Months?!! Wow, that would be pretty deep litter alright. But kind of interesting if it is partially composted… Thanks for the clarification.
Yup! It’s not done a lot with horses (in North America) except maybe in group housing for broodmares. You need heavy equipment (minimum skidsteer but a proper loader tractor is best) to clean it out.
I’ve been in a few breeding operations that were set up for it. The one that was built the best had the stalls set down from the aisle about a foot with a ramp at each door. All dividers between stalls were hinged so that they could all swing back against the back wall. The first stall in the row had a full width sliding door to the outside so on clean out day, horses would get turned out as normal, the big slider opened and all the stall dividers swung back. Loader tractor would come in and was able to do clean out the whole row without having to manoeuvre awkwardly. The only manual forking was a bit around each stall’s ramp.
Once it was cleaned out, a thick layer of clean straw was put back in, the dividers swung back into place and the sliding door closed and secured. Then the whole process started again with obvious manure piles being taken off the top every day and fresh straw thrown on top to make a clean bed again.
When clean outs are properly timed, it makes a lovely warm barn for the winter that gives beautiful compost for spring that can go right on fields and eliminates the massive manure pile volume issue that can be so difficult to deal with when doing normal straw bedding.
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Between this, and the barn where you tossed manure into a trough in front that was flushed out, I am learning a lot, lol.
I’ve never gotten used the idea of straw bedding as it doesn’t seem absorbent, same with rice hulls.
LoL I personally hate straw bedding except when it’s done deep litter. Even then I don’t love it.
Stable cleaners are The Best. I’ve been at 2 horse barns that had them and cannot understand why anyone would build a million dollar (or even less) or more building and not have a stable cleaner in the building plan. The time, labour, and annoyance they save is priceless imo.
If you MUST use straw bedding, buy old straw that is dark gold color, no shine on the stems, maybe a year old. Not real attractive but does break down to absorb better than new straw will.
Bright shiny straw is not absorbent under horses or other animals unless used as a deep litter bedding that breaks up the stem fibers to expose edges that will allow absorbing. Shiny straw can be slippery, not beneficial for spreading on fields unless it was in the manure pile or composted because stems will just blow away. One of those “looks good, but not really helpful” things they used to do in stabling.
We have straw for foaling mares, because the stems do not stick to wet babies or get breathed in as shavings and sawdust can. Sawdust, wood products inhaled, can cause pneumonia in the new foal. We have found pellets on the mats under a DEEP straw layer, to work well for absorbing the liquids in a foaling stall, new foal keeping stall. I HATE cleaning that stall while we need to use the straw, but better than a sick foal.
Dirty straw should be put on manure piles or composted to get any value as fertilizer.
If you want to do the extra work, chopping straw to use as bedding will make stall cleaning a breeze! That stuff is amazingly absorbent, seems to clump around any liquid. So just forking out the clumps, poop piles, takes only a minute or two. We had extra straw bales left over from the foaling. I told daughter to run the straw thru the leaf shredder, use the chopped straw under her 4H calves to use it up, get our storage space back. She did that (a very dusty job) and put the chopped straw in some garbage cans to use as needed. Chopping/shredding greatly reduces the volume of the straw, with a bale ending up as maybe half a trash can worth. She ended up with several cans full from about 10 bales. The calves were bedded on the thick layer, stalls cleaned daily. No runny stuff at all. She also thought it was a great bedding. Easy to use, clean out fast, calves stayed very dry on it.
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I would love to see actual research on this. <-- that’s a general shout out, not necessarily a question I’m asking of you … unless you happen to have a link or two 
I don’t think it is inhaling shavings/ wood products but bacteria in shavings that are bad for a foal lying on them. I have read this in multiple reputable places so I feel this is probably accurate.
That’s weird though. I mean straw has actual field dirt in it and is way more prone to harbour molds.
I’d really love to see this knowledge backed by science or debunked - either. I’d just like to know know instead of wishing I knew for sure lol
the deal with wood/shavings, and foals, is that the bacteria harbored in wood can much more easily cause a navel stump infection. Once that has fully dried, then shavings are fine for foals to lie on.
But for sure you don’t want finer sawdust/wood particles being inhaled by a newborn foal either.
Do you have a link to a study that shows this?
We are on very hard, cherty soil in central AL. My stalls aren’t in heavy use, but we still had created pee spot ‘low spots’ and places by the gates where impatience holes had been dug. we filled and leveled the stalls and the hall with gravel fines and tamped them with a walk-behind vibrating tamper. We then topped with with the 4X5 mats from TSC and used matt clips to secure them in place (my horses trot into their stalls from the pasture and I didn’t want them shifting the mats. 5 years on, nothing has moved. I use less bedding, it’s less smelly from ammonia, it is easy to clean and use a blower to get the floors and hall clean when need be. I wish I had put them down 15 years ago when I thought it was too much expense.
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Yeah, once you have them secured, there is no going back. I use the heavy interlocking mats and don’t have to have them anchored down. They also don’t need to fit snugly along the stall walls, which makes it nice because stalls are NOT plumb.
It helps to have a gelding, who pees in the middle because, after various moves, I have a 3-6 inch unmatted border around the mats.
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yes, my barn is a pole barn that we built and we are not carpenters LOL. I have a few places where the mats don’t align well but between PDZ and fine shavings, it’s fine. I certainly bed deep enough to avoid hock and eblbow rubs, but the mats keep the urine from sinking. Scoop the soiled bedding, sprinkle PDZ - done.
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I boarded at a barn that used straw for 3 years. For 10 months I was there I was a working student and cleaned 10 stalls 6 days a week. I did not mind the straw at all. I think they laid down more often. It was plenty absorbent. We live in mushroom country so the mushroom farmer comes to remove the pile every week or 10 days. We were part of a 45 stall farm so generated enough of a pile to make it worthwhile for the mushroom farmer to pick it up. Straw for larger farms is very common in our area due to the mushroom farmers picking it up. It makes manure removal much easier and cheaper for large horse farms.
These stalls had the grid mats and a decent gravel base under them so they drained well. One stall had mats. The stall with mats we had to bed a little heavier.
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BTW, I learned a new word, “cherty” Might need it for Wordle…
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It took me a long time to decide to buy mats, and after a few years I can say that it was the best investment. I would have been glad if I had been pushed to do this earlier. Yes, it is expensive, but this is compensated over time – less bedding + saving time on cleaning (a huge plus). I also like how it looks aesthetically. As wrote above, you just need to install it qualitatively once. Me and my horse are happy 
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My barn uses SoftStall. This is more expensive then mats, but they are not slippery and offer a softer bed with less shavings. Urine does pool, though, and when the manager wanted staff to try using less shavings, there was a noticeable ammonia smell.
Those of you that only take the urine out once per week… aren’t you worried about the negatives of breathing this in? Why not just bed them deep enough to avoid doing this?
I stayed in an aisle at a show with a barn that cleaned stalls this way, it smelled awful… I think they just got used to the smell and didn’t notice it. Yuck.
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Huh? The people who are removing urine sporadically ARE talking about a deep litter system. That’s how deep litter works.
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As SImkie said, pretty sure you’ve read the urine out once per week posts incorrectly. My stall is deep enough that if I ever see urine on the surface, I’ve screwed something up. If I ever see mats, either there is something wrong with my horse or I have let the bedding get too low.
Deep litter bedding shouldn’t stink. If it does, something is wrong with the management of it.
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