Pros and cons of bedding with straw? How many bales does it take to bed a 12 x 12 stall? I guess storage is always an issue with straw.
I bed with sawdust and I used to buy in bulk, but since I have a lower number of horses staying in the barn than normal, I can’t use the sawdust quick enough and don’t have proper storage for it. So the sawdust tends to rot and get nasty before I can use it all. I am buying bagged sawdust, but it’s expensive.
Thanks!
I love how cozy straw is but wow was it hard to work with. Heavy and messy.
I like bedding pellets in the middle and bagged shavings on top.
The kind of straw matters - I like wheat straw. When it is clean and chopped, it makes a really nice bed. Not all suppliers are picky enough about making sure the straw is clean, so if you’ve had a bad experience, it might be worth trying another vendor.
The other thing I like about it is that it is much easier to just grab a flake or two at a time and throw it in when you need just a bit more bedding or a clean surface. With shavings, you have to move the whole bag into the stall to get some out and it ends up being easier to just use the whole thing, because it is not always easy to store part of a bag.
When you clean with straw, you’ll want one of those wide metal pitchforks, not your standard plastic manure fork. Trying to clean a straw stall with a plastic fork will make you stabby if you can do it at all.
Depending on your preference for depth, you can bed a whole stall with one bale of straw, which also makes it less expensive (in my area anyway) than shavings.
Voracious eaters will snack on it, so that can be a reason not to use it especially for ponies.
I would say, give it a try, see if you like how it works for you.
I’ve been bedding straw for years now, and I love it and my horses love it. I am lucky to have a local farmer who sells me lovely, fluffy golden straw for under $3 a bale. One bale is enough to bed my 12X12 stalls rather luxuriously; I usually use less.
I have some of the greediest eaters around (including my dearly departed pony) and none of them have ever done more than nibbled on it. Perhaps oat straw might be tastier, I don’t know, but it’s never been a problem for me.
I have always cleaned with a standard shavings fork, and have gotten quite good at it. I can go under and pick up a “nest” of poops pretty handily now! I also find that since it is so much cheaper than shavings, I don’t have to be so meticulous about picking only the bad stuff out, so chores take less time.
The only big downside of straw is storage and disposal, because it is much bulkier than shavings (which I still use for a light, absorbent layer under the straw). However, I have a big loft and 80 acres to spread on, so it’s not an issue.
The only other thing I’ve heard people complain about is the smell, which is not good once they pee in it. However, my horses are out 24/7 for 3/4 of the year, and the other months I just keep things as clean as I can, so I don’t have an issue with it.
I also have a REALLY piggy mare boarding here now, and I can’t even imagine bedding her in shavings only, it would cost a fortune! This mare drinks two five-gallon buckets a night, and I swear she pees twice that! But with straw she always has a dry top layer to lay down on.
Also, I think that clean straw is better for their breathing, which is why it is commonly used for racehorses.
To each his own where horse keeping is concerned, but I love my straw bedding 
I think I’m going to give it a try. If one bale of $6 straw (feed store purchased for now) is all it takes to bed my 12 x 12 stall, that’s much less expensive than the 2 - 3 bags of sawdust ($6 each) a week it takes to keep the stalls bedded sufficiently.
I assuming straw is probably better for composting and spreading than sawdust or shavings? We are in the process of building. At the new farm, I will be using an ATV driven manure spreader, rather than having a manure pile like I do at the current, leased farm. Has anyone had any issues with spreading the straw?
We started using the large squares of chopped straw a year ago. The chopped straw works quite well because there are enough small pieces to absorb the pee. I really like it and it is wickedly cheaper than bagged shavings. Straw that is not chopped to me is nightmarish to clean because the strands are too long and entangled to clean easily and I HATE it… Horses seem to like it as a nice comfy bed, though. No issues spreading but we have a big tractor and spreader…
I love straw. I find it WAY cheaper than bagged shavings and much easier to clean. I pay about the same for a bale of straw v. a bag of shavings, yet I only need 1-2 bales to initially bed a 12 x 12 stall. Then I usually only add a few flakes a day after that.
Good tools and good technique are important for cleaning, as others have said. You have to pull the bedding back with every cleaning and really rake the floor, or else it will get gross and wet. But if you rake it well and use your “fines” to suck up the moisture, it’s not an issue.
In PA, mushroom growers will actually pay you a small amount for your straw manure so long as it doesn’t have shavings in it. I’m not sure if they travel as far south as VA, but it sure is a nice bonus to profit from manure disposal!
I’m currently using bagged shavings and am hating my life.
My only experience with straw was Christmas Eve 1988 (yes I remember it that well) and I thought I was giving my mare a nice toasty warm stall for Christmas. Christmas day my mother, I was a teen at the time, waking me up saying that my mare wouldn’t eat. That was not a good sign for this mare. She had eaten all her straw, her water froze in the middle of the night and she gave herself a nice impaction. Spent the entire day with my vet, a nice man from Wrigley Arabians drove my horse to the University Hospital where she spent a few day hooked up to an IV. She did survive and never coliced again.
Never again did I try to bed with straw.
Picking out a stall with shavings is ever so much easier to me. Find the wet spot, pick out the poop, and fluff. Easy as pie.
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