I’d also say, having worked for years at a big commercial barn that had dirt floors with haphazard mats and used straw or sawdust as available. I HATE mats!
Yes 200 pounds of pellets, wetted. I’m not sure on the size of the shavings bags but I think they’re usually 8 cubic feet, making your calculations correct. They were quite deep, but I wouldn’t say well over a foot. They were certainly soft and fluffy and quite comfortable looking. Anyways, I posted the amount of bedding used to justify that they were not lightly bedded by any means, and there was still mixing of soiled and clean.
That is a super interesting set up with the pavers. I am quite intrigued though we would have to get creative with removing the topsoil. There’s a relatively low loft over these stalls so theres no room to allow them to be built up and even midsize machinery won’t fit under the loft and in the stalls. I’ll have to do some more thinking on this one and certainly not a “now” bandaid.
One thing to consider is dust. My stalls have a sand/dirt floor. They drain really well. Even after adding mats on top of the sand, you can hose out the stall, even flood the stall and it will drain in 24 hours. The reason I added mats was due to dust. Just clouds of dust everywhere and when cleaning. The mats significantly cut down on the dust.
I no longer use any bedding. Since my horses aren’t stalled for long periods, I muck and sweep any manure dust to the pee spot if there is one and muck that out. I much prefer mats compared with sand. I prefer to use no bedding compared to using a fully bedded stall. I can clean my stall in about 5 minutes and don’t have to lug shavings around. Even with the piggy mare- she paces manure everywhere and it is still easy to clean. If I did add bedding, it would be in the pee spots only.
You could do hybrid stalls- mats in front, no mats in back with a sand floor. Those work well too.
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I did notice the dust at facility 2. I’m not usually sensitive to dust and such but I did notice I was sneezing and occasionally coughing more doing stalls there.
Good idea on the hybrid option. I do keep my stalls un-bedded up front to keep their eating and water area clean and swept out; not much angers me more than having to sift through hay when picking a stall. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
our sissy horses would not pee in an unbedded stall too yucky I guess for them, even in the field they go to the same place where some bedding is put where they pee so they do not get splashed and these are same guys who will go play in the mud
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It’s only about 8" deep. Which, if you look at species that have actually had proper studies done on them (cattle) that is the minimum for keeping them sound and free of bedsores. Minimum over any flooring whether it’s mats, concrete, matresses, waterbeds, etc. Minimum.
And yes, cattle are heavier and have pointier bones than horses, so, horses may be able to be kept sound and bedsore free on less, but we’re only talking a difference of a couple hundred pounds for larger warmbloods compared to a fully grown Holstein.
Side note - if you do it right, that 8" depth can be kept up with 2 bags of shavings a week for 8-12 hour turnout, 3 for 4-5 hour turnout, and 4 for stall rest.
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I’m redoing the stalls in my barn currently. I have 24 to redo so going to do 3-4 stalls in February and see how I like them before completing all of them.
My game plan is to do:
Add clay sand mix to level; then compact down ( all 24 of them)
Possibly cow carpet depending on my budget to keep the gravel from disappearing
Bottom layer - 3-4" of gravel
Mid layer- 2-3" sand over gravel -
Top Layer - Stall Savers
Bedding - Hemp (depending on $$)
I’m hoping that everything under the stall savers stays fairly level with walking and pawing. If not my hope is that I just need to pull up the stall saver, rake it level and re-install. I have not bedded with hemp before but my friend just started and loves it.
I think the long term “drain life” of sand is going to vary depending on what soil it is laid on. Here, and likely where you showed in FL, the native soil is a sand mix. That would improve drainage performance and longevity. Certainly a sand floor could be periodically replaced or topped up to maintain it.
I’m dubious about the it’s ability to be disinfected.
Also sand colic might be a concern.
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Disinfection is my biggest concern. I have so many questions on how sporulating (and even non sporulating) bacteria move and percolate up through layers of soil and bedding, that no one seems to be able to answer. And I don’t know if there even are answers. I’ve often wondered if I just bed deep enough, to put a thick layer between soil and newborn, if that would suffice. Then I remember how much it costs to hospitalize a very ill neonate and decide it’s not worth trying. But at the same time, clostridial endospores are EVERYWHERE, tracked in the stall on feet, in the dirt on the mares coat, in her manure, etc. So it’s not like I can get rid of it all. These are the spiraling rabbit holes my mind goes down, often times in the middle of the night…
So a little bit of a tangent here, for those who have done considerable work on their stall floors. How do you level them? When I have brought in new material, I spread it out to what looks level to the eyeball, then the mats determine that that was a lie. I’m just a little bit at a loss as to how to make the things, you know, semi flat.
