in a deeply bedded stall that is well maintained versus a thinly bedded stall that is pretty much stripped daily. I find that it’s easier to get all the urine out with wet bedding in a deeply bedded stall because you have better absorption and avoid having a puddle spread all around on the mats with thin bedding.
I’ve not found there to be any “ick” factor in deep litter. Keep the bed picked out, including any really soggy spots, which may happen until it is established and deep. Bacterial action works at keeping smell at bay and breaking down the lower levels.
Spring is the deal breaker…you do need a local schoolboy or a bobcat.
Lovely, ready to use compost.
Peat or straw.
I’ve not used it for a whole barn of horses - mine is at home, but have used it for our horses and sheep when we had them.
[QUOTE=Alternative Rox;8087725]
Not sure how deep litter can work properly in a stall with mats since it traps the wet. It works great on dirt floors.[/QUOTE]
Except when your horse lives in a swamp. Those dirt floors will bring you to tears each and every spring whether you deep litter or not. BTDT, burnt the dang t-shirt. lol
I do semi-deep litter on mats and it’s great. It actually gives the puffed up pellets a chance to soak up as much as they are supposed to soak up. The the weight of the horse and the dry bedding on top sort of compacts it into wet particle board. I probably go through a bit more bedding than on a well draining floor, but my pig would make up for it with her shit flinging ways anyway. The joke is that she raises her tail and twirls.
Thanks for all the informational replies! I worry about it since I am in the South, and all I can think about is 90% humidity on a 95 degree day and what that humidity might do the smell! I know the method is very popular in Europe and in the northern states. Thank you again!
FWIW, I am from the south. Only been living in the horrible dryness for a couple years. The norm out here is virtually no bedding. I learned my deep bedding ways in the south 
Reading replies, I do think there is a terminology problem. Deep litter is doing minimal cleaning, just adding more bedding to the stall location on a regular basis. Cleaning to the ground only a couple times a YEAR. That would be a killer moving all that wet, packed hard, mess by hand.
Deep bedding as most of you are describing, is NOT the same as deep litter stall keeping. With good daily cleaning/picking, though not removing ALL bedding, I wouldn’t have any problem. This is pulling the clean stuff left into the middle, after removal of dirty bedding, poops. Then adding MORE clean stuff around the edges. Certainly an OK method of keeping a stall taken care of.
Issues can arise with types of bedding used as well. Straw is not really absorbent, especially that lovely LOOKING, shiny gold stuff. Old straw, darker, flat stems is better, with stalks broken to absorb better. New straw is not really absorbent at all, kind of a waste to use with liquids pooling on the ground. Now CHOPPED straw is wonderful bedding, equal to any sawdust in absorbing, making a good layer to keep animals dry, easy to clean. But unless you chop your own straw, you won’t find it available.
I find our wood fiber is wonderfully absorbent, and if used in enough quantity, animals don’t get wet marks when laying on it. Easy to clean off our matted stalls, easy to handle to put in or remove in cleaning. Less expensive than sawdust, not as dusty.
