Hello! I was wondering if anyone knows of different bedding options that last longer than your traditional wood shavings. I’ve heard of some people using wood pellets but that seems expensive and uncomfortable for the horse. I’ve even heard of people using M-10 or stone dust. Is that safe and efficient? I’m open to all ideas. Thanks!
I currently use wood pellets, and love them for my messy mares! You do have to be careful of them getting dusty if you don’t go through them very fast, so I wouldnt recommend them for a horse that’s super neat, unless you are prepared to water them down every day. I can get a pallet delivered for under $7/bag, so they’re economical for me. (I’m in an expensive area, so they’ll be cheaper for most other people.) I also don’t have the storage for bagged shavings, so the pallet is a fab way to save space.
I also use pellets and am quite happy with them.
I’d not use stone. It’s so abrasive, doesn’t biodegrade, and you’d not be removing the urine. The stink would be terrible after awhile.
Back in the “olden” days, horses were bedded on straw, and in some areas, may still be. Not my personal choice, but still doable.
I live near a pencil factory and you can get huge bags of the excess wood shavings from them drilling the holes into the wood blanks that make the pencil (no lead - just wood). They were super inexpensive, and actually quite “fluffy” (like miniature little corkscrews). But after trying them for a month, I decided I did not like them, and preferred something more substantial.
@Ainsley688 I’ve heard a lot of good things about the pellets so I’m really considering them. However, I’m not sure if I’d like have to worry about wetting them, and wood shaving seem to be cheaper than pellets.
@Simkie Yes, the idea of stone dust didn’t sound great to me but I just wanted more opinions to be sure.
@4LeafCloverFarm I used to live near a saw mill and they would sell these giant bags of wood shavings for a great price but I have relocated and I can’t find any saw mils near me. I also did some research on straw bedding and not all people like it. Some say that horses may eat it (if they’re not picky) and people say that the urine runs to the bottom and doesn’t always get absorbed. Which I would not like that so I’m not going to use straw.
I just found a wood shaving bedding for horses at a local equine store for only $4 a bag. It claims to cover 8 cubic feet, and I would be using it in a 10x10 stall. How many bags would I need to use in one stall and how often would I need to add another bag. Of course I know that you all can only give an estimate because every horse is different so it doesn’t have to be exact. However, my horses generally keep their stall pretty neat and clean. Thank you all so much for the help.
On a side note, I know that this doesn’t have anything to do with stall bedding but I don’t want to make a whole new topic just for this question. Anyways, what is the smallest sized stall that a Miniature Horse can have. I’m just curious. Thanks!
I’m a deep bedder of stalls (say 4" - 5"deep), and though I don’t have a 10X10 stall for reference (mine are all odd sizes, as I have a really old barn), I start with two bags. The amount you add after that depends of how much the horse is in the stall (24/7 or out 1/2 day, etc), so it varies widely (for me, probably 1 bag every 2 to 3 days when up 24/7 and a lot less when they go out 1/2 day. It also makes a difference according to how good a stall cleaner you are! Now that is for a horse. A mini would need much less. But some people just put a 1/2 or maybe 1 full bag of shavings in the middle of the stall and let the horse rearrange it to suit them.
As for stall size, I go by what space it takes them to lay down comfortably and get up safely. For a mini, I’d not go any smaller than 7’X7’. But it really depends on the mini’s size - a petite/slim 32" mini could be in a smaller stall than say a 36" rolly-polly mini that also likes to roll in the stall. But like the deeper bedding, I also like larger stalls, so tend to make them bigger than needed.
@4LeafCloverFarm Thanks for the estimate on how many bags I’ll need. As for how often they’ll be in the stalls, it really just depends so I’ll just adjust how often I refill as needed. All of my stall are 10x10 but I have one odd stall that is a size 10x5. It came like that so I was just wondering if that would be big enough for a Miniature Horse that probably wouldn’t be over 32" tall. (I don’t own the Miniature Horse yet but I plan to very soon.)
@4LeafCloverFarm Also, I prefer to have less bedding so I can clean it better to keep it fresher. I like to only put it thick enough to cover the floor and I don’t put it on the edges of the stall because over time I’ve realized that my horses don’t need it. (If you’re wondering it my horses have enough padding since I don’t put a ton of bedding in the stalls, I have really nice mats specifically for that.)
I love pellets! I lay them flat and cut a slit in the middle and fill the bag with water from the hose while filling water buckets. Or pour the excess from the water buckets into the bag (4-5 gallons). They fluff right up in a few minutes. Then I cut a big X from corner to corner and pull up the empty bag from underneathe. They practically pick themselves. They fall right out of the fork without all the tedious shaking and they’re super absorbent. It’s basically sawdust once they are hydrated, very comfortable. I don’t have to bed very deeply. They are dense and feel comfortable at considerably less depth than shavings. Easy to store for the small barn like mine and usually $6 a bag at TSC.
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I’d venture a guess and say a 5X10 would be fine for a mini. As long as they can easily turn around, it should be fine.
And I’m going to be the outlier for sure on amount of bedding. LOL I’m quite sure the horses could do with less, and probably they wouldn’t care either. Some habits of caring for horses since the 1980’s are harder to break than others! 
