STRAW PELLET BEDDING

We have been trialing Equine Max straw pellet bedding supplied by PelletBeds (www.pelletbeds.com) for just over a week and are very impressed with the quality of the bed that it produces, and the economics!

For the past year or so I have been using wood pellet bedding and liked it very much. However, the wood pellets are very firm and need to be reconstituted with water before laying the bed.I have also found that the wood pellets discolour very quickly, so I was interested to try this new product.

The straw pellets are much softer than the wood pellets and can be laid directly into the established bed, making a much quicker job. They start off a darker colour, but seem not to get much darker and the bed looks much fresher. They are more absorbent that the wood pellets and even Simon (who seems to want to create a water hazard in his box every night) has a dry bed. I use more pellets for Simon that for each of the others but I seem to use an average of around 3.5 – 4kgs per box per day. This means that the 1000kg bulk bags will last me about 35 days – I shall know exactly how long they last in a few weeks. At a cost of £300 this means that I am bedding down seven boxes for about £8.50p a day (about £1.20 a box). If I were using shavings the cost would be around £13 a day for seven boxes.

The 1000kg bulk bags are rather large due to the soft nature of the product which makes it bulkier than wood pellets, but a 750kg bulk bag is available and, I am told, a 500kg bulk bag could be available if there is sufficient demand.