I’m new to using pellets rather than shavings. I must say I love the time savings I’m seeing. However I’m not sure about the maintenance of the stalls over time with the pellets. Advice please… and thank you!
I tried the pellet bedding. I couldn’t stand leaving it as pellets, because I prefer to use a fine-tine manure fork to sift out poop balls, and the pellets are too big to fall thru the tines. When I use a “regular” manure fork with wider tines, I end up sifting half my poop back into the stall.
I tried wetting them when I put them in the stall to get them to expand. Used a garden hose with a spray nozzle - pretty high water pressure. It took forever to get the pellets to absorb and expand. And a ton of water. Not fun in cold weather, or when we are on a well.
I went back to my bagged sawdust. Not shavings - sawdust. Sifts thru the fork perfectly and absorbs pee like a champ. Only downfall is the cost - ouch.
I loved pellets. I’d throw the bags down, slit them open, and pour in 5 gallons of water or so per bag, and then go do something else, and the pellets would have fluffed and be good to spread around the stall in about 10 minutes. So much more absorbent than shavings, and so much easier to pick. I found that I did need to keep them damp, spraying them with the hose every few days (depending on the weather), or they’d lost their absorbency and dry out and break down to nothing. Keeping them damp kept their volume and absorbency up. Very easy to get the whole pee spot removed, and sawdust-coated poop was a breeze to pick out too. I found I definitely had to “flip” the bedding every few days, turning the stuff that was packed down against the stall mats so it was on the surface. That also helped keep the bedding from drying out. Very soft and supportive to walk on, didn’t slip out from under my horse’s feet when she got to her feet after a nap, and very good at minimizing odors. I would put in a bag or two every few days to a week, and I did completely strip the stall every two weeks or so. This was partly because I liked the look and smell of a newly pelleted stall, so sometimes I stripped the stall “just because,” but also I did find that if you weren’t keeping the pellets just a shade damp, they just disintegrated and disappeared. And, at a certain point around 2 weeks, for me the stall just got too full of poop flakes that the pitchfork couldn’t catch.
I moved barns and the new barn takes good care of the stalls so I don’t need the extra performance of the pellets, but, if I ever were doing more self-care again, I would be very happily buying pellets.
Not sure what you mean by maintenance?
I start a bare stall (12 x 12) with 5-6 bags of pelleted bedding. I wet them with a hose so I have a mix of fluffed pellets and whole pellets (about 75% fluffed). I bed my stalls so the bedding is in the middle, swept back from under the water/feed buckets in the front of the stall, and swept back from the back wall where my hay feeder is and the back door to the paddock is. The depth is 3" of bedding (or more). I use a Wonder fork with a basket attachment to get the poop and I take out all the pee, every morning. My boys are in 13 hours a day during the winter, a 15.1 QH and a 17.1 Warmblood. I put a bag of new pellets in every 4-5 days on average. I dump it in and spray it with a hose.
During the summer/dry times the bedding is dusty, and I’ll give it a spritz with the hose.
If you are using them on matted stalls there shouldn’t be any difference in maintaining the stall with pellets over shavings. If you are using the pellets on a dirt floor, then I can see the issue. Once wet the pellets seem to stick like cement onto a dirt/clay surface, requiring more digging to clean the floor. On dirt or clay floors, I use shavings. Also, I don’t wet the pellets down. We found out that by wetting the pellets it made one of our horse’s feet too soft, so we went back to putting them in dry. Withing five minutes or so, he has them all crushed down, so for us, it is not a problem.
I use pellets in warm weather.
I start a stripped (stonedust floor, no mats) stall with 3 bags and mist them lightly with the hose to jumpstart the breakdown.
Horses walking on them does the rest - they are total powder in 2-3 days.
I find them very economical as I can easily pick out & rake over the wet spot & pick manure w/o picking bedding as well.
I add a fresh bag roughly every other week - my horses are out 24/7 so never stalled for very long.
When it gets cold I switch to shavings, and might use a bag of pellets in the wet spot - both my geldings pee in the same place, so easy to locate.
I could stick with pellets and just let the horses crush them, but I’m a weenie and think they get a warmer/fluffier bed when it’s cold.
Plus I have a bargain source for shavings - cost 1/2 of pellets.
