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Pelleted bedding????

Around The Farm
#41

I tried some of the other brands–TSC brand (Equine Fresh), Boreal- and they started to smell nasty after a bit. The TSC stuff also aggravated my asthma. No problems with WP.

I’ve noticed the same with other brands of pellets around here too. They might work as well but they just don’t neutralize smells as well. WP is like using baking soda for smells it seems. :yes: I can have my barn closed up in winter due to blizzards and when you open the door and walk in, it smells like fresh bedding. Never urine.

7HL, straw bedding manure is great for the mushroom growers.
But greenhouses and nurseries love to take pelleted bedding manure piles too. None of the wood chip shavings to ruin plants. :yes:

And older lady flower gardeners fight over it…and you don’t want to try to break those fights up, LOL!

#42

Which is why we used it, when we had the big boarding barn…

#43

Any in Arizona able to find pelleted bedding. I loved it when I used it in Georgia/FL, but I can’t find it here.

#44

I sell a product up here in Ontario called EcoStraw:

http://www.angelfire.com/on3/TrueColoursFarm/EcoStraw.html

Its a chopped, pelleted wheat straw bedding product

I have some clients that use it straight in their stalls and love it. I have some that mix it in with their sawdust or shavings and love the fact that it makes their wood based products more effective. And some use in underneath their straw bedding so it traps the urine and doesnt allow it to flow into the good bedding and they simply whoosh away the top layer of straw, remove the wet patch (it clumps like a clumping kitty litter) and then whoose the straw back on top again

Its totally different than wood based pellets which are dehyrated and extruded into pellets and then require water to make them puff up again. The EcoStraw is a compressed pellet so you dont add water at all - it simply breaks apart when the horse walks on it

We’ve shipped to some areas of the States cost effectively but to be honest, the transportation costs are the killer overall, unless someone is ordering an entire tractor trailer load. Otherwise to spread out the shipping costs over one or two skids just cannot work no matter how much we try. And going through feed stores with their mark ups doesnt work either

So - its a great product if you are close by and it works very very well. The clients that are using it seem to like it very very much and because of the fast breakdown / decomposition rate (2-4 weeks on average) getting rid of it is very easy as well and you dont have the disposal costs like you do with wood based bedding products which can take up to 3 years to fully breakdown before it can be re-used once again

#45

I took care of a neighbor’s 3 horses for 3 weeks. They use shavings. Rather than deal with their spreader I simply cleaned their stalls into my manure tubs, took them home and spread them, just as I do my pelleted bedding.

BIG MISTAKE! :eek: My lawn turned yellow!

#46

I have used only pellets (except during foaling) for years now. In the wi ter people here have wood pellet stoves so all the stores sell them. We live in very low humidity but I don’t have any horses inside in the summer so it’s not a problem. I never have any ammonia smell, the manure pile with 8 horses is manageable and it takes less time to clean stalls. I don’t wet them because they tend to break down too easily. I have Equiturf floors so it’s easy to clean but you can’t skimp on the pellets.

Erica

#47

I was so leary about trying pelleted bedding due to all the negative comments I’d seen on COTH in the past whenever the topic came up. BUT I finally bit the bullet, matted my one mare’s stall and went for it.

I love them.

I am an anal stall picker. With shavings, I’d be there FOREVER getting every pooplet. With the pelleted, it’s just a quick sift and chuck in the wheelbarrow, pull out a clump, mix in all and DONE!

This year’s project is to mat the Percheron’s stall (it’s a biggun… 12 X 16) and convert it to pellets too.

Granted, the barn they’re in is totally wide open and airy (pole barn) and my mares aren’t in all that often… but when they are, they’re comfy on that bedding and I know their stalls will be fresh all the time.

Plus there’s little to no waste…unlike my fellow boarders who still buy bulk shavings from a mill. Half of what they remove is shavings. They also have to strip those stalls almost every week…blech :dead:

#48

THIS ~

This ~

#49

Another pellet lover here. It takes half the time to clean the barn. Our manure pile is 1/4 of the size it was with shavings and because it breaks down faster we are able to trade manure to a lanscape supply company in exchange for mountains of mulch.

It is dustier than shavings, that is a given. I do not use it on anyone with respiratory issues. I love the base it provides over mats and we have no issues with it packing in hooves as someone else mentioned (perhaps they were not wetting them?). I do use shavings for anyone on stall rest over a base of the pellets.

I do not find it less expensive than shavings and we usually buy Guardian by the tractor trailer load. I have also used Equine Pine at TSC when we are out. The only brands I did not care for were the WP and pellets by a company callled Pestel (sic?).

#50

I will say that the biggest reason why we switched from pellets to compressed bag shavings, is because the BO and I are really anal about our stalls. I know most - all?? - folks mix the Pee spots in, for a pelleted stall, which is something we just couldn’t do. We get everything, and because we do, our barn never has that ammonia smell. We still use the pellets for pee spots - mixed with Kitty Litter - but we just find that the shaving are much cleaner. If you clean a shavings stall properly, there really is little waste.

