Pedigree Query

Has anyone had any luck with bedding that is made of tiny pine pellets? The bag advertised half as much bedding wastage, great absorption, low dust, safe for ingestion, et cetera and the prices at my local Tractor Supply Company are slightly less expensive than the same weight of shavings. It's also supposed to deter the growth of bacteria and fungus. It does look easier to sift through with a muck fork, but it says to use about 8 bags for a 10x12' stall and then to finely mist the top layer so that it becomes soft and fluffy...

Any opinions, insights, or thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated! And the stall in question will have a stall mat down first, lightly sprinkled with probably Sweet PDZ, used mainly for overnight protection with my horse able to access it during the day (as a run in shed that doubles as an outdoor stall).

If you are buying bag shavings, pellets will save you a bundle. The trick is to learn to muck the stall out and not take all the bedding out.

But against a dump truck of sawdust, pellets are still expensive.

I just saw these on RDTV over the weekend. I'm sceptical but hopeful as they did fluff up a lot. the guy was useing a hose so they are not "lightly misted" but nearly soaked. they looked easier to work with than shaveings and the producer said thay last longer so the intial out lay is higher than shaveings but they are cheaper in the long run, also more uniform, ie no black walnut or other bad stuff.

Hmm, it looks attractive enough to at least try - if worst comes to worse, it's around $20? out the window for 6 bags or so, so it's worth a try. I wonder if it works well for goat bedding as well and if it'd be just as safe for them...

We tried a similar product with mixed results. My wife had a large QH show gelding which had been trained to urinate only in his stall by a previous owner. This guy would be out in a run all day and save everything up until he was put back in his stall. Then he would then flood it! The product we tried instructed to bed the stall, activate with a light mist, then remove only the manure for the next three weeks. Then pick out the wet spots and refresh the pellets as needed. Supposedly, the compressed pellets would absorb the urine. The results of our experiment were mixed. The volume of waste was reduced. The odor of the stall increased. The gelding developed a fungal skin infection. We stripped and disinfected the stall, rebedded with pine shavings and had no more problem with the fungus. We didn't save any money.

Good luck!

Thanks! I think I might give it a try, though I'll learn from what happened with your wife's horse and remove the wet spots too. Certainly don't want an odorous stall or it being damp enough in there to allow fungal infections of the skin.

A couple of year's ago, we had a barn full of mare's with foal's. We were using shaving's. It was killing us trying to keep the stall's picked, and the odor down. And it was pretty expensive replacing the shaving's every day.

I found ABM Pelleted bedding at one of our local feed stores. After reading the advertising on the bag, thought what the hell. Can't be any worse than what we're doing now. Loaded up 7 bag's. That evening we striped one stall and put down the pellet's. Misted them like the instruction's said and took the manura fork and fluffed them. That was on Friday, went back to the store on Monday and bought enough for the rest of the stall's. The ammonia smell was gone, pick the poop and fluff the wet spot's. The best thing was that it took about half the time to clean stall's. We added about half a bag every 10 day's per stall. No more shaving's in the manure spreader. Much easier to store. Haven't looked back.

I have just signed on to market a really neat new bedding product. Ive used this product myself on a test basis and loved it a lot!~

Its a soft pellet that you can take between your thumb and forefinger and crumble and its made out of pulverized straw, so it is NOT like Woody Pet at all and you do NOT water it! When they say you only need to add one bag per week - it REALLY means that you only need to add one bag per week! So its great for limited storage space and less labour costs as well to use and maintain the stalls with it ... (each plastic bag is the size and weight of a typical bag of pelleted feed ... so it takes 1/2-1/3 the space of a typical bag of shavings)

I put one bag more than they told me in the very beginning and 13 days later we added our first bag and that was also with taking 3 wheelbarrow loads OUT of the stall and putting it into another horse's stall just to get rid of it! It literally poofed up to knee deep in there over the course of 3 or 4 days and as you kept mucking it out and exposing more of the pellets to being trodden on, it kept growing and growing every day! Literally so much so that I was sure someone was adding more product every day as a joke!

It wicks the moisture away from the surface, so it kept the coats dry even if they lie in urine spots, it coats the manure so if they roll in it, they dont get covered in manure stains, plus it keeps the flies away because its not fresh manure being exposed. Plus the pee spot is very small, its easy to see, quick to muck out and you really do only take out half of what you normally would with shavings. I was consistently taking out a third to a half wheelbarrow load per stall as opposed to the 1+ per stall with shavings which then equals a smaller manure pile as well.

It also works fabulously well with horse's that are on limited turnout and using a lot of shavings plus horse's with respiratory issues!