I find that with pelleted bedding, I remove much less wet soiled bedding from the stall. I don’t get it really wet - maybe a gallon per bag? I put a new bag in every couple days. I do not use it in the summer because it will get dusty. My horses are out a lot in the summer and the stalls just get too dry.
[QUOTE=moving to dc;7328611]
I tried the pellet bedding. I couldn’t stand leaving it as pellets, because I prefer to use a fine-tine manure fork to sift out poop balls, and the pellets are too big to fall thru the tines. When I use a “regular” manure fork with wider tines, I end up sifting half my poop back into the stall.
I tried wetting them when I put them in the stall to get them to expand. Used a garden hose with a spray nozzle - pretty high water pressure. It took forever to get the pellets to absorb and expand. And a ton of water. Not fun in cold weather, or when we are on a well.
I went back to my bagged sawdust. Not shavings - sawdust. Sifts thru the fork perfectly and absorbs pee like a champ. Only downfall is the cost - ouch.[/QUOTE]
You are supposed to wet them – pelleted bedding is dehydrated sawdust. I know some people don’t wet them, but that’s the whole point of using them. It should be pretty much identical to using pine sawdust, except that you can store them more easily because the water has been removed. And, I suppose, you can control the moisture level because you can choose how “wet” or fluffed up they become by how much water to add.
It is true that they absorb more slowly in cold temperatures. If you are lucky enough to have hot water in your barn, that’s what I would use to fluff them up in the winter. I don’t, so I have to just be patient and try to time it around the warmest part of the day or warmer days of the week to add bedding. I can see why people switch back to sawdust or shavings for the winter, though.
Depending on the brand, the amount of water needed can differ, and of course your own personal choice. I use at least a gallon per bag of 30lb Boreal Pellets from Agway. Probably more, but definitely never less.
If I’m starting with a naked stall I’ll wet them and then mix in dry pellets as needed so the absorb as they fluff. I do remove the wet spot every day and try not to remove too many of the unfluffed pellets before they’ve done their job.
Whether you wet them depends on what you’re using. You are not supposed to wet pelleted straw, such as Strufex, which is what I use. They clump and get icky. They are softer then any of the 3 wood pellets I’ve tried, and just even 12 hours of walking around on them breaks them down nicely.
I’d be very hard to convince to go back to shavings. They all get dusty in my situation, as horses are not in long enough to make turnover fast enough, but shavings would end up packing and clumping down in corners. I push whatever’s in the stall to the sides on a regular basis when they come in for breakfast, just because I don’t want pellets breaking down for that period of time in the stalls. If I need to keep them in over night, I pull everything in like normal and let breakdown happen. Picking out manure is SO much less wasteful of bedding. I find too that even pee spots, if you have put enough bedding in, is much less wasteful because it tends to super-absorb and create heavy spots that don’t get dragged around the stall as much as shavings do, so again, less bedding gets scooped out.
I only fill stalls when I have to leave them in, and then it takes a really long time to get to the point of needing to add more bags
Just a warning. Where I boarded once they did not wet the pellets. I asked them not to use them in my stall as my mare ATE them. She ended up having surgery to remove a full bucket of that stuff that was stuck in her colon…she lived. So be sure to wet them until they no longer look like edible pellets.
I slit the bag, fill with water, and let it sit, a few minutes later, it looks like a bag of popped popcorn.
I love it, it is easy to clean, reduces waste, and doesn’t take up a ton of space.
One of mine likes to nibble fresh pellets for a few minutes, but it’s straw, not wood, so I don’t worry.
With a dozen stalls and no bulk shavings storage, the pine pellets are a blessing here. I have one of those BIG rubbermaid tub-cart things on wheels. and dump twp bags at a time into it, level them off, then put in water until ‘just’ at the level of the top of pellets. Leave it for a few stalls, and pretty much ready to use for topping up or re-bedding. Our horses are not locked in their stalls at any time - each has an attached individual run - and thankfully most of them are pretty good about not peeing their stall out. The real bonus to using sawdust or pelleted bedding is the greatly reduced bulk in the manure pile as opposed to shavings or (God forbid) straw bedding. Even when we had foaling mares and did use straw, I put pelleted bedding underneath to soak up the wetness and keep ammonia down for babies.
[QUOTE=Calvincrowe;7328806]
Not sure what you mean by maintenance?
