Conference noted::equitation

    I prefer shavings by far. My stalls are 12 x 12 and open directly onto
    the paddock, the horses have free access and choose to spend the vast
    majority of their time outside. Still, they are in enough at nite that
    I must clean the stalls daily. I have no problem with dust in the
    shavings at all. I've tried sawdust, but found it a pain to clean up,
    it gets very heavy when wet, and it seemed I needed more sawdust than
    shavings per stall. Also, shavings can be bought for an average of
    2.50 per bag in my area (and I live close enough to my supplier,
    Brindle Ledge Farm, that I get free delivery), I dont even know of a
    place that offers bagged sawdust. In summer I get both for free at
    the sawmill at the end of my road, so Im very lucky that way, but I
    must bag it myself. Ive never tried straw, I have no doubt my TB would
    have his entire stall eaten in the first day. :-) I'd LOVE to have
    stall mats and probably will get them in the next year or so, currently
    my floors are clay.
    

    I too use shavings, and in one stall I have rubber mats -- the others
    have dirt floors.  I find that the stall with the mats gets soggy much
    faster than the stalls with dirt floors -- not a surprise at all, since
    the rubber mats eliminate drainage.  I've tried straw, but I think it
    gets disgusting looking almost immediately, and is hard to clean (I
    always end up throwing away a lot of partially clean straw) and also
    smells bad once its wet.  Supposedly these problems are common with oat
    straw (the only kind I've ever seen here in the Northeast) but are not
    problems with wheat straw.
    
    My one complaint about shavings is the bags they come in.  I have a bad
    back, and find these really hard to lift.  And there's no way to drag
    them, as you could with a bale of straw.  
    
    In the past, I've also used shredded paper, and liked it very much. 
    It's more absorbent than shavings, and decomposes more quickly too, so
    your manure pile doesn't get as huge.  But I haven't found a local
    supplier for this.  Anybody know of one?
    
    -ellie
    
    

    
    We have clay covered w/ rubber mats, and use bagged shavings
    during the winter, and shovel our own at the local saw mill
    during good weather.  The shavings are too light and fluffy
    for me to consider them any good.  My horse lies down a lot,
    and being as big as he is, he gets burn marks on his hocks without
    sufficient padding.
    The stuff we get from the saw mill is actually small chips (about
    the size of a nail head) rather than sawdust or shavings.  This
    stuff is ideal!  It doesn't float around, it's not dusty, and
    it makes picking stalls a 10 min job.  Not to mention it's only
    $5 for a truckload....
    

    I prefer using sawdust over shavings.  The sawdust are actually chips
    as described previously and are less dusty than the shavings
    (especially if the shavings have a hardwood mixed in).  We have 1
    stall walker and he was making a mess with the shavings - mixing
    everything together thoroughly every day which required alot of bedding
    removed.  The sawdust is packing down on the clay floor and is staying
    much cleaner.  My horse has mats with sawdust.  The stall doesn't stay
    as clean - the sawdust isn't packing well on the mats and the bedding
    gets much wetter with nowhere to drain.  This horse is a digger so the
    mats work best with him. 
    
    To clean the dirt floor with packed sawdust requires 5 minutes of
    picking, then removing the damp spot, then topping off with fresh
    bedding if needed.  We strip the stalls every other week - sometimes
    after 3 or 4.  The pony stall hasn't needed refreshing all winter using
    this method (he's a very tidy pony!).
    
    When I was in Arizona I bought bagged shavings for the stall.  Most
    horses live in small pens out there so bedding is rarely used.  One
    trainer uses dried-and-purified-by-the-sun recycled manure.  This
    system was very inexpensive and quite clean.  The larger barns use
    shavings.  Getting rid of the manure is a big problem out there.  You
    can throw most of it in your rubbish bin for collection in some areas. 
    If you can't you have to hire a "Farm Cleanup" man and truck to haul
    the manure pile away.  I built my riding area with my years worth of
    bedding.
    
    How about adding to this topic by discussing - cleanup techniques?
    