The way I do it, is I get all obvious Poop piles. Then I use a flat shovel and scrape up the Pee spots - after I rake away all clean shaving around and over it. Then, where ever I see loose poop balls, I use my pick to throw it against the walls. The poop gets sifted to the top, and falls all neatly together. This is the same way I cleaned the pelleted stalls, and while they too had little waste, it was also impossible to “sift” the poop, since again, we are over anal, and the little poop pieces drove us nuts.

But as I said - the pellets/kitty litter mix is great for pee spots!

#51

I do NOT mix the wet spots back in- that is just NASTY!!!

#52

I don’t mix in the pee either.
Since it clumps in a small spot I just rake the clean bedding off of it and then scoop it off the mats and toss it out. Even with multiple pee spots, the bedding removed is very little since it holds the urine to a small spot without spreading.

#53

Regarding the OP’s original question–I have never noticed pelleted bedding clumping/packing in horses’ feet, at least not to the degree that it doesn’t all fall right out when I pick the hoof up. No digging or excavating necessary. :slight_smile: But my horses spend almost no time in their stalls, just for grain, maybe a few hours in the afternoon if it’s hot and buggy, and at night in the winter if they feel like it. (stalls open to paddock 24/7)

I love pelleted bedding, but am not using it at present for a couple of reasons:

  1. Cost–about $1/bag more for pellets and the bags are smaller
  2. Convenience–the only kind I really like are sold at the TSC (Equine Fresh) which is a 15+ mile drive, whereas the feed store where I buy regular fine pine shavings is on the way to/from work.
  3. Not enough of a difference between pellets and Fine Pine to notice–this brand of Fine Pine shavings is virtually sawdust, no more or less dusty than anything else, and is very quick to clean and doesn’t fill up my manure bunkers any quicker than pellets
  4. No need to water the Fine Pine–I don’t MIND doing it for the pellets but it’s a time waster and they freeze here in the winter because my stalls are open and snow blows in, leaving frozen tundra where there used to be bedding. :lol:
  5. I like to patronize my local feed store, and they don’t sell pellets that I like. If they were to switch to Equine Fresh I’d be very tempted to go back to 100% pellets, at least for spring-summer-fall.

Right now I do put a few bags of (dry, not watered) pellets down on my horse porch every few weeks and just let those break down and mix with the soil/sand/old bedding that’s out there. This is the McCrumb brand that I actually HATE in stalls (they don’t break down as quickly or uniformly) but they are OK for outside.

#54

Yup, pee spots get removed

#55

Another pellet user here – 3 horses and about 4 acres. My stalls open as run ins so pellets are great that they als don’t blow around outside. My manure pile is very small, and stall cleaning is quick and easy.

I’ve never had any trouble with the bedding packing in hooves. Maybe it’s too wet?

I buy by the pallet load and get 85 bags for $4.99 each (Boreal brand) from our local Agway, and for an extra $30 they deliver it and stack it for me. :slight_smile: I store all 85 bags in a 6x8 store room and still have room for a lot of other things; I can stack them 12+ high.

I do think it takes time to find the right balance between moisture and dust, and it depends on your climate and how much your horses are in their stalls. I often spray them down only because my horses are out on pasture overnight and in this hot weather they dry out rather quickly if not being used.

For the record I never mix in the wet spots, and usually “excavate” around them with my manure fork and then a shovel to clean as much wet out as possible. Then I flip the entire stall front to back, top to bottom to redistribute the moisture throughout and make sure there are no wet spots.

#56

Yes, remove pee spots ~ easy to do ~

#57

Hmm…no comment on the weight of pellets on the muck fork when mucking. That what turned us off and we went back to shavings. And we aren’t in our 90’s yet nor have a lot of horses…

#58

Yes, pelleted bedding in a basket fork is heavier. Mostly because with a basket fork and fine bedding you can scoop a lot more up at once to sift than you can with lighter shavings and a flat fork.
However you can just not scoop as much up at once and just pick through too. :yes:
I prefer scooping a bunch at a time…great arm workout between the lifting, sifting and tossing. :slight_smile:
No flapping bat wings under these arms! :cool:

#59

We switched from fine shavings to corn cob bedding at our boarding barn and I have to say I absolutely love it… BO did say it’s more expensive though. Another option if you can get it locally.

#60

We currently bed our stalls with pelleted bedding and really like it. It’s great for horses that tend to pee a lot - which we have - we just bed the stalls really well and the pee gets contained in one place and doesn’t spread over the whole stall. We clean out the pee everyday.

We have limited space in our barn, so the pelleted bedding works best for us since it takes up a lot less space than bags of shavings.

The bedding can get dusty sometimes, so when it does we just lightly mist the whole stall and wet it down.

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