My horse is living in a 12 X 12 barn stall. The shavings aren’t always the best quality and there aren’t always much of them. Would stall mats be beneficial? He’s an older gentleman and I get him out as much as I can, but I’d like for him to be cozy in his stall.
Mats won’t make things cozier, and depending on what the ground is now, may be worse. More than a few horses have gotten hock sores from lying down on, and getting up from mats. But it also does depend on the mat.
What does “is living in” mean? How many hours?
Can you pay for, or put in yourself, extra bedding? that’s what really needs to be done.
Mats without enough bedding will just allow urine to pool, which will make them more slipper.
Mats WITH enough bedding, help keep urine from seeping into the ground where it can start to smell over time.
7 Likes
A lot of the stall and mat issues can depend on the fill-soil-dirt under the mats. The use of the old favorite footing of blue clay as stall footing did allow water and urine pooling even in deep bedding. My barn has layers of sand and crushed limestone as stall footing under the mats. The layers allow great drainage, nuetralizes ammonia, never gets smells.
I like mats best, for the easy stall cleanup they allow. Here, freezing cold without mats, means you need to break off frozen -to-the-ground manure in stalls. The colder it is, the harder getting manure out is. Dirt floor is never smooth or level, like is possible with mats. Frozen poops may not break off neatly, leave rough tops until the ground thaws in spring! You can try beating the lumps off, but may be futile efforts, on a daily basis. Shovel or fork slid across a mat gets frosted/frozen manure piles up easily. I LOVE my stall mats, make my life much easier with daily cleaning of stalls.
Mats come with various surfaces. I see a small pebbled look, grooved, as well as smooth surfaces on mats. I prefer the pebbled type in stalls for the slightly better grip under hooves or shoes. Pebbled also cleans easily. Not much grip, but better than smooth surfaces. The grooved side is usually put on the ground side for drainage in stalls. However I put grooved side up, used out under the paddock gates where we lay mats to prevent terrible mud with daily gate use. Grooves usually give a better grip when raining, snowy, icy. Not perfect, just better than mud or the smoother mat surfaces.
As JB said, you may need to add bedding if they are stingy with it at the barn. Not much protection or absorbency without a bit of depth of sawdust or shavings on the mats. I like mats also for the insulating factor, protection from the cold dirt when they lay down at night.
1 Like
Mats are a BIT softer and marginally less slippery than concrete.
Mats do NOT make up for lack of bedding.
With insufficient bedding, horses will get bed sores on any stall surface including mats, concrete, stonedust, clay, and dirt. Least likely is clay, but if the expense of keeping the clay in good condition is already being assumed, then there is probably enough bedding in the stalls because woe betide the person who ruins the clay by digging in it!
Fwiw, before I went on DIY board, my agreement was always to provide my own (or additional if there was a weekly allotment) bedding and have staff only pick manure through the week. On weekends I would do a full turn over and removal of wet spots, re-lay bedding, add anti-stink of choice to the areas likely to get peed in and add more bedding.
Actually this worked out so well and was so economical that I continue this method on DIY board and keep my horse in about 8" of lovely bedding for the same or less as my DIY barnmates keep their horse’s with much less bedding.
4 Likes
I wish I had a place to keep extra shavings, but space is tight at this barn.
Can you buy once a week? They don’t need to be added every day. I add once or twice a week max.
2 Likes
If you have the footprint of a bale of shavings, you can stack them high.
I LOVE the mini shavings from Southern States, and there are a few other brands like that. They are smaller tham the “mini” shavings from Tractor Supply.
What does that mean? They are the best of both worlds between pelleted bedding and regular shavings.
Pellets break down to “dust” which is very absorbent, but also very efficient in that you only remove wet spots and manure, not a lot of shavings with that manure. But they can get dusty if not well-used (and yours may be well-used enough to not be an issue)
Regular shavings take a lot longer to get dusty (like almost never in a regularly used stall like yours), but you also remove a lot more bedding to clean
this means those mini shavings last a lot longer, without the dust, which means you’re not using but maybe 1-2 bags a week.
1 Like
From my horses’ POV that doesn’t factor in.
They have free access to stalls 24/7.
Bedding is shavings over well-compacted (18yrs) screenings. No mats.
Lately 2 of the 3 - horse & pony - have been choosing the compacted manure/shavings hills* just in back of the stalls to lay down at night.
*Hills formed over the remaining snow - think: permafrost.
Our weather hasn’t been warm enough yet to melt the snow insulated by the muck on top.
I’m brushing this stuff off coats every morning. This morning the horse was wet on his belly & the hip in contact with the ground.