    An effective method that I use to 'sort' a messy stall is to ramp the
    bedding on one wall - throwing it up in the air over the pile.  Gravity
    sorts the larger objects down to the bottom of the pile - quick pickup
    with the Future Fork and we are done!

    I get free delivery of shavings and shredded paper in big plastic bags
    that I can store outside under my deck. They're too big to carry, but
    can easily be dragged. Shavings are about 3.50 for a BIG bag. I believe
    paper is about $1 cheaper a bag. I get them from Fred Gurney of
    Littleton, MA 433-6985.
    
    Sawdust makes nice bedding, but you have to have a place to store it in
    bulk. Bagged bedding is a lot more convenient for us.

    Out here in the NW, I haven't found ANYBODY who uses bagged shavings.
    They just don't seem to be available. We have to buy bedding by the
    truck load. The suppliers have a truck the size of a 10-wheel dumptruck 
    but it has a big box for a bed and a gizmo that pushes the bedding off
    the back. You get about 45 cubic yards in one delivery. That's about a
    3 month supply for 3 horses.
    
    In NH, we originally used bagged shavings which we bought in bulk
    quantities from the same guy who delivered our hay. The bags went into 
    the loft on one corner, the hay took up the rest of the loft. Never
    considered sawdust at the time because I thought it would be like the
    stuff my saws at home made, fine and dusty. 
    
    Then, my "neighbor"(he lived a mile away but was only the 3rd house
    from us!) came over with his farm truck(6 wheel dump truck) loaded with 
    sawdust and asked me if I wanted a load for $15. I looked at it and saw 
    that it was more like chips than dust or shavings. I switched right then 
    and never went back to shavings. 
    
    In NH, we got a tractor trailer load and covered it with a roll of 6 mil 
    black plastic. The plastic was held down by worn out tires I got from the 
    dump. They were glad to get rid of them! A tractor trailer load would
    last us nearly a year and kept real well under the plastic. The outer
    layers of the pile did freeze in NH's cold winters but you could make a
    hole through to the unfrozen stuff year round.

    
    
    RE: John's last reply
    
     
    We use bagged shavings.  The trouble I've had in the past with sawdust
    is that it does freeze here in New England winters.  I think it's 
    because the wood being cut is still wet and the saw dust ends up being
    damp.  For the most part, the shavings we get in bags in NE are kiln 
    dried and the absorb very well and stay nice and fluffy.  I like the
    waythe dry shavings fall through the tines of the pitch fork leaving
    just about only manure.  The wet stuff clumps together and all it takes 
    to get it is to dig down and turn everything over.
    
    /Simone
    
    
    

    
    I used to love baged shavings.  Until I tried sawdust type.. it's
    not real fine sawdust (its' just right)  The baged shavings are
    to much $$$ and are havey and they are much harder to clean..you
    end up tossing out the shaving..sawdust drops through the fork
    nicely. 
    
    You do have to have a place to put it, we have an extra stall
    and My husband gets up a dump-truck load full and it last us
    6moths.
    
    

    RE Janice's comment in the .4 reply
    "How about adding to this topic by discussing - cleanup techniques?
    
    An effective method that I use to 'sort' a messy stall is to ramp the
    bedding on one wall - throwing it up in the air over the pile. Gravity
    sorts the larger objects down to the bottom of the pile - quick pickup
    with the Future Fork and we are done!"
    
    We use that technique too except that we make 4 piles, one in each
    corner. It works for both sawdust and shavings but a little better for 
    sawdust because less manure gets lost in the pile... which is what I
    wanted to mention. Some manure does end up in the pile you make. Hey,
    nobody's perfect! So, maybe ya didn't throw it high enough or had too
    big a fork full...whatever...some gets in the pile. No sweat. When I
    go to spread the pile, I start high up in the pile and rake one fork full 
    at a time out into the middle of the stall. Being round and heavy, the 
    manure travels farther than the bedding so it's easy to pick up. Again,
    this works better with sawdust than with shavings because the sawdust
    falls through the fork tines. The shavings don't. We seem to throw out
    a lot of clean bedding when we're forced to use shavings because
    sawdust isn't available when we need it. (Only happened once in 8-10
    years)
    
    re Simone's comments about sawdust being damp...
    
