Pellet bedding help!

[LakeEffect]

Hi all!

Brought my two horses home and having a really hard time getting a hang of using pellets as bedding. For the last five years or so, they’ve been on true sawdust at a boarding barn, which I found super super easy to clean/pick. But, it was very dusty and didn’t offer a lot of cushion.

Thought pellets would respond similarly, but I’m finding they don’t absorb nearly quite as well. If I bed deep, I can’t find those pee spots underneath without digging around and making a mess. If I go thinner, they get swirled around anyway. Long story short - they all look gross, and I feel like the stalls nearly need stripping each day due to the swirl and inability to isolate moisture.

I’m not crazy about shavings - always hated picking those at shows and other barns. In theory, pellets will compost faster as well.

Help! Any tips to share?

[Simkie]

There are a million ways to bed a stall and a million ways to use pellets, but this is what works for me:

Bed fairly lightly but enough to keep the pee in a pile. That’s usually starting with 3-4 bags and adding about 1 bag a week, but it’s a huge ymmv.

When starting a stall, I add water to half the bedding in the bag. The other half goes in dry.

When cleaning, pick the poop and rake through the rest of the bed to find the pee (and any hidden poop.) Yes, you do have to go through all of it. Not every forkful needs sifting but all the bed does need to be raked through down to the floor.

Pull bedding away from stall edges.

When I add bedding, I clean the stall as normal, then pull bedding away from the center of the pile (make like a donut with it) and dump the fresh bag in the middle. No added water. Then cover the fresh pellets with the old bedding.

It takes me 15-20 minutes to clean 3 stalls. One horse is super tidy, one is a total pig, and one is in between.

[JB]

Which pellets are you using? Hard ones typically require at least some portion to be wet down to break down, and then you can add the rest of the dry pellets on the bottom, broken down stuff on top, and the horse walking around will break down the rest. Or, you can wet them all down to start, and assuming you have enough left each time, pull them back from the middle, spread out a new dry bag in the “hole”, and pile existing stuff back on top

Or, if the horse has a pretty defined pee spot, you can pile new dry pellets in that general area - maybe that’s the middle for a gelding, and a particular corner for a mare.

For pee spots, I remove all the manure piles first, and then I start “sweeping” bedding out to the sides with the fork, working from the sides in to the middle. This gets the dry stuff off the top and starts uncovering any urine section. I finish pulling dry stuff off, and then scoop out the wet pile.

IME, the pellets absorb very well IF you have enough.

I had one horse who was confined to his stall for long enough each day (injury) who did walk through more of his pee piles, and honestly, if it was relatively evenly scattered, I let it air out, they dried pretty well, and I could keep them for a while before needing to some stripping. Otherwise, all mine have pretty consistent pee spots they typically avoid, so no mixing, and easy cleanup. That’s applied for me whether it’s been large flakes, mini flakes, or pellets. Some horses are just pigs and the bedding doesn’t matter, stripping is more common than not.

Pellets are really the same as sawdust, they just don’t start that way (cuz they’re pellets lol). But not all pellets are created equal, so if you have other options, it would be worth trying a different brand to see if it behaves any differently from you. I did NOT like Tractor Supply pellets, but did like Southern States’ pellets. I actually use TSC “fine” flakes now and this is a great compromise for me

[LakeEffect]

Thank you both!!! Super helpful.

Big takeaway on the sweep/rake piece, I was sifting nearly all of it. Can’t wait to try that approach.

I am using TSC pellets, and I did wet them to begin (x thru the bag, pour in half a bucket). I’ve also used their tiny flanks so if I really give up on pellets will probably go that route. I do have access to some other brands, just not quite as locally.

Do either of you bank? It doesn’t sound like it, I’m wondering if that wasn’t helping either (mine were going into the bank). I have one fairly tidy gelding and a mare who don’t care.

[JB]

I don’t bank, because if someone’s going to pee, I want as much bedding there as possible to keep it all fairly tidy.

[Tee]

I use a combination of wetted down pellets and fine shavings. My boys are only in at night, so I can do about 1/2 bag of fine flake shavings per stall and then add two new bags a week of pellets, and typically that will last the entire week. I find the shavings help a little with absorbtion, and make everything just a bit fluffier.

[Simkie]

Nope, I don’t bank. I … anti bank, lol. Rake the bedding away from the corners & walls. The horses are totally capable of moving it there themselves.

I also hate the TSC pellets. Anything else! The only other brand I found awful was a white bag with red lettering out of Canada. So dusty. Years ago, wish I could remember the name.

I added sawdust to my stalls recently…we had a bunch of logs milled, so it was here and “free.” I find it very different than pellets. It’s less absorbent and far, far dustier. None of that is a surprise–pellets are dried, and “dust free” in that the smallest particles have been removed. But it’s made me very glad to use pellets instead!

When I brought my horses home, I found stall cleaning to have a surprising learning curve. I’d worked at barns and cleaned stalls before? But really did have to figure out my own process and method, and there were absolutely days where I walked into a stall and wanted to walk right back out. You’ll get into the groove of it before too long!

