Necessity of Bedding - Varieties of Bedding - Comparative Powers of Absorption of Water by Various Kinds of Bedding - Requirements in a Bedding - Classification of Bedding Materials - Effects of Bedding on Horses' Feet - Straw - Peat Moss - Sawdust - Wood Shavings - Tan - Ferns, Fir Needles and Moss - Sand - Combined Bedding - Choice of a Bedding - Bedding down - Mucking-out - Disposal of used Litter - Stable Manure.

Necessity Of Bedding

The following are the chief reasons why a stabled horse requires to have an artificial covering for the floor of his box or stall: -

1. The floor is necessarily made so hard that he could not lie down in comfort on it without a bedding. In fact, the absence or deficient supply of bedding is not an uncommon cause, in badly managed stables, of horses getting cut about the points of the hips, hocks, and fetlocks from contact with the floor. We must here remember that when a horse is at grass, he has a large choice of ground upon which to repose, and even then he does not always escape from the injuries just mentioned. Also, it is advisable as a rule to encourage hard-worked horses to lie down during the day, when they are in the stable.

2. For purposes of health, comfort and cleanliness, an animal needs to have some material under him that will soak up or drain off the urine and the moisture from the dung, which duty an ordinary floor will not perform.

3. To save the horse from the bad effects of chill, whether generally, or locally in his feet and legs, he needs for lying and standing on, a material which is a bad conductor of heat. Except when the floor is of wood, it is in all usual cases a good conductor of heat. It is true that when a horse lives in the open, his lying down and standing up are performed as a rule on substances which conduct heat with comparative rapidity from objects placed in contact with them; but this disturbance of blood circulation is more or less counterbalanced by the fact that the animal's system is then more resistant to the effects of chill than that of the stabled horse. Also, when at liberty, he occupies the greater part of both day and night in moving about, chiefly in search of food. The tendency to "fill" shown by the legs of even sound horses which are kept for a long time in a stable, is far greater, if they have to stand during the day on a floor which is a good conductor of heat, like stone, cement, or brick, than if the standing is warm to the feet, as is the case with straw, wood, and peat moss for instance. Frequent movement being one of the natural conditions of equine life, we find that a horse's feet and legs are anatomically badly fitted to bear long-continued rest, especially when standing, in which position gravitation materially helps to retard the circulation of blood in these parts. The ill-effects of this local interference are manifested not only by the legs filling, but also, and far more seriously, by tendency to fever in the feet and navicular disease.