    True, sawdust is from the mill saw when the trees are cut into boards
    and is therefore "green" or uncured. The shavings are usually from the
    mill's planer which smooths out the boards after they are cured by
    kiln-drying. So yes, sawdust is "damp" compared to shavings. To me, that's 
    an advantage of sawdust over shavings. The shavings contain a LOT of 
    particles which are finer than the sawdust. Because they are dried to a 
    lower moisture content than sawdust has, those fine particles in
    shavings turn to airborn dust very quickly in a stall. Being "damp"
    also seems to *improve* sawdust's ability to soak up urine faster.
    Sure, sawdust can't soak up as much urine per ounce as shavings but it
    does seem to soak it up faster. At least, our stalls seem drier when 
    bedded with sawdust.
    
    Don't we sound like those dreary "housewives" on laundry commercials?
    ;-)
    John

    Since Algiers tends to soil mostly one area of his stall, I like to
    rotate the bedding through that section.  Older bedding gets raked 
    onto the area he soils, new bedding is added to the rest of the stall.  
    That way, over time his stall stays much fresher.
    
    Mary

    Well so far, we don't have much diversity or many exotic beddings. I
    think all we have is:
    	1. Shavings
    	2. Sawdust
    	3. Shredded paper
    	4. Dried-and-purified-by-the-sun recycled manure
    
    I really expected more variety with regional agricultural by products
    (expecially in areas not known for their timber production)...like maybe
    ground corn cobs in Iowa, ground peanut shells in Georgia(although GA
    does have forest products too), straw in the plains states, etc 
    
    John

    
    I had heard that the ground corn cob & peanut shells were
    too expensive, and also not very absorbent....
    

    On the subject of shavings, I had a delivery last week, and the woman
    told me that they (Brindle Ledge Feeds out of Goffstown) are now using
    a new supplier.....the price went up .55 cents per bag. She told me the
    new stuff is spruce as opposed to pine, and is supposed to be 'less
    dusty'. Well, I find this new stuff to smaller chips (which is fine,
    but I had no problem with the pine chips), *more* dusty (perhaps
    because of the size of the chips?), and smaller bags with less shavings
    in each.
    
    I'm going back to my former supplier, the price is better and I like
    his product better. I should have known a price of 2.25 per bag and
    free delivery wouldn't last long anyway, Brindle Ledge has only had
    their feed/shavings business a few months. :-)
    
    Anyway, does anyone prefer spruce shavings to pine for any reason? The
    woman who delivered seem to expect me to be excited about this
    change... :-)....
    

    The place I bought shavings started carrying both, with different
    prices of course.  The only advantage I could see was the bags were
    much easier to handle, but then that means you don't get as much either
    right :^} ?
    I found the old shavings at the old price, you just have to look
    around. 
    Sharon

    re ground corn cobs & peanut shells
    
    I agree that I probably don't want to use them out here because I can
    get sawdust so cheap. But, I figured *somebody* would be using ground
    corn cobs in Iowa/Illinois because it was cheaper than importing bagged
    shavings from someplace with forests. Apparently, that's not the case
    since bagged shavings are available in AZ, etc. 
    
    I had another reason for asking too. What are we gonna use when the
    forset products industry makes it easy and cheap for sawmills to make
    all their shavings into chip board? 
    
    As the forests/logging decline & mills have to become more efficient to 
    survive, our shavings and sawdust supply will dwindle. It might be nice 
    to know what are reasonable options when that happens(even if it is 20 
    years from now). 
    