His choice.
Overnight temps below freezing.
Only the mini is sleeping in a stall.
In late November I switched to a very fine (near sawdust) shavings. Mostly for economics, a 60# bag is $4 bought as a pallet of 40.
I refresh stalls with a full bag roughly every 2 weeks.
This week I split 1 bag between 2 stalls & will do the same this weekend when temps drop to teens. Again 
2Dogs and I live “near” each other on the weather map, deal with similar cold issues. We put our horses in stalls overnight during cold weather, Oct to late April. I see mine make what I call “poor choices” in what they do. So laying outside overnight on the dirt in very cold conditions, is not optional here! Ha ha Mine do lay down most nights, so they have to lay on bedded mats.
I know mats are not really softer or more cushioning under them. Too soft of matting does not last well under hooves and shoes. Pawing shortens a mats life too. But i have no holes to fill, no floors to level repeatedly. I lived with dirt floor stalls as a kid, way too much work cleaning them, trying to keep them acceptable under the horses. Mats are non-conductive, so they are a bit “warmer” because they are limiting heat loss. True or not, this is what I tell myself!! Ha ha
In reality, here, it all comes back to mats being so much easier to clean well, fast, all the time. More time to do horsey things. Gosh, It really is all about me!! Ha ha
2 Likes
This is exactly what I do. I always heard it referred to as “deep litter.”
I bed 4-6 inches of mini-flakes on mats. He pees in the same spot, it sinks down to below the top layer and he has a nice bed to lay on. I pull clean shavings over the pee spot if, for some reason, it looks wet on top.
Weekly, I rake off all the shavings that move easily, leaving behind a “pee cake” that is densely soaked. I dump the pee-cake, replace with the older shavings and add new to the perimeter.
He always has a firm bed to lay on, he never has pee stains, and I swear I am saving money versus trying to pick out pee spots daily!
1 Like
I call it modified deep litter because true/traditional deep litter means that the wet stuff is left for literally months, over the winter usually, and then all hauled out in big loads already partially composted.
1 Like
Im getting ready to add some stalls in my barn. What did you put under the mats? any rock ? A man who used to board horses told me that he put lime something or other, in the middle of the stall where the horses turn, to prevent them from putting a pit in the stall?
You need a good solid base (packed stone is what I have) to keep the mats from moving. I have interlocking mats and they haven’t moved in 20+years
Anything that will tamp down to be like concrete but still drainable. Bluestone/crush-n-run are names around here, basically the “fines” from rocks. When wet, and tamped (vibrating if you can), it will compact such that a vehicle won’t leave tracks, but will still drain.
Screenings. Tamped with a vibrating plate tamper–call up your local equipment rental place–and carefully level. Properly installed stall mats fit so tightly together than there is no leaking through.
If your base isn’t level, the mats won’t meet perfectly at the seams and you’ll catch your fork. If your base isn’t tamped down, horses will create dips, and then your mats will become uneven at the seams.
It’s a lot of work to do right, but it’s absolutely worth doing right ONCE.
1 Like
This is what I do, with the added benefit that it evens out my dirt stall floors. A thick “pee cake” layer in the dip in the stall makes for a level floor as well as keeps from making the hole deeper by digging into it every day. I pick manure daily but dig it all out about every 2 weeks, straight into the tractor bucket. My stalls are dry and don’t smell, which is not the case at the barn I occasionally work at with mats on the floors that are bedded more thinly and completely cleaned daily. There is often a very strong ammonia smell in there (not just by walking in the barn, but when I clean the stalls sometimes it makes my eyes water and leaves a lingering odor on my clothes).
1 Like
Me too.
This was supposed to be a reply to Gail Byrd.
Our base is packed limestone (layers of stone, watered and rolled, repeat). Dirt guys said they pack to 96% of the hardness of concrete. We installed mats on top, and bed with pellets.
Like mentioned above, it stops holes in the base, and makes picking a stall easier. I boarded at a lot of barns in the decades before we bought our own place, both with and without mats, with surfaces that varied from dirt to crushed rock to whatever. After those experiences, I knew I wanted packed stone with mats on top; it’s worked great for over two decades, and have yet to deal with a hole, or even a low spot, in the base.
When we power-wash the barn, we peel back the mats a little where they join together to remove the tiny amount of fines that manage to work their way through the seams. That’s it as far as base maintenance.
I notice a difference with our barn’s concrete aisle, between standing on the bare aisle and standing on the grooming area which is covered with thin rubber matting (the type that comes in a roll). If that thin matting makes a difference I can feel through my boots, then surely the stall mats do add some comfort.
1 Like
