While bedding may be an afterthought, it is a crucial component in your barn. The right amount of bedding keeps your horse rested and healthy in his stall. Each barn goes through a large quantity of bedding each month. This is why it is crucial to minimize the waste of horse stall bedding.
It doesn’t help that we often find ourselves adding more bedding in horse stalls with less-than-desired flooring. Lastly, it doesn’t help that the in-and-out traffic leads to wasted shavings in both the center aisle and outside paddock areas.
We recognize the need to minimize bedding costs and save time cleaning in a horse barn. That is why we offer a wide range of solutions to ensure your barn is functional and stunning. You can learn about our three product recommendations to help manage your horse stall bedding.
Recommendation #1 – The Bedding Blocker
Our first recommendation is our Bedding Blocker system for horse stalls. It is the quickest and most cost-effective way to keep valuable bedding inside your horse stall.
The Bedding Blocker is installed in your door opening. It can be installed in both interior and exterior horse stall door openings. It is installed at the base of a door opening to keep the shavings inside your horse stall. Our Bedding Blocker is guaranteed to save you valuable time cleaning and money on wasted shavings.
The Bedding Blockers can be installed in under 10 minutes, requiring minimal installation expertise. [Watch Installation Video] One question that many clients ask is, “What kind of surfaces can the Bedding Blocker be used on?” While a solid floor is ideal, you can use a bracket system and pressure-treated lumber (not included) to install your Bedding Blocker over soft surfaces such as dirt, screenings, and stall mats so you aren’t limited to a barn floor.
You can learn more about frequently asked questions in this helpful post.
Recommendation #2 – StableComfort Horse Stall Mattress
After the Bedding Blocker, our StableComfort Mattress system is the second easiest fix to managing your bedding costs. This horse stall mattress system can be installed into both new horse stalls and existing horse stalls.
StableComfort™ is a wall-to-wall waterproof stall mat system. This is in place of a traditional interlocking rubber mat kit. This mattress system consists of stall mattress pads that are equivalent to 4-6″ of wood shavings. The pads are then covered by a rubber crumb and one-piece top cover. This combination allows you to drastically reduce bedding usage without sacrificing any comfort.
Lastly, the top cover is a single seamless piece, rather than multiple interlocking rubber mats. This top cover reduces your cleaning time by at least 30% because mucking out time is drastically reduced.
While the StableComfort mattress system is a significant upfront investment, it will pay for itself in both savings on bedding costs and your time saved. You can learn more about frequently asked questions about our mattress systems in this helpful post.
Recommendation #3 – Add a Shavings Guard to Your Horse Stall Door’s Bottom
Our third and last recommendation is only applicable if you are purchasing brand new, custom horse stalls. This is why we mentioned the Bedding Blocker and StableComfort Mattress products first, since our clients can add them to their existing horse stalls.
If you have the luxury of purchasing our custom stall fronts, we always recommend that clients add a shavings guard to their horse stall doors. We make this recommendation when our clients choose a grilled bottom or mesh bottom on their stall doors. The shavings guard is positioned at the bottom of a door. It is filled with either powder-coated steel or lumber.
This addition ensures that shavings are kept within your horse stall when the door is closed. This way, no shavings can leave even if you have a vented bottom (i.e., mesh or grills on the bottom door). This can be added to both Sliding Stall Doors or even European Stall Fronts‘ hinged doors. A bonus idea is to pair our shavings guard with a Bedding Blocker (as seen below).
Do you have any questions regarding any of the above – Bedding Blocker, Stall Mattress system, or our Shavings Guards? Our team is here to help guide you every step of the way to ensure you have the most functional horse stall products. Please feel free to contact us by email at sales@americanstalls.com or by phone at (855) 957-8255. Alternatively, you can also complete a Contact Us Form.