    Heck, it is difficult NOW when contruction is in a down turn & the mills 
    aren't producing as much. Even in New England, it was sometimes hard to 
    find new suppliers when local sawmills closed. At one point about 10 
    years ago, I had 3 different mills and one trucker who specialized in 
    bedding go out of business within 18 months or so. The trucker quit 
    because the big mills he had been doing business with started using all 
    their chips(for chip board) and sawdust(for furnace fuel) so he had no 
    supply!
    
    John

    Well, in UK and Ireland, straw is the answer....
    
    -ellie

Hi,

Up here we have several options.  Probably 80% of large "public" boarding 
stables (>15-20) have rubber mats with only about 2-3 wheelbarrow loads of 
shavings.  It personally drives me crazy as coming from the UK, where I usually 
deep littered in the winter (tonnes of straw and just lift out the yuccky bits
or pay through the nose and have somebody else do it).

We have straw, usually wheat, on top of rubber mats.  I guess about 1/2 to 1 
bale per day - after being picked over.  This actually works fine unless they 
are very messy (like mine) or stall walkers and have to be left in all day due
to inclement weather - like today - wet slushy snow (about a foot).
While I can say - I am not fond of this arrangement - I have had no trouble
with feet/breathing/digestion etc, (touch wood) neither have most of my cohorts.
Problem horses can have shavings.

At show times, for the overnighters, straw is used unless shavings are 
requested. It is much harder to get rid of shavings, often a mushroom farm 
comes and gets our straw manure or we have a couple of organic farms that 
come at varying times of the year.  If we have real problems at the barn, at
your own expense you could use peat but just make sure the feet are clean.

Where we are, until last year the local farmer, almost gave the straw away, he
finally wised up, but it is still very cheap.  For about 10 months (don't ask
    about the other 2) supply it is only about $5,000 (you pick), bear in
    mind this  for a barn with 40-60 horses in the winter and 20-40 in the 
    summer.  Not to mention show time.  
    
    In B.C. unless you had your own farm/tame farmer - shavings and
    sometimes sawdust was used.
    
    Linda

    

    
    I wouldn't use straw on rubber mats.  Straw isn't absorbent,
    and the manure and urine mixed w/ straw makes for a slippery
    mess.
    
    Why do I say this?  I have a friend who found this out the hard
    way.  Her mare foaled in a rubber mat w/ straw stall.  During
    the foaling, the mare had knocked her waterbucket, dumping water
    onto the floor.  The mare then gave birth under the bucket.  The
    foal was on wet straw, and in the struggle to try to stand, the
    poor foal kept slipping.  The foal burned all the hair off of her
    leg and shoulder, from the constant friction and slipping.  The
    mare gave birth in the middle of the night, so the owners found
    the foal injured in the early hours that morning.  The foal cost
    big $$ to treat, but they still have her.  She has permanent scars,
    of course.  

    re: -1
    
    You may be right but so far touch wood......
    We've had mares foal in that situation with no problems (not under
    buckets of water as we have automatic water things) .  
    Accidents do happen anywhere and any time.  Unfortunately, all we can
    do is try our best with what we have available.  Try as we might, we 
    cannot wrap our creatures in cotton wool as much as I would like to!
    Remember some do not have the choices that others may have in other parts 
    of the country.

    So how does one efficiently clean a stall bedded w/straw? 
    
    We used straw once back in ancient history for foaling a mare because we 
    had been told that straw was the bedding of choice for that purpose. 
    
    I found it very difficult and time-consuming to clean. We switched back
    to our regular bedding and haven't used straw since.
    
    Are there tricks to cleaning straw that I hadn't learned?

    I have my mare bedded on straw this year after having many problems
    with what we believe were some form of cracked heels.  I tried
    every possible solution that is available on the market for heel
    problems and finally ended up with a fungicide from the vet that
    I would put on and then wrap her heels twice a day with vetwrap.
    My vet said he had never seen anything like it, and it was at times
    making her lame!  
    
