What we are doing about bedding at Sagehill Stables!
At Sagehill Stables we are striving to be environmentally friendly while keeping horses as healthy as possible! Our indoor and outdoor bedding regimes reflect these goals.
Indoor board horses are housed on soft stalls. These amazing rubber mats provide more cushion than a horse gets on the grassy plains! The key to soft stall mats is to ensure that the footing is as level as possible so that pressure points don't bother the bottom of the horses feet or legs and cause them to pace or be uncomfortable. Excessive or uneven bedding can cause these pressure points. The bedding provided in soft stalls is enough to soak up moisture but not too much to disturb the beautiful footing provided by the soft stall mats. We also want to ensure that horses are not standing in old wet manure at any point, as this can cause chronic cases of thrush, and as such stalls are completely cleaned out daily. These soft stall mats also help us be environmentally friendly, resulting in decreased volumes of manure. Not only is there less manure generated, but because there is a decreased amount of carbon (i.e. bedding materials) in the manure, the nutrients are more readily available for plant uptake. When it is applied at the right rate at the right time, this manure can be much more beneficial to crops and result in less chemical fertilizer application for a field!
Bedding outdoor horses depends on the weather and the availability of alternative bedding sources. In the summer time, as long as adequate clean dry space is available, outdoor board horses are not bedded. Bedding in the spring, winter and fall depends on the pen size and herd size of a particular group, whether dry ground or grass is available or whether snow or waste feed around bales is available for bedding down in. Although horses only sleep 4 hours a day, often standing up, they do often like to lie down during the day when the climate and ambience is right. And again, preventing thrush is also an important consideration. We typically bed in the shelters in the winter and fall months, and may extend this into the spring if wet conditions are occurring. Amount and frequency of bedding in the shelters during the winter will depend on availability of fresh snow or waste feed around bales to lie in. Again, manure build up and management is always taken into consideration with the environment. Reducing manure pile generation (in favour of promoting natural spreading of manure on land by the horses themselves) will reduce the amount of fossil fuels needed to spread manure and reduce chances of nutrients lost to the environment during storing and spreading.
Indoor board horses are housed on soft stalls. These amazing rubber mats provide more cushion than a horse gets on the grassy plains! The key to soft stall mats is to ensure that the footing is as level as possible so that pressure points don't bother the bottom of the horses feet or legs and cause them to pace or be uncomfortable. Excessive or uneven bedding can cause these pressure points. The bedding provided in soft stalls is enough to soak up moisture but not too much to disturb the beautiful footing provided by the soft stall mats. We also want to ensure that horses are not standing in old wet manure at any point, as this can cause chronic cases of thrush, and as such stalls are completely cleaned out daily. These soft stall mats also help us be environmentally friendly, resulting in decreased volumes of manure. Not only is there less manure generated, but because there is a decreased amount of carbon (i.e. bedding materials) in the manure, the nutrients are more readily available for plant uptake. When it is applied at the right rate at the right time, this manure can be much more beneficial to crops and result in less chemical fertilizer application for a field!
Bedding outdoor horses depends on the weather and the availability of alternative bedding sources. In the summer time, as long as adequate clean dry space is available, outdoor board horses are not bedded. Bedding in the spring, winter and fall depends on the pen size and herd size of a particular group, whether dry ground or grass is available or whether snow or waste feed around bales is available for bedding down in. Although horses only sleep 4 hours a day, often standing up, they do often like to lie down during the day when the climate and ambience is right. And again, preventing thrush is also an important consideration. We typically bed in the shelters in the winter and fall months, and may extend this into the spring if wet conditions are occurring. Amount and frequency of bedding in the shelters during the winter will depend on availability of fresh snow or waste feed around bales to lie in. Again, manure build up and management is always taken into consideration with the environment. Reducing manure pile generation (in favour of promoting natural spreading of manure on land by the horses themselves) will reduce the amount of fossil fuels needed to spread manure and reduce chances of nutrients lost to the environment during storing and spreading.