The straw fibres are bound together with vegetable oil so the feet do not dry out and it actually gives a sheen to their coats as well!

What I also found very interesting was because of its composition, the pee spot didnt go right through to the stall base, so it didnt erode away at the limestone screenings at the bottom of the stall - it was bone dry on top and bone dry on the bottom which also led to less / no odour at all as the urine wasnt soaking into the base of the stall. A really neat product once you worked with it each day and understood the differences between it and shavings ...

And if manure disposal is a concern, it makes for a very easily bio degradable and environmentally friendly product that decomposes faster than shavings (within 2-3 weeks!) and any garden centre will take it because it is straw and not shavings based which also leads to easier and less costly disposal costs.

I was at Adena Springs a few weeks ago (Frank Stronach who owns Magna Entertainment, as well as Adena Springs farm, also owns Fex Manufacturing - the manufacturer of Streufex bedding) and his manager at the farm showed me these little containers.

In the first one was this black, fine powdery dust. This is what is extracted from the raw straw when it initially comes in for processing, through a high tech filtering system. The same raw straw that if you bought it in bales, would be in your horse's stall for them to breath in ...

The second container showed the sanitized, sterilized, dust extracted short, golden straw fibres that were ready to go into the next set of machines to be further heat treated, pulverized and compressed into the Streufex pellets. Because of the heat process involved, they golden straw fibres turn a coco colour and while it would be nice to have them maintain the golden colour, to be honest - I'd prefer the fact that all dust has been extracted and heat had been put to the straw as well to kill off any mold or allergans on it instead of maintaining the pretty golden colour ...

They DO have another version of the Streufex pellet being manufactured that DOES bind some of these golden strands to the pellet so - esthetically - you do have a golden coloured stall bedding, but you DO lose some of the absorption capabilities of the bedding as a direct result. SO I guess it all depends on whether you want 100% efficiency from the bedding or want an esthetically *pleasing* looking stall and dont mind if you lose a percentage of the effectiveness as a result

There has been some talk of the bedding being "dusty" and to be honest that is exactly what I thought as well when I first put it into the stalls, by the 2nd day, when it started to break down. But - it poofs up and then settles down immediately. It doesnt hang in the air like dusty sawdust or shavings will, and after using it for months, I never found that I, or the barn staff, or the horses, were coughing or sneezing up particles. Plus now that I understand the process the raw straw goes through before becoming a Streufex pellet, I am now 100% confident that it is a virtually completely dust free bedding product

We are launching Ontario first, but for interested parties in provinces and US States outside of Ontario, we are also working with them on a case by case basis and I had my first load going in to a large farm in Ocala, FL 2 weeks ago as well ... and this was the comment from that new client:

Hi Donna,

I have had the bedding for a week now, and I LOVE it! It has drastically reduced my removal load, and cut my over all mucking time dramatically. It is so soft, I don't have any horses stocked up from standing. Thank you so much for the information... I am so happy.

Thanks again,
Adrienne from Ocala, FL

and another email this morning from a lady who I dropped product off to yesterday, whose horse is a total pig in his stall and the urine smell coming from his stall, hung in the whole barn:

Donna:

So far so good this a.m. I haven't actually mucked his stall, but when I went out to feed and walked into the barn and peeked in his stall, the centre is not bare and there is no urine smell. It actually looks good and smells clean. I can't believe it. Will give you more info after I muck it out. Hope you are right that the three bags I put in will continue to expand over the next few days.

Yay!!!! streufex. I mucked his stall and it was great. Hardly took any pee spot out and very little of the bedding. Lots of poop to take out and that is normal. It really is puffing up and I mounded it in the centre again so he will walk on it to continue breaking it down. I didn't even put in any stall fresh today as his stall smelled so good. That bedding has a distinct aroma that I really like. It is a very clean smell. As soon as I walk in the barn I can smell it. I think this is going to be my savior


Faye from Campbellville, Ontario

You can view more details on this wonderul new product at:
http://www.fex.at

and you can contact me at: [email protected] until my new email address is activated in September which will be:

[email protected]

Thanks very much!

I am a believer in pelleted bedding. Stall maintenance used to be a real hassle for me - two very wet geldings.

I've used Equine Fresh from Tractor Supply for 8 months. It has saved me both time and money vs. shavings. I started out with 5 bags per stall and misted them per the instructions. I pick through it daily and add no more than a bag a week per stall. I don't dampen the new stuff I add, but I fluff it about with what's already there.

The ammonia odor ihas been greatly reduced, the stalls are dry (no nasty wet spots), and I've gone from weekly stall stripping to every other month.