I start a bare stall (12 x 12) with 5-6 bags of pelleted bedding. I wet them with a hose so I have a mix of fluffed pellets and whole pellets (about 75% fluffed). I bed my stalls so the bedding is in the middle, swept back from under the water/feed buckets in the front of the stall, and swept back from the back wall where my hay feeder is and the back door to the paddock is. The depth is 3" of bedding (or more). I use a Wonder fork with a basket attachment to get the poop and I take out all the pee, every morning. My boys are in 13 hours a day during the winter, a 15.1 QH and a 17.1 Warmblood. I put a bag of new pellets in every 4-5 days on average. I dump it in and spray it with a hose.
During the summer/dry times the bedding is dusty, and I’ll give it a spritz with the hose.[/QUOTE]
Sounds very familiar! Works well!
- Took awhile but I love the pellet bedding ``` for use with a topping of shavings ~
[I]
- Admitting it took me awhile to develop my system but I do love the pellet bedding and often top with a bag of shavings ```
I put three (40# bags of pellets )Equine Fresh in a big [/I][I]Rubbermaid wheelbarrow ``` keep it in an empty stall.
In the morning after turn-out … I dump the water buckets in the wheelbarrow … not All the buckets :eek::lol: not more than 3 gallons per one bag of pellets…
While I clean stalls ``` the pellets FLUFF … and are ready to be added to stalls as needed…
Pellet bedding is wonderful for pee spots = easy removal
as well as easy for picking piles …
**I do add a bag of shavings to some stalls depending upon the level of “pig behavior” :lol: of any particular horse or pony …
Some horses are only pellet bedding users
Most are pelleted bedding with some shavings on top
I do not like to water or sprinkle the pellets in the stalls
I prefer to have the pellets "FLUFF’ and readied to use for consistency of product.
** When bedding outside run-in-sheds … I haul twenty bags out to the shed in a large John Deere garden cart …
bags standing on end ~ slit at the top and water (3gallons) added with the hose ~
by the time I drive out to the shed the pellets have 'fluffed" in their bags and then I dump the cart
and spread the bedding pulling out the empty bags as I go …
Hope this helps … there is a learning curve with pellet bedding … and all brands make up slightly differently but I really do think it is a great product …
economical ``` easier & faster stall cleaning … and less wasted bedding added to the manure pile :yes:[/I]
I use the pellets and must wet them-if not fluffed, my mare eats them! I use a 20.00 hot pot to boil water in the winter. 1 hot pot of water to 3 gallons cold fluffs the really fast. I find they clump like cat litter and let me scoop out the pee too. I often use some fine shavings mixed in too.
I use pellets over mats in my stall, I pour a bag of pellets into a muck bucket, add water and then let them puff up and spread them out, and add more bags as needed, usually about a bag a week. They are easy to pick through and absorb the urine well, my mare is a pig in her stall so it helps that I can just pick the manure and urine spots out so easily!
I love pellets. I always used the slit the bag open and dump some water in method.
However, I found that for my QH, the pellets were contributing to lost shoes. I think they must have been pulling all the moisture out of his hoof and it was the wet to dry every day/night that caused a problem. I went back to shavings and no more lost shoes.
I curse those shavings every day when I have to muck though. I think shavings are warmer in the winter too.
I love pellets. I too use 5 bags or so to start a stall. When adding a bag, I have a pocket knife, put a bag in the middle of the stall, rip and X into it, pour in a bucket of water, usually one of the very buckets from the stall, if half full, I pour both in. A bucket per bag. Walk away, work on another stall. Few minutes later, the pellets are expanded, I turn the bag over and spread contents around stall.
Now and again another person throws un wetted pellets into the stalls, which I hate, and I spray them down with a hose. My trainer says that the pee etc breaks down the pellets, but I find that if you put straight hard pellets into the stall, the horses roll around on them. Also, more importantly, they crush them with their hooves, and now you have a very fine dust, and over time the stalls are very dusty, when pellets are left to break down on their own.
If you add water to the pellets when they are first added to the stall, they fluff up, and your wood pellet is actually a bit of a curled shaving, and there is much less dust than if the pellet was crushed beneath a foot.
Just a comment about the collect of dust in my trainer’s barn compared to when I manage a barn myself with pellets - no dust.
Probably also because there is a bit of dampness added to the shavings to start - it might solve the problems of too dry-ness the above poster noted, too.
