New bedding

Diary

Posted: Sunday 25 January, 2004

by Rosemary at 10:09pm in Equines 1 comment Comments closed

We're, well I'm, lucky enough to have a horse. For those interested, Smokey, or Munro of Millfield, is a 15.1hh grey Highland gelding. He'll be seven in May and I've owned him since August 2002. Owning Smokey has been the fulfillment of a lifetime's dream and I could bore for Britain on his positive attributes (many) and shortcomings (few).

Anyway, last winter (2002/03), Smokey worked very hard to provide us with copious amounts of dung. Every morning when I mucked out his box, I would put on my "Marigolds" and fill a large skip with the "hard stuff", shaking off excess shavings, and bring it home in the boot of the car.

We were, at that time, bringing into cultivation an area of rough grass behind the garage. So each morning, about a square yard of ground was covered by a thick layer of dung. A black polythene sheet was rolled forward over the dung and weighted down. Come spring, the polythhne was removed, the soil lightly worked and potatoes planted. What a crop! And barely a weed showing.

Over the summer of 2003, I invested in rubber mats for Smokey's stable. A thin layer of shavings goes on the mats each day to soak up excess moisture. The mats are great, but the dung seems to get very broken down into the shavings and it's very difficult to remove it without loads of shavings attached.

So, we're investigating using hemp as bedding. It's a wee bit more expensive per bale than shavings but it is, according to the bumf, four times more absorbent. But the real plus is that we can get organic hemp, it's sustainable and best of all, it rots down into quality compost in eight weeks.

The main problem is sourcing it. To get it at a reasonable price, you have to buy it by the pallet load. So, we're going to buy a few bales locally next weekend, to try it. If we like it, we might have to bite the bullet and buy a pallet load.

We're going to try it as bedding for the hens as well. We use shavings currently so when I do the weekly clean of the chook ark, I remove all the dung into the compost bin, as free of shavings as possible, then remove the shavings. Using hemp should let me remove everything into the compost bin.

We'll keep you posted of developments.