[Jarpur]

I’ve been using pellets for decades, and far prefer them to shavings. I even tried going back to a mix (as had been recommended by someone on C0TH) a couple years ago, which only reminded me how much I prefer pellets. I do use the TSC pellets, as that is what is available to me here.

The only time stalls are stripped is before pressure washing the barn. When starting with a stripped stall, we begin by putting down a very light layer of a product such as Stall Dry or Sweet PDZ (this is over the rubber stall mats), before adding the pellets.

My barn has 12 x 12 foot stalls, and we use about three to four bags of pellets over the mats when starting from scratch. Generally add a bag/week/stall (half bag at a time), but this could vary – for instance, if bad weather necessitates more stall time then additional bedding might be necessary. The stalls have feeders in the corners, with Nelson waterers in the diagonal corner, and I try not to have much bedding in either of those two areas, as it would be wasted there.

When necessary, half of a new bag is dumped towards one side of the stall, in a pile, and watered by a hose sprayer (not soaked), left to sit, then forked over to see how dry the pellets deeper in the pile still are. Most often, sprayed one more time, and left to sit again*. Later, the fresh pellets are spread by the forkful, concentrating the clean pellets in the areas where the horse likes to lie down.

Have only had geldings for a number of years, therefore the wet spot(s) is/are located around the mid-stall area. When cleaning a stall, I fork up these spots, apply a small amount of the Stall Dry or Sweet PDZ, let it sit for a minute, then pull some bedding from the stall sides to cover these areas.

The idea is that older bedding is used to soak up urine, while the horse can sleep on the clean, fresh stuff, and none of it is wasted in the food or water areas.

*the water amount needed is probably affected by both the humidity level and the pellets themselves; never used to need to water pellets here, but we’ve been in an extended drought for a long time and must do so now

[Jarpur]

@Simkie

Rake the bedding away from the corners & walls. The horses are totally capable of moving it there themselves.

Same.

[OzarksRider]

I bed with sawdust, pine shavings, and pellets. I use sawdust because it’s cheap ($20 for a pickup load) and available locally. I top the sawdust with small pine shavings to help keep down the dust. I use pellets to fill in the pee spots, and I don’t apply any water. The horses do a fine job watering the pellets for me, and they can pee on it a few times before it’s wet enough to remove.

[clanter]

@Jarpur

Stall Dry or Sweet PDZ

we use Standlee’s Horse Fresh which like PDZ are made from zeolite,

Horse Fresh at least here is about half the cost of PDZ

[Calvincrowe]

Agree, pelleted bedding is not to be banked. I anti bank-- for my gelding he gets a generous bed of wetted pellets (so a mix of sawdust and whole pellets) in the center of his stall. I sweep the sides all the way around (hay and grain is fed in the ‘front’ and the back door (Dutch to the paddock) is kept free of bedding. For my mare, she gets a more traditional bedding pattern as she of course, pees behind rather than in the center.

I pick the poop up, using a sifting method. I prefer a fork with a basket so I can get all the bedding off the poop. I then rake away the good bedding in search of pee piles. With a bed of 4 inches at least, of bedding, the pee is easy to find and lift away like a cat box.

[PamnReba]

I also spread fresh pellets over PDZ covered mats, then use the hose sprayer to wet them down. Wait half an hour, come back, rake them thoroughly, then spray again. After that, the horses will spread them around just fine. I will put intact pellets down in common pee spots though, and then cover with a thin layer of extra-fine shavings. Then it does make like a cat box and cleanup is easier. I use a flat shovel (spade, maybe?) to pick them up and expose the rubber mat underneath, which then gets treated with more PDZ. All wet spots do.

[Jarpur]

Here, Sweet PDZ is $24/40#; Stall Dry is $13/25#; don’t have a local supplier of Horse Fresh.

[ASB_Stars]

I use fine shavings in my stalls, with pellets in the areas likely to be peed in. I am old school. and I do like a good bit of bedding in my stalls. I will bank if I’m feeling like adding the bedding. I am not a minimalist when it comes to bedding stalls.

[luvmyhackney]

I only use damp pellets in pee spots for horses that really pee in stalls. Everything else is shavings, mix of fluffy and fine. I bed deep and bank enough I only have to add on the weekends.

I boarded at a barn that was stingy with shavings, I now I probably go a little over board.

[clanter]

Standlee Horse Fresh 25 pound bag is $7.95 here, PDZ same size bag is $13.99

[MorganMaresVT]

@Jarpur

apply a small amount of the Stall Dry

I can’t find Stall Dry around here any more. It really worked well for so many situations. I far preferred it to Sweet PDZ. Where do you find it?

[LakeEffect]

Thank you all! Will not be banking going forward based on the feedback. I’ll also look to pick up some PDZ; doesn’t look like the standlee version is available near me.

They’ll be going out more and more which will help, we’ve just been watching for fence testing + introducing the grass beyond slowly.

Really appreciate the wisdom!

[Jarpur]

Our local TSC carries Stall Dry.