# bedding



## SDFarms (Jul 7, 2016)

im new to horses and am getting a horse i have heard diffrent bedding you can use but was wondering what everyone liked best and a good and bad thing about it thank you in advance


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## Latestarter (Jul 7, 2016)

Greetings and welcome to BYH @SDFarms  We have quite a few horse owners here... Let me Introduce you to a couple: @Ferguson K @Baymule @Mini Horses @TAH @Poka_Doodle  There are many more of course, but these are a few that first came to mind. Hope you'll post a few pics once you get him/her. We all thrive on other folks pics of their animals   Good luck!


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## TAH (Jul 7, 2016)

Welcome!
What kind of horse are you getting? I have tried many different kinds of bedding. My fav was a layer of saw dust at the bottom of the stall and them straw. The saw dust helps soak-up any wetness and smell. I tried Pine shavings on my goats and it sticks to them I didn't like it. I don't have a horse anymore sadly.


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## Ferguson K (Jul 7, 2016)

Over the years I have used many different kinds of bedding. I much prefer using sand it is quite natural, the only thing with this and as you have to make sure you dig get out every day. I've had horses on shavings and didn't like how much I went through of it. I've had them on Pine bedding, which when you get it wet soaks up to a saw dust . Works very well except I've had horses eat it. Not good for eating. These days my horses are pastured and do not have access to a barn, and they do just fine out there.

In the end it comes down to how often they're going to be in the stall, how often you feel like cleaning the stall, and how clean the horse keeps their stuff. Some horses enjoy destroying their stalls on a daily basis. While some horses will only poop in one corner at one spot at certain times of the day.


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## SDFarms (Jul 7, 2016)

Latestarter said:


> Greetings and welcome to BYH @SDFarms  We have quite a few horse owners here... Let me Introduce you to a couple: @Ferguson K @Baymule @Mini Horses @TAH @Poka_Doodle  There are many more of course, but these are a few that first came to mind. Hope you'll post a few pics once you get him/her. We all thrive on other folks pics of their animals   Good luck!


thank you


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## SDFarms (Jul 7, 2016)

TAH said:


> Welcome!
> What kind of horse are you getting? I have tried many different kinds of bedding. My fav was a layer of saw dust at the bottom of the stall and them straw. The saw dust helps soak-up any wetness and smell. I tried Pine shavings on my goats and it sticks to them I didn't like it. I don't have a horse anymore sadly.


im not sure yet its part of 105 day training challenge ill find out tomorrow


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## Poka_Doodle (Jul 7, 2016)

How often you clean the stall is a factor. I'd say that if you are going to be cleaning the stall often that shavings are AMAZING. If your horse is in a pasture that no bedding is needed, a couple of bags of shavings under a covered area once is good. Straw can be nice but I'm not exactly positive about it, we use shavings.


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## cjc (Jul 8, 2016)

We always do sawdust on the bottle and straw on top.


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## Baymule (Jul 8, 2016)

My barn floor is sand. We haven't built individual stalls yet, so the horses can come and go as they please.


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## SDFarms (Jul 10, 2016)

im getting a grey pony mare for the challenge


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## norseofcourse (Jul 10, 2016)

If I had stalls I'd probably use pine shavings, and maybe use a bag or two of pelleted pine underneath the shavings.  Shavings (and pellets) are readily available almost anywhere, and fairly easy to store if you get the bagged ones.  They can, however, be dusty.  Straw here is very expensive, looks great when it's clean, but I find it too time consuming and too much work to keep it clean enough.  It can also be dusty (and musty if not put up or stored right).

What's under the bedding makes a difference, too.  If you use solid stall mats, you'll go through a lot more bedding, as it will have to soak up all the urine.  I don't like stall mats, mainly for that reason.  A good stall base will let liquids drain through easily, but still be solid enough to stand up to the horse and regular cleaning.  Most places just seem to use whatever dirt happened to be there; some will dig the dirt out and put an underlayer of sand, limestone rock, limestone grits, or other material that lets liquids through more easily.  There's not one 'best' way, you work with what you have and do what you can.

Having the pony out of the stall as much as possible is both good for the pony, and saves on bedding.  My current ponies are outside all the time, year round, with access to a run-in shed that they don't use often.

Good luck with the challenge and hope you can share pics and how it's going!


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## Latestarter (Jul 10, 2016)

Hope you'll share some pics when you get her home and settled.


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## Kusanar (Jul 27, 2016)

I personally don't like straw in stalls, reason being, it doesn't absorb the urine all that well, so the straw is SOAKED and dripping when you remove it... Gross... also, it's hard to remove manure from straw without wasting a lot of mostly clean straw. I use sawdust (dusty but free), shavings (better than sawdust about dust but have to buy them), and lately, I've been shreading paper and tossing that in the mix in the stall. If the horse isn't in all the time, I tend to do a deep litter type method and just don't clean it, I just mix it up some (or the horse does) and let the manure mix in with the bedding, then just clean once a year or so, but that's with my horses that are only in once a day for an hour max so they don't wreck their bedding that bad most of the time.


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## DutchBunny03 (Sep 24, 2016)

There are alot of bedding types available. The most conventional type, straw, is moderately absorbant, but is used very quickly. My favorite type, pine shavings, is more absorbant. Pete moss is a less well-known type, but is VERY absorbant. Paper shavings could be used, but the ink on the paper tends to stain the coats of lighter-colored horses. Rubber matting is good to use under all types of bedding. Hope this helped .


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