Use a 2" x 4" on edge to sweep across the floor in different directions to assure it is fairly level helps.
If very fancy, add a level to it and try to stick by what the bubble tells you.
We have one of those flat tamping feet you buy at Home Depot, Lowes, Walmart we use here and there also, but is time consuming:
I’ve done this a few times.
You use a long, straight board and get down on hands and knees. Pull the board across your floor, take down high spots, build up low spots. Tamp with your vibrating tamper and repeat until you have a solid, level surface.
The more precise you are, the better your mats will fit and lie flat. If your base is perfect, and your mats are installed correctly, there will be no edges to catch a manure fork or collect bedding underneath.
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Also if it fits for the mats to be staggered, where only two come end to end at the time, they stay in place better than those you set end to end directly, where four corners meet.
Very good. Thank you. I’ve scouted out a vibe compactor at the rental place I use. I just wasn’t sure about the board technique. Thanks!
The mats are a bit difficult as my stalls are an odd size and theres a rough concrete apron (about 4 inches wide) around two sides of each stall, on the exterior walls. So it’ll take a bit of precision to get the level of the floor up to the level of the apron, so that mats may butt up against the walls. And I’ll have to cut some mats to get the odd dimensions to work. But good point on staggering the mats.
If you can, use interlocking mats. They are a bit more expensive than regular mats, but worth it. We’ve used them very successfully in stalls w both a concrete floor and a sand floor. We use gorilla glue in the joints to initially be sure they are stable and locked into place.
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My stall floors are packed stone dust. One out of the three has a mat and yes, the urine pools and more shavings are required in that one. My horses have free access to the stalls and they do tend to go into them to pee. The barn doesn’t have a urine smell. Over the years, the stall floors without the mat have become uneven and should probably be repacked but I haven’t bothered with it since they are just used for meal time and napping throughout the day.
Years ago I worked at a farm where they taught me that if you mix in some dirty shavings with fresh new ones, the bedding is much deeper. Shavings that have a bit of moisture in them are fluffier so a mix of old and new shavings gives you a deeper, softer bed with fewer shavings. I find it easier to do this in the stalls without mats.
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Just took these pictures to show how we get mats moved.
Ours are 4’ x 8’ 3/4" so very heavy.
We use one C-visegrip welding clamp in the middle and pull from it with a chain thru it, a hay hook, a lead rope, just anything to pull from.
If you want to try two, about two feet apart and the chain thru both, or a chain on each, that works also.
One clamp is better to jerk it around sideways, turn it over and over, to place it exactly where you want it, two maybe easier to drag a long way.
I just changed some 50 mats around and leveled under them last fall and didn’t have any trouble with one clamp and a long hay hook.
Other clamps work also, the C clamps are easy to put and take off and just seem to hold best for us while pulling mats here and there, even being dragged by a pickup or tractor by them for longer stretches.
The advantage of the clamps and something to pull from is that you don’t have to bend your back to pick them up and drag them around, it saves your back.
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Interesting read. I guess I don’t really understand the concept that mats “pool” urine more as being bad. That’s kind of the point. You want to be able to remove the urine, so if it drains into the soil/sand you can’t.
Whether or not the sand/base layer can properly drain the urine well enough to prevent odors is hard to judge. I would think that it depends on the drainage as well as the amount of time the horses are in the stalls. A friend cleaned stalls once for a STB farm that had sand in the stalls. The ammonia would burn the hair out of your nose as soon as you entered the barn.
I think they literally bedded on sand (no other bedding) which clearly wasn’t effective, but I would worry that eventually urine would saturate whatever material was under the bedding and it would smell like ammonia.
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I cleaned stalls at a barn that did not have mats, had packed sand for stall floors. Shavings on top.
At my barn I started with out mats (cost reasons) and now all three of my stalls have mats.
Like so many things horse management wise - for the theory that pee drains away and never smells to work it depends greatly on where you are and the conditions there.
Add that with out mats even the slightest bit of repeat cleaning or horse pawing causes a divot in the base. Some of the stalls in the barn I worked at had huge pits in the middle by the time it was scheduled to have the base fixed up again.
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