Shavings Review.

If you watch my vlog’s on my You Tube channel you will know that recently I have not been able to get hold of my favourite type of shavings for the horses’ stables – Snowflake.  This means that I have tried a few different ones since Christmas and thought that I would do  a review of all the ones I have tried.

I like snowflake shavings because they are not dusty and are soft and look clean.  I realise this last point is probably a bit daft but I like the horses beds to look clean.  According to their website they are also ‘highly absorbent but remain dry on the top’.  

The first ones I tried were Littlemax – these aren’t dusty but they had quite a strong smell (of pine). I also  found the bits were a bit hard and some of them sharp.  I worried that when lying down one of the horses could get one of these sharp (some bits were like sticks) in their eye and cause real damage!

  

I also tried Bedmax, made by the same company – the bits in these are bigger and just as hard and sharp as the Littlemax. These are also dust free and ‘hygienic’.  However,  I found that both these and the Littlemax weren’t very absorbent and the urine was leaking out of the stables much more than usual!  I found skipping out difficult with these bigger ‘bits’ and it took much longer to do the stables each day.

 

According to their website the pine has antibacterial properties which is, of course, a good thing.

 When I told the people at my local tack shop about the absorbency problem they suggested putting Megasorb underneath.  This, as the name suggests, is very absorbent and is also dust free.  According to their product information the wood fibre pulp is sterilised up to 500 degrees which kills mould, spores and bacteria – so great for horses suffering from respiratory problems.  I tried these on the bottom of Chesney’s stable and they definitely absorbed all the urine.  However, they did not look very clean or very soft or warm.

 

The last ones I tried were Safemix, these are now my second choice.  They were soft and clean looking and fairly absorbent.  Again, dust extracted they made a good bed but I still favour the Snowflake, probably because the bits are slightly bigger (but nowhere near as big as Bedmax) and so slightly easier to rearrange after skipping out.  

Bedding and shavings for horses is such a personal thing, we all have our favourites for different reasons – what type of bedding do you use?

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Until next time!

Jo