Bank on it
With rubber matting now an increasingly popular choice of stable bedding has the ‘old fashioned’ use of banks had its day?
While some manufacturers recommend that you use minimal amounts of high absorbency bedding with rubber matting, it’s important to still create banks. The actual amount of bedding used in the middle, however, can be greatly reduced.
The reason that people use banks is to help prevent their horse from becoming cast. This is where a horse is unable to get up from the floor, usually because they can’t get their legs underneath themselves, and can be caused by lying down, or rolling, too close to the stable wall. For banks to have any effect they need to be about a foot wide at the base to keep your horse away from the stable wall. Use a shavings fork to pack them down to make sure they’re reasonably solid.
A clean stable is a happy stable
Keeping your stable clean and tidy on a regular basis helps make it a much more pleasurable environment for your horse to live.
Good stable hygiene is essential as an unclean stall attracts insects and encourages hoof problems like thrush. In addition, breathing ammonia from urine saturated bedding can be harmful to a horse or pony’s sensitive lungs and therefore droppings and wet bedding should be removed on a daily basis.
It’s also really important to keep your stable dust-free, as dust can irritate your horse’s respiratory system. Cobwebs hold dust, so these need to go too. Every month move your bedding to one side of the stable, to avoid dust and cobwebs getting in the bedding and clean the walls and ceilings using a lightweight yard brush. Make sure you do it in the morning so that the dust has time to settle again before your horse comes in.
At least once a year take out all the bedding and wash the walls and floor using a stable disinfectant. It should be completely dry before putting the bedding and horse back in – so do it on a warm day if possible.
If you have rubber mats you need to wash them too. It’s a good idea to number them as you take them out, so you know how they fit back in again.