    I thought that using sawdust may have caused heat in her heels so
    I switched to straw at the end of last year as a last ditch effort.
    The change was incredible.  Her heel problems went away almost 
    immediatly, and knock on wood, haven't come back.  Though its expensive
    at 5.50 per bale and hard to clean it is worth every bit!!  As far
    as cleaning goes, I use a wide prong fork for the manure and clean
    the wet places every other day.  I use a lot of straw though, and her
    stall is bedded with 10-12 inches of straw.  

    
    Wow!  $5.50 a bale for straw?  I can get it for $4/bale!
    
    I use it for my rabbit's bedding......of course, 1 bale lasts
    for years.....
    
    Even w/ rubber mats, I use 5 bags of shavings in my QH's stall.
    
    Any less, and his hocks are rubbed bare of fur........

    I usually pay $4.25 at my regular grain store but they don't carry
    a huge surplus of straw and its usually sold out by the time I get
    there.  For $5.50 I am getting a huge wire bale of excellent quality.

    I started using hemp as bedding for my mare, about two months
    ago, and wished I'd known about it before.
    It's so easy to manage and friends are delighted to have the 
    muck heap for their gardens.
    
    Has anyone else experienced it ?  
    
    For those that haven't met this stuff - it's NOT Indian hemp, so 
    our equines aren't likely to get high on it.
    
    It is very similar in looks and feel to small wood chips.
    the differences become more obvious when you look closely.
    Apart from looks it is highly absorbent, odour free, weighs less
    and lasts longer that shavings.
    The down side has to be the cost of setting up a bed.
    At �6.50 per bale, and 7 - 8 bales to start the bed it hits
    the purse a bit hard.
    Still I only use 1 bale a fortnight now, so it's a little easier.
    
    Is hemp available in the US ?
    
    I'd be very interested in hearing of anyone elses experiences with it.
    
    Judy

    
    I thought I'd rejuvenate this discussion with a question using Oak
    bedding.  Sometimes the local lumber mill only has Oak shavings (100%)
    and when I'm forced to use it the Shetland tends to get a touch of
    thrush.  His stall stays very clean but he insists on standing on the
    1 ft diameter wet spot he creates at night.  (he also likes to drag his
    feed pan over to the spot and, well, you get the picture).  I get 
    concerned using 100% Oak.  It turns black when it gets wet and
    the odor is offensive.  I'm worried there must be a chemical reaction
    going on with the urine - I thought I read somewhere that this is
    tannic acid?  Has anyone heard anything about using Oak?  The dust is
    actually not bad in this stuff - its rough milling so it's more like
    wood chips.  When I stick with pine for a length of time his feet have
    no problems.
    
    - Janice
    

    I've not heard of problems with it, but softwood shavings would be much 
    more absorbent and are at least as plentiful and cheap from the
    sawmill.  My biggest concern would be that a sawmill set up for
    hardwoods like oak would also be inclined to do other hardwood 'furniture' 
    type woods such as black walnut. Just a little bit of black walnut in the 
    shavings will founder and often kill a horse. Make sure your supplier 
    knows this.
    
    Sharon

    Hi Sharon,
    
    	I've heard this about Black Walnut and I've mentioned it to them
    many times.  Since they mill wood based on high resale prices (oak is 
    quite high right now) I'm concerned they might mill something toxic.  
    
    	Any other woods to watch out for?
    
    Thanks for the info,
    
    	Janice 
    

    >Any other woods to watch out for?
    
    I don't know of any type of sawdust other than black walnut that has
    caused problems when used as bedding. FWIW, I seriously doubt that
    you'll *ever* find black walnut milled in New England(assuming 
    you haven't moved recently, Janice)...There just isn't enough black
    walnut in New England to be worth milling. I think most of it
    grows in the midwest and mid-atlantic states...
    
    But, re the oak...I do recall an article mentioning that oak was 
    perfectly all right for horses and ponies. Maybe, this one's just 
    expresing his personal opinion. You know how ponies are! ;-)
    
    The apparent increase in thrush w/oak vs w/pine may be due to the 
    antiseptic effect of pine shavings rather than something "wrong" with
    the oak. I forget what it is about pine but something in it does have
    a mild antiseptic effect....