101 on how to make the best bed for your horse!

Mucking... Is something all of us horse people needs to day on the daily. It can be an annoyense. But! I have found THE perfect way to make it so much easier for you! Read along, if you want to know how! 

So we all have different ways of mucking out and making the best bed for our horse. This also means with the type of bedding you use. Some use straw, others different types of pellets and then some are using shavings only. Personally I don't believe that one type of bedding, is better than the other. It all very much depends on what type of horse you have. For me having my horse on straw, would be a very bad idea, cause she's going to eat it.  When we went to Blue hors, my horse started eating the straw. So that's why it's a big NO from me personally. I'm not saying it's bad and doesn't work at all! Just that some horses, have way too much apeitite. 

Something I do really want people to understand is, it's very important, that you take the poo out! Alot of people, when having their horses on straw, just put more straw on top of the old poo. But it's really not great to do that. So no mather what bedding you use, please take the poo out! 

But in this post I will focus on bedding like pellets or/together with shavings.

We all have different preference on how we do the bedding in the horse's stable. This is my way and I swear by it! It is seriously THE best way to muck the stable and keeping it really clean! I like having a really soft and fluffy bed for Gitte (my horse). I know this is what she like the best too. I can definitely tell, when she's not happy with the bedding. If it's too hard or whatever it might be. Because then she will make a big mess. Some people will also make a very thick type of bedding. Now, I'm not against that, but maybe the horse doesn't really need having to use a stool, when getting in and out of the stable. We don't want a very thin bedding either. So it needs to be someting inbetween. One thing I do really care about, is making the bed completely straight all over. This should also be done with beddings using straw. I know some people are totally against using pellets or what ever, as they think every horse makes holes in the bedding, that makes the concrete floor visible. But I have found, that my horse rarely does that and when she does that, it mostly because another person has mucked her stable out and they don#t use this metheod. So I'm telling you, if you do this... Your horse will love you for it! 

 

 But here's my rutine: 

I try flip the whole bedding once a week. Sometimes throughout the week, I just lift the bed, where's it gets too compressed together, because that's where she lies down to sleep. But what I do first, is to take all the poo out. I try to take all of it out, but I know, there's always going to be some bits and bobs left, so I always leave the wheelbarrow till the very end. I also take the pee out. or that means I flip the bedding, where I know she likes to pee and take the really wet bedding out. So that's the first pile. It's all the things you normally would take out of the stable. 

The next step is taking all the really good and 'not good, but okay' bedding. You would want to put the best bedding in one pile on it's own and the other one, in its own pile. The ' not good but okay' is the bedding that's a little bit moist, but not entirely wet. There is very special reason why I do this and you should too! Even though we want a bed, that's dry, we still need to have just a little bit of moist in it. The reason for that is, otherwise it can get too dry and be very dusty. Especially in summer, because it's usually really warm and that makes it really dry. All the dust can create air/breathing problems for some horses. So if you have a horse with allergies or some problems with their lungs, then this is the way you want to do your horse's bed! 

When you have made the two piles in the stable (I usually put them up against a stable wall). You can if it's winter and really wet, put some powdery material you use in stable, to suck the moist out. You would want to spray, just a tiny, tiny layer on the stable floor. If it's just a little moist, then you just leave it out to dry a bit. Then you take the pile with the moist bedding and put it were you know your horse pees and poops. This is usually the back wall of the stable. You would want to make a very straight layer. If it's "wet" then you would want to spray a thin layer of the powder product I just talked about. 

Then you want to take the best bedding and divide out in the stable. What I do, is to firstly put some on the other bedding. Then I try to place all of the bedding in the rest of the stable. Trying to make it, as straight as possible. One thing I found out, is that horses very much prefer when the bed in very straight. I know we always makes fun of the grooms who does that. But think about it. Would you like to lay in a bed, that going to one side, or had made this kind of mountain in the middle of bed? No? Well if you don't want to, then why would your horse? The last thing I do, is to put some new bedding on. In my case I would use either shavings or pellets. I soften the pellets with a little bit of water. You can just open the bag with the pellets, or put them in a wheelbarrow. Then spray just  a little bit of water. You don't want to soak the pellets - especially if your bedding is very wet from the start. When they are ready, you want to put them in the stable and in a very straight layer. Same with the shavings and voilá, you now have the best bed for your horse! 

Like I said: I swear by this metheod and I find this makes my mucking days way easier, because my horse keeps her stable so much cleaner!