Top Tips for Horse Bedding Maintenance

A good bedding routine makes wet areas easy to spot and leaves a clean, dry bed for your horse to lie on. Check how the bedding behaves in your stable and choose a fork that lets you keep the clean material.

Check the flake size and dust

Start with bedding you can keep dry and lift cleanly. Compare a large-flake option such as Bedmax shavings with a finer flake such as Littlemax shavings. Check dust extraction, how the bed handles wet patches and whether your fork can separate waste from clean bedding.

Look at the floor and drainage as well as the bedding. If the stable stays damp or dusty, use our stable ventilation guide to check the room and the jobs that stir up dust.

Match the tines to the bed

The Red Gorilla medium PC bedding fork suits daily work on a loose shavings bed. If small pieces of waste are falling through your current fork, try closer tines such as those on the Red Gorilla close-tined shavings fork. Sift a small amount at a time so you can see what you are keeping and what needs to come out.

Lift wet patches and top up the bed

Check the areas where your horse usually urinates as well as the surface. Lift the wet and soiled material, put any clean bedding back and top up before the bed becomes thin. Check for pooled water, damaged mats and damp edges while the floor is visible.

Keep track of what you use

Record how many bags you use over a week and how much clean material you take out with the waste. Use that to compare how a change of fork or bedding works in your stable. Store spare bags somewhere dry and follow the manufacturer’s directions when preparing a fresh bed.

See our daily mucking-out guide for the order of the jobs, and read the British Horse Society’s bedding guidance when choosing a material.