perfect illustration why removing horses from the agricultural setting is difficult.
Actually, many of us do. Sometimes, what we question is whether the BM, actually, has any clue about the math of boarding, as some BMs appear entirely clueless about doing a business plan and about their ability to actually deliver the services and care that they have contracted to deliver for the agreed-upon price.
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I am switching a barn over to straw. $6 per bale but one bale does a stall (1 1/2 for a large stall) and at 1-3 bales per horse per week, it’s quite economical compared to shavings.
Cleaning takes ~5-7 mins per stall if done twice a day. Does take some adjustment of technique, but I find it way easier than shavings. Disposal makes a larger pile.
Shavings just turn into awkward wood when wet and the large shavings absorb nothing at all. I hate them.
I chuckle when people say “for the price I pay”. They are frequently trying to sum up raw costs. Not the price you pay for my expertise which, by the way, you use all the time. Not the price you pay for the emergencies that crop up constantly or the wear and tear on equipment, facilities, and our bodies. Not the pasture reseeding and the pipe fixing and the emergency call for the roof leak.
If your stall board is under $575 I guarantee something is being overlooked. If nothing else it’s your BO’s sanity.
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I bed my stalls deeply and my herd voluntarily goes in them to nap, even though they’re on 24/7 turnout. Several years ago I worked at a farm where I was taught that dirty shavings are more fluffy than clean shavings so I pick the manure and the big wet spots but I mix old shavings in with the new ones and the bedding is so much fluffier. The horses are clean and the barn doesn’t stink, no flies. My farrier has also recommended this approach if a horse is on stall rest with a sore foot of some sort. My bedding expenses are fairly low with this approach too.
I’m cracking up about all the pellet love. I hate them with a passion! The nasty dust they kick up coated my work clothes & made them smell so bad that I used to strip on the mudroom porch, shower, & then come back out to hose them off before I’d even put them in the washing machine. I’m going to go with hemp or flax if I ever have stalled horses at home again
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I just started using them about a month ago. They seem to be working well for my messy old horse but I’m really struggling with my younger neat freak gelding. He moves around a lot so breaks down un dampened pellets awful quick and he’s so neat that his bedding doesn’t get replaced very quickly. Dust is atrocious. Hosing down his stall reduces dust for less than an hour in this heat. The humidity has been low ish so far. If the increased humidity of full summer doesn’t help I’m going to replace his bed with cedar shavings.
Where do you find that? Is it available everywhere?
Just be aware that some horses can get hives from the oils in cedar shavings if they lie in them.
Yikes, why cedar? That’s generally not considered animal bedding because the oils can irritate the skin and lungs.
It smells good. Some say it reduces bugs. Previous boarding barn has been bedding on mixed cedar and pine shavings for some years. My horse doesn’t have any issues from it. YMMV
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How do you know my horses, LOL
It takes me 90 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes at night to do chores during good weather. Once we get the rainy season, or cold season, it takes another 30-45 because they use their stalls more. This is three stall/paddocks for equines (pony and mini donk share one), four sheep, three goats, a cow, and chickens. Once per week I strip the sheep shed, goat shed, and chicken coop. That’s an additional two hours. I turnout in good weather during the day. That adds 20 mins of leading. For vacation once per year (less than a week) I arrange for 24 hour turnout for all critters. No one cleans to my standard and it’s too much liability to have strangers going into stalls anyway. That sounds terrible, but I’ve been doing this so long that I’m really efficient at it.
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Around here cedar is commonly used! Barns like it because it cuts odors and reduces bugs.
Occasionally I hear of a horse with bedding allergies - but it’s usually pine, not cedar.
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Oh yes!
A boarding friend and I were talking the other day and said we’d never leave the barn we are at because we are on self care, and NOBODY is as picky as we are!
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I learned somewhere along the way that cedar shavings were not a good idea for horse bedding, but that may have been regional. I believe there are different types of Cedar grown, and the way bedding is processed is different, depending on location.
I’ve used pellets in wet spots, under regular swift pick pine shavings. This works for me in stalls with dirt/clay floors and horses that don’t mix-master their wet spots too badly.
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We use cedar bark mulch (hog fuel) in paddocks and arenas in the PNW. Our horses all sleep outside on it. When fresh it is clean and I think quite sanitary.
I see no reason you couldn’t bed a stall with it other than it is very heavy once it’s wet. At our barn we have hog fuel supplied for our runout paddocks so we can top them up as needed. We buy our own shavings or bedding pellets. It would be frowned upon to use hog fuel as stall bedding only because we would go through it too fast and $$$.
The cedar shavings available in my area (mid-Atlantic) is hard on the respiratory systems of lots of critters. Especially smaller ones. A friend once brought me two chicks he had bought for his kids to see if I could figure out what was wrong with them. They had been healthy & active upon coming home from the farm store. Then, they’d suddenly become sort of floppy & weak. I instantly spotted the problem: cedar bedding. I snatched both chicks out of there, gave them a sponge bath to remove any residual oil & dust from their down, and set them up in my little urgent care brooder. Both perked up almost immediately.
Cedar oil is like a nerve toxin to baby poultry. Rabbits, too. But even for larger animals, it can be irritating. I once mixed it with our normal shaving at a 1:4 ratio. The horses were coughing, I was coughing & developed a migraine from mucking out, and we ended up stripping the stalls & starting over. People here also have it sprayed all over their yards in hopes of preventing ticks & then complain their dogs have mysteriously developed skin allergies & hot spots.
It could be the particular type of cedar that is available here. Who knows? I just avoid it at my farm.
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Interesting! We have Western Red Cedar here. Hog fuel is quite chunky. It’s also used outdoors. The only respiratory problems I’ve experienced were from pine bedding pellets or pine sawdust.
The main issue with cedar sawdust is that it A) does not break down quickly and B) when it does break down, it is oily and toxic… which is the reason why those with cedar hogfuel rings have been fined for contaminating a neighbor’s well and been forced to have the hogfuel removed. Farms with a lot of hogfuel in rings and paddocks have had to pay the cost of removing residual hogfuel when the place sells… it’s that toxic. And yes, I’ve used it too, years ago now, and like many, got away with it. For use as bedding, it can be difficult to find a disposal company that will take it, (if they know you are using it), because they can’t find a place to dump it, no one will take it. So, be careful if you are using cedar sawdust or hogfuel… it has it’s issues.
That’s why cedar is such outstanding wood for construction projects, totem poles etc… it lasts forever, because no bugs or fungus can or will consume it.
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This is very interesting regarding cedar! Like Scribbler I am in the PNW - except Oregon not Canada, but I’ve never observed these issues using cedar shavings or hog fuel. As somebody else said, I wonder if it’s a species or processing issue. Ours is Western Red Cedar and is kiln dried for shavings.
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