Mucking out wood pellets - how do you do yours??

laceyfreckle

laceyfreckle

Well-Known Member
May 27, 2007
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Essex/Suffolk
I have just changed over to wood pellet bedding and to start with they were great. I did what I thought was best and took the poo out daily, raking the top and leaving the bottom as much as possible. However by the end of a week the whole bed was quite wet. So I mucked it out properly.

This week tried to take the poo out daily and a bit of the wet, while turning the bottom over and again about 6 days in found the whole bed was fairly wet so had to do a full muck out, there was a lot of clumped stuff.

Doing it this way I am taking out a barrow a day (between two ponies) and then 2 barrows per stable when i do a full muck out.

ETA: Am adding around 2 bags of new a week (not wetted) per stable

Can I do anything differently?

How do you do yours?
 
'normal' horse and pony:
remove dropping daily. Very quick. hardly take any bedding.
About once every two weeks, scrape back the top, remove a barrow of the darkest soggiest bedding. Replace the hole left with existing bedding, then add 2 bags new bedding on top. I tried not soaking it, but find it much better if I add a bucket of water to the bag first.

scruffy git who box walks and stirs the wet and droppings into a mash:banghead::
Daily, try and find as many droppings as possible. take some wet patches out if I have to - i.e too near the surface. no more than 1/2 barrow total. Every couple of weeks, add a 2-3 new bags, soaked. His bed is a darker colour than the others, but still dry and doesn't smell.

I have quite deep beds, even though they are on mats. I think it easier and cheaper in the long run. Possibly yours aren't as deep - I guess mine are at least 6 inches deep. They are only bedded in the back half of the stable though.

mine go out all day every day.

HTH :wink:
 
Thanks,

Mine just seems to be really wet.

Must say that Piccolo's bed is fine and I do hers about the same as you do your 'normal' horse.

But Harvey, well by about day 3 you can see wet patches coming through the surface and by day 6 most of the bed looks 'wet' and is saturated at the bottom.

Their beds are on concrete but are about 4" deep, maybe I should get them a bit deeper?

I don't take a lot of bedding out each day with the droppings which is what I like but Harvey seems to be able to collect half a barrow just of droppings each day! (He's only 13.2hh!)

They aren't in every night but most night atm, they are in from 3.30pm until 9am though 5 days a week and from 5.30pm until 8.30am at weekends.
 
laceyfreckle said:
I don't take a lot of bedding out each day with the droppings which is what I like but Harvey seems to be able to collect half a barrow just of droppings each day! (He's only 13.2hh!)
Click to expand...

Blooming 'eck! That's what I get out of my 15.1hh Shire x LOL!:giggle: you must be feeding him too well:wink:
 
Dark Storm said:
Blooming 'eck! That's what I get out of my 15.1hh Shire x LOL!:giggle: you must be feeding him too well:wink:
Click to expand...

yes, well we have 'issues' lol. Maybe if he kept the food in him a bit longer he might get a bit fatter lol. Believe it or not, he's only 13.2hh but is struggling to hold his weight. I don't feed him cereals as he has had ulcers in the past. So he gets fibre feeds, at the moment he gets ad lib hay (eats about 4 sections a night) plus two feeds a day each consisting of 1 scoop AlfaA oil and 1/2 dried scoop soaked in 5 x water of speedibeet plus 1 cup topspec comprehensive balancer.

He has recently gone from his best weight ever of 345kg to about 324kg. :stomp:, oh and he has a 300gram turnout rug on and is chaser clipped.

Maybe the amount of fibre he gets means a lot of poo?

Piccolo is 12hh and I only take out maybe 1/6 of a barrow out of her bed in total.
 
I take out poo's daily, also have my bed about 6 inch deep and just the back 2/3rd's. The wet comes out weekly, what I do is similar to whitby witch, scrape back loose top stuff and remove hard packed wet underneath, fill hole with old bedding and chuck on 3 or 4 new bags (pre wetted with half a bucket of water each bag and left to swell for 30 mins) was only using 2 bags a week but he's been in a lot more this last few weeks.
I found it odd to start with as it always seemed damp, it's supposed to be a bit damp though I think and it does go quite dark, as long as there are still some whole clean pelletts in with it I wouldn't worry to much.

P.s Oscar poo's for England too if it's any consolation.
 
I just skip the poos out daily and flatten the top. Then once a week or so scrape the top layer back until I find a proper wet patch and just dig that out with a shovel (I found that spreading the wet about just made the rest of the bed wet but leaving it undisturbed allowed it to just clump in one place). Doing it this way I take out only the poos during the week and maybe half a barrowload of wet on the weekend.
 
I think from what everyone is saying that I need to have the bed thicker?

It's about 3-4 inches but the wet is showing throught the top layer every day. If i made it thicker it would help with this?
 
I think once the bed has had a chance to "settle" then its a lot better. I leave mine in for as long as possible and just top up although I do put straw on top . I just scrape back the good straw and take out the wet stuff leaving the wood pellet base in tack. Seems to work well for me that way.
 
I find that it takes a week for the bed to form a solid base, then topping it up with 2 bales, and only moving the bed that doesn't stay where it's supposed to (it always gets disturbed at the front, in the middle), and usually I find that it only needs pushing back for the first 3 days, then day 4-6 I take out about a third of a barrow of wet..
Then day 7, I straighten it out, and do the top up.. this bed will last the second week, before the middle needs pulling out, but it depends on how wet your horse is, and how discreet they are with their habits (do they pile their poo in one corner, a long the back of the bed, all over, or tread it in once they've done it - they're the worst to keep clean - turning the bed into something that resembles a tipped bucket of water with bedding in, and a few droppings thrown in for good measures:giggle: I shouldn't laugh, I know it's not funny, it's happened to me a few times with the youngsters...):biggrin:
 
Depends on which wood pellets you use, but poo's as often as possible and I take out the worst of the wet every day (where you can see it's soaked) then mixed the rest all together so the dry and wet mix. I use 1 bag a week as top up, beds only 2 inches thick but I have rubber matting.
 
I take the droppings out every day and then the wet patch which is in the middle of his bed when it rises to the top, (usually twice a week) .

i put pellets down dry when i remove the wet patch and then put the old bedding over the top or half a bag of shavings over the top. I have been using woodpellets for the last 2 years and find it best to use a mixture of pellets and shavings, 1 bag of pellets every week topped up with 1 bag of shavings on top every 2 weeks, my horse is in every night winter and summer .
 
Take poo out daily, and rake it across. I'm quite lucky because it's the very front that gets wet because the beam drips, so i remove a semi circle at the front then put a bag of fresh down once a week.
 
I had exactly the same problems as you, found it got really wet and if I left it was like rotted wood so ended up getting through loads. I know people rave about it but I just couldn't get on with it so changed to Bliss which is by far the best bedding I have ever come across.
 
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