Stable Bedding - Why Has this Changed? We look at bedding materials past and present

Fifty years ago virtually every stabled horse was bedded on wheat straw, mucked out every morning and during the day droppings were skipped out almost before they reached the floor. In the main horses were kept for hunting, competitions or belonged to riding schools. Some horses had "broken winds" or "hay coughs", but the initials COPD meant nothing to the average horse owner and the majority of horses were looked after by professional grooms who probably had many generations of horse keeping knowledge behind them.

Today's the situation is so, so different. The majority of horses probably fall into in the "leisure" or "pleasure horse" category, many are in DIY livery and often owned and managed by first generation owners, a cough is not to be tolerated and the range of bedding materials available grows almost daily. As the work commitments and lifestyle of horse owners makes deep litter or semi-deep litter systems the obvious choice, fewer and fewer horses are mucked out on a daily basis.

Is this a bad thing? The perfectionist may prefer to keep his or her horse in a spotlessly clean stable (we know one owner who even takes her domestic vacuum cleaner to the yard to remove dust and spider webs!) but providing the horse's environment is dust and spore free and relatively dry underfoot little harm should result. Today's premium bedding materials are excellent for maintaining such conditions. For the traditionist straw is still available and, providing it is clean and dust free, makes an excellent bed. Today's combining processes remove the long pointed awns that used to make barley unpopular and barley straw now used as frequently as wheat, but modern straws are much shorter than those used by our grandfathers and nothing like as easy to manage. Disadvantages include the amount of waste material generated, which may be costly to dispose of and hard work to cart to the muck heap, the dangers of spores and dust which compromise respiratory systems (both horses' and grooms'), and greedy horses often eat straw bedding. Dust extracted chopped straw products (such as Belvoir Bedding), which are treated to make them unpalatable, eliminate the health risks and are a relatively inexpensive alternative to baled straw.

However, once research had demonstrated the problems caused by dust and spores many responsible owners turned to sawdust and wood shavings. The former was more absorbent, unpalatable and comparatively inexpensive, but failed to reduce the dust problem so eventually fell out of favour, whilst shavings became established as a healthy option. Today shavings are still a popular choice and branded shavings (there are too many to mention) are normally clean and relatively dust free. However, those obtained from sawmills sometimes contain flakes of treated wood and frequently include large quantities of sawdust.

On the plus side branded shavings provide a bright, clean, warm comfortable bed that contains little dust, is spore free and unpalatable. The down side is they absorb little moisture, are slow to rot down - causing disposal problems - and are relatively high maintenance compared with some of the more modern alternatives. Recently "improved" wood based bedding materials have come on the market and their manufacturers claim these are particularly dust free.

The introduction of hemp based products combated several of the drawbacks of shavings, but created others. For the modern owner searching for a low maintenance bedding suitable for deep or semi-deep litter systems, hemp offers the advantage of being far more absorbent than shavings or straw. Why is absorbency significant? If a bedding has a high level of absorbency, liquid waste is contained in a small area, so less of the bed is contaminated, the damp patch is quicker and easier to remove and the amount of material thrown out is reduced - making the bedding less expensive and reducing the time and effort required for mucking out. Other advantages being that hemp based bedding (such as Hemcore and Aubiose) is quicker to rot down than wood based materials, so reduces disposal problems. However, the perfect bedding is yet to be invented. Drawbacks include the initial cost of putting down a bed, as the cost per bale is rather more than shavings, the material is not so bright and attractive visually as shavings or straw and the bed needs to be damped with a fair amount of water when first laid.

Beddings made from waste newsprint and cardboard are also available and have found favour with owners and managers of horses that eat their beds, or where the muck heap may be burnt. They provide a warm, dry alternative but are higher maintenance as they are normally mucked out on a daily basis so not ideal for deep litter systems. Their light weight can make the muck heap prone to blow around the yard in windy weather.

Moving on to the latest innovations, rubber matting is a relatively new concept and obviously provides a much warmer, safer and more comfortable floor than old fashioned stable bricks or concrete. Combined with conventional materials it works extremely well and significantly reduces the quantity of bedding required. But it is difficult to condone the use of rubber mats as a complete substitute for bedding. Bedding is provided to encourage the horse to lie down and rest and to keep him warm, dry and comfortable. The installation of mats definitely reduces the bedding required, but those who cover half or a third of a rubber matted floor with straw, shavings or other material rarely, if ever, find their horse lying down on the mat. Given a choice almost every horse prefers the warmth and comfort of the bedded area.

The latest bedding material to come to the UK is made from Flax and is rapidly gaining favour in yards all over the country. The manufacturer of one such product, Equisorb, has a novel way of demonstrating the absorbency of this bedding. The company uses a tank with several compartments each filled with the same volume of premium quality bedding material, hemp, shavings, wood fibre and flax (Equisorb) and adds to each the same quantity of water. Where the other products either drown or float the flax absorbs all the liquid.

Due to its extremely high absorbency, used correctly Equisorb is both cost effective and labour saving. Management is simple - daily mucking out to the floor is both unnecessary and extremely wasteful; initially you put down a thick layer, disturb it as little as possible, remove droppings from the surface on a regular basis, then every three or four days dig out the damp area and top up with around half a bale per week. Other benefits include being dust and spore free, unpalatable and easy to dispose of. Due to the amount of moisture it contains it is not possible to burn the waste, so flax bedding is not suitable for yards who rely on this method of disposal, but it rots down exceptionally quickly, even quicker than chopped straw and forms a valuable compost. Although the price per bale is comparable with that of other premium materials the low usage rate makes the cost per week considerably less - and size of the muck heap is significantly reduced as well.

Kindly provided by Belvoir Bedding

for further information, please visit www.equisorb.co.uk or contact Belvoir Horse Products Ltd, South Lodge, Ropsley, Grantham, Lincs, NG33 4AS, Tel 01476 585888 Fax 01476 585111
email: belvoirbedding@btconnect.com