I am so over the dust created by shavings in my barn. I use a combination of pine shavings and pelleted bedding but with my horses only in a few hours a day they both get SO dusty.
There is a feed store in the area that sells pelleted straw bedding. It’s over twice the price of shavings, but if it can eliminate dust in my barn I’m willing to give it a try. Does anyone have experience with this bedding?
Just to confirm, are you wetting the pellets? When I was in a barn where I could use pellets, I removed pee spots daily, but I kept the pellets just barely damp, and dust wasn’t an issue. But, every barn is different!
I’m not sure pelleted straw would be as absorbent as pelleted wood, but could be entirely wrong.
Yes, I even mist them down daily after cleaning stalls in an effort to cut down on the dust. It’s better if I don’t use pellets and stick with only shavings, but I spread and the shavings take longer to break down.
I was hoping the straw pellets would have decent absorbency, less dust, and be better for my soil!
Let us know!
My barn had a terrible dust problem with the sand/dirt floors. I finally gave up and invested in stall mats. I don’t like fine shavings-too dusty. I don’t like the pine pellets- if you don’t add water they are hard, and I want my stalls dry, not wet. If you do add water to the pellets, they dissolve and become dusty, especially if stalls aren’t used daily.
I tried corn cob- it’s phenomenal at absorbing moisture, but my horses all thought the bedding tasted really good. Maybe if they mixed corn cob with pine, it wouldn’t be so edible.
I finally decided on medium flake pine shavings and only put shavings in the pee spots, using minimal bedding.
I love corn cob and think that would be ideal, if they mix it with something.
Not for everyone, but I decided to eliminate using any bedding. It has now been 18 months. The stalls (with bare mats) are left open to the outside and the horses come and go as they please. They have chosen places outdoors where they will lie down when they want. If it’s too hot outdoors, they come into the stalls ( motion activated fans). When they want to pee or defecate, they go outside and then return. But I just have 2, and they get along. One is subservient, and the other is just plain too lazy to put any effort into conflict.
No experience with straw pellets and you may have tried this: A fellow COTHer recommended not wetting the pellets and it does seem to make a big difference. I discovered misting them makes them dustier. No idea why. I switched brands from the local feed store to the TSC brand and that helped as well. Please report back if you try the straw. My dust is cut about 80% from where I started but I’d pay the extra for nearly dust free.
I have one who uses his stall as a bed and pees daily. I bed in pellets. I wet them slightly to break them down a bit. His stall is never dusty. The horse next to him never pees in his stall and if I used pellets, they were stupid dusty. He now has a combination of medium flake shavings, banked where he likes to lean against the stall (he’s old, I humor him) and fines type sawdust in the middle of his stall where he now likes to pee suddenly. This has reduced my dust significantly.
Once pelleted bedding has broken down completely in a stall, the dust is impossible. I found if I kept bedding to a minimum and shoveled out the superfine dusty crap and replaced it with fresh pellets, the dust was also minimized. That might help.
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