@gypsymare When I was researching the pellets I was told that they take an hour to soak with cold water but if it only takes a few minutes like you said, them I’m worried about having to soak them. However I did read that you need about 5 bags to fill a stall versus about 2 bags for wood shavings so it seems like it would be a more costly option or do you not have to replace as often?
@4LeafCloverFarm Thank you! I was hoping that it’d be big enough. I also used to put a ton of bedding in the stalls for cushion but I have cut back on the amount I use because it wasn’t nessesary for my horses.
I do have another question. Would wood shavings or the pellets breakdown faster and to a lesser amount when it is removed from the stall? I have limited space to dump the stall waste so the faster it breaks down, the better. Thank You!
The pellets/sawdust definitely break down faster as compost that regular shavings. But turning/mixing your piles will help and putting them where they get full sun seems to help in decomp as well.
I use 2-3 bags to start a 12x12 stall with pellets and usually go through a bag a week. It’s far less expensive for me than using shavings, and composts much faster. They’re also easier to store.
I also don’t add water to the bedding except in a brand new bed. Dry pellets are added weekly.
How pellets are managed really depends, IME, on your climate. Tons of humidity? No added water needed, or at least not a lot. Super dry climate? Things are going to get dusty, water is probably necessary, maybe several times a week.
How much shavings you go through depends on the shavings (kiln dried or not? big flakes or not?) the horses (tidy or piggy?) the set up (runs or just box stalls?) and how you clean (method, how much bedding do you toss.) Impossible to say how many bags of bedding you’ll wind up using every week…
Another possibility is peat moss. I used one bale of peat moss to bed a 10x10 stall and added on as needed after I mucked out. I stripped the stall once a month.
This made a soft, yielding bed for the horse, the urine got soaked up super quick, it cut down on the smells, and gardeners love, love, love this for their compost piles.
This is what I used when I kept a weanling colt in my back yard in Charlotte, NC. My stall did not stink and my next door neighbor told me to just throw the used bedding over our fence and he used it on his yard. I did not get any complaints about barnyard smells. My colt never ate any of it.
The downsides are that you have to clean your horse’s hooves out frequently (1-2 x/day) and it takes some of the shine off of the horse’s coat.
Well, I just learned something new today. I’ve never knew about peat moss as bedding.
I got the idea from Horace Hayes “Stable Management and Exercise.” Since I was in the middle of a largish city (downtown was 3 miles away) I knew I had to keep the smells down.
It makes a wonderful bed, soft, yielding, and it never stank. The peat moss soaked up ALL the urine (with proper cleaning.)
@4LeafCloverFarm I’ll keep that in mind.
@Simkie Since you only use 2-3 bags for a 12x12 stall, how heavy is each bag? So you don’t wet the new pellets that you add to the other bedding each week? If so, do they stay hard or do they soften? It is very humid where I live. The pellets in my area are kiln dried. As for the size of the shavings, they would be big flakes. They offer finer shaving but they’re more expensive and can be dusty. The stall are stand-alone so they are in the pasture and not connected to a big barn. I can leave them open as a run-in or close them in. My horses are pretty neat and clean so they don’t waste a lot of bedding. I use a pick fork and pick up the droppings, sifting out all of the clean bedding. I don’t waste any. Then I just get all of the wet shavings. None is wasted.
@Jackie Cochran Can you explain what peat moss is? Where can you get it and how much is one bale?
Both the pellets and the shavings seem like great options so here’s my question. For enough to initially cover a 10x10 stall (not super thick) and to add one bag once a week which option would be cheaper? The wood shavings that cover 8 cubic feet for $4 a bag or a 40 pound bag of pellets for $6? (The website doesn’t say how many cubic feet it covers, only the weight of the pellets before soaked.) These are the prices in my area.
Thanks!
Peat moss is plant matter that partially decays from a wet environment and then dries out. It is the very first step to becoming coal (which takes a loooong time.) The British isles have peat bogs, and there are some peat bogs in this country, I think. They mine the peat moss from the peat bog, let it dry, and bale it up (or put it in bags for smaller amounts.)
There is poultry peat that is usually recommended for bedding horses but I COULD NOT find poultry peat, so I went to my garden center and got their bales of peat moss (around the size of a small bale of hay.) It worked quite well for keeping a horse in a large city.
I do not know the current prices of peat moss but I did not have to use that much of it once the stall was fully bedded and it lasted a long time. Slightly dusty when it gets too dry but the horse pee wets it down quite well. It is SUPER absorbent!
@Jackie Cochran - is this the peat moss that is more loose chunks/ground up stuff at the garden center that come is a bag and is (typically) brown, or the solid mat type peat moss (that’s typically green on top) you’d use to make a planter pretty or use to keep moisture in orchids? Or would either type work? I am now fascinated with this. LOL
Sorry OP to hijack your thread!
Pellets are 40# bags. No, I don’t find that they stay hard when added dry to an existing bed. They absorb moisture out of the air and out of the existing bed, and break down. The weight of the horse also breaks them down. They’re far more absorbent than shavings, especially shavings that aren’t kiln dried, so much less comes out every day with the pee.
For my horses, and the way I bed, and the way I clean, pellets are less expensive. For you? Who knows. Way too many variables to tell.
How you bed and how you clean your stalls and your horses are all things that determine what’s better for you. You’re really just going to have to try it and see.
