I've been using Guardian Horse Bedding (compressed softwood pellets) for Lucy for almost a year now. They are SO much better for a messy horse than pine shavings are. Lucy likes to "decorate" her stall in no particular pattern, and then she makes sure to drag her hay everywhere and stomp it all up into a nice mash for me to find in the morning. Let me tell you, there's nothing better than trying to separate a poop/pee/hay mash from what little bedding I can salvage at 7am.This was an especially nasty chore when the larger shavings were almost impossible to sift through.
The pine pellets break up into such a fine bedding, though, that I can actually sift through everything very well, and that allows me to save a lot of bedding and just throw out the manure. I go through about ten bags a month, as opposed to a bag of shavings every other day, which ultimately saves me a lot of money.
The supplier that I've been using used to deliver the bedding for a small fee, but recently that delivery fee has ballooned and I asked myself why I didn't just go pick it up with Kenny's truck. It's about an hour drive to get there, but a friend splits the pallet with me and reimburses me for gas, so it's really a much smarter idea than delivery.
I went up today and got a pallet of the bedding. A pallet consists of 55 bags and I got an extra five to make the order come to a nice round number of 60 bags, so that my friend and I can each have 30. Each bag weighs 40 lbs, so this photo is 2,400lbs of horse bedding in the back of that truck! It drove great all the way home, too :) After work I will go and drop off my friend's half of the pallet at my current barn, and then I'll drive to the new barn to hopefully find a place to stack the other half.
I've always been curious how that bedding works!
ReplyDeleteSo it breaks apart after it gets wet right? Does it clump together? Do you take out the stuff she pees on everyday or just every once in a while?
I LOVE that bedding. Good choice.
ReplyDeleteLove it too! It's the only way I'm able to go through and clean 12 stalls in 3 hours:) Jessica; I usually dump the bag of pellets in the stall in a nice line, then wet it thoroughly. It breaks down into a nice almost sawdust like consistency. When the horse pees, it is drawn down and makes a nice, easy "patty" to scoop out. I always remove all the soiled bedding every day; the more often you clean the stall, the less bedding you remove!
ReplyDeleteJessica, Jen hit the nail right on the head. It is really simple to use and there is a lot less waste. I will do a pictorial so you can see exactly how it works once I am situated at the new barn.
ReplyDeleteI freaking LOVE pellets. When I'm home in ohio and not at college boarding, I use pellets...cheaper, cleaner and softer :)
ReplyDeleteOh interesting! I thought they stayed in pellet form until the horse got them wet. So, after you wet them down to break them up into sawdust form does it dry out? How does it not create a constantly wet stall?
ReplyDeleteIn Maine Fire Pellets for wood stoves are cheaper and they are the same. You better off going with them and In Maine you have no taxs too.
ReplyDeleteBarn I go to uses them as well and I be honest I like it and woods freaking well with Rubber matting too.
They are actualy not the same. Pellet bedding is made from softwoods such as pine, whereas wood stove pellets are made with hardwoods. Hardwood pellets can make a horse very sick, as a lot of the hardwood trees are toxic to horses.
ReplyDeleteJessica, in the winter they dry out thoroughly because the air is so dry. The bedding sometimes gets a bit dusty when it is dry. In the summer they dry out enough to still be ultra absorbent, but the air is humid enough that they don't get dusty. You'd think that dumping water into a stall to wet the bedding would be counter-intuitive but it actually works very well :)
ReplyDeleteI disagree because wood pellets we use does the very same as Horse pellets but I guess it depends where you getting them from. They don't sticky at all they just break them down and do the very same job as horse pellets.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying that they don't do the same thing, but the materials they're made from could be harmful to the horses. They also typically have aditives to aid combustion in the wood stoves that are comprised of toxic chemicals. Do a google search if you need proof. For me, that's a good reason to pay a bit more and get the right stuff. To each his own, though.
ReplyDeleteHey that's the same truck I drive! Same color and everything! :) I personally like the pellets, though it takes some getting used to before you get your system down. Let us know what you think of them!
ReplyDeleteActually there are two kinds of stove pellets- hardwood and softwood. Softwood stove pellets are the same thing as those marketed as horse bedding, but usually quite a bit cheaper.
ReplyDeleteOk, well I stand corrected! I will keep my eye out for those around here. So far I've only seen hardwood stove pellets.
ReplyDeleteLocally, softwood stove pellets can be a challange to find from pellet retailers. We have one about 5 miles away and they will only carry hardwood stove pellets- no softwood. The reason behind that is that hardwood pellets- just like hardwood logs have a longer hotter burn, which is usually preferred by folks using pellets stoves for heating. So far Guardian is the horse bedding we have used that we really really like- but the nearest retailer is about 30 miles away and doesn't deliver- which for us is a deal breaker because we need a few ton at a time. This past winter we tried woodpellets.com and have been very happy with them and if we were to add up what we would have spent driving to and from the retailer and our time it probably equals or excedes what they charge us to deliver.
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