Get more from your straw

As a wet autumn moves into a wet winter and a poor harvest sends straw prices soaring, owners who use traditional straw for their horses may be interested in a new option

If you’re a lover of soft straw beds but the ever-increasing supply price is making you second-guess your selection and seek out something new, the UK’s leading bedding manufacturer Bedmax may have the answer for you. Introducing Strawmax straw pellets, an exciting new bedding option that sits alongside their range of Bedmax and Littlemax pine shavings.

All the best of straw and pellets

Straw pellets are a new innovation for the company, which  has made its name as a maker of top-quality shavings for 20 years, but the commitment to quality, integrity and innovation behind Strawmax is exactly the same, says Bedmax MD Tim Smalley. “Although shavings are very popular today, there are a lot of owners who still use traditional straw and a growing number who use wood pellets. We’ve developed Strawmax to combine and maximise the benefits of both straw and pellets, and to eliminate the downsides that come with straw.

“Baled straw is one of the worst sources of the dust and spores that cause respiratory problems in the stable. It’s very bulky to store, it doesn’t absorb urine, it’s difficult to muck out without a lot of waste and it creates a huge muckheap that doesn’t compost very quickly. It also varies enormously in quality, availability and cost depending on the harvest.”

 Key benefits for horses

Strawmax is made at its own dedicated production facility from a contracted – and therefore guaranteed – supply of locally harvested high-quality wheat straw. It’s chopped, dried at sterilising temperatures, dust extracted and pelletised to create a consistent, high quality bedding available in convenient 15kg bags.

As with Bedmax shavings, the top priority in the development of Strawmax pellets is to help owners create an exceptionally healthy and hygienic stable environment for their horses that…

• generates virtually no airborne dust
• absorbs exceptional quantities of moisture
• fluffs up into a deep comfortable bed
• absorbs and suppresses odour

Although they can be laid dry in the stable, pre-watering is very much recommended to activate the pellets’ capacity to absorb moisture and fluff up to at least three times dry volume. Watered pellets are also less palatable to hungry horses, but they still have the capacity to immediately absorb urine in very restricted patches that makes mucking out extremely easy, quick and cost effective, reducing the amount of bedding consigned to the muck heap to a minimum.

Key benefits for owners

And that’s where Strawmax becomes particularly helpful for time-pressed, value-conscious owners – particularly those with wet and messy horses – because they’re…

• labour-saving and easy to use
• low on waste and therefore small on the muckheap
• quick to compost

For owners who prefer straw, Strawmax offers all the natural qualities of a traditional bedding, re-engineered to maximise its benefits and eliminate its downsides.

Strawmax straw pellets are now available from equine retailers and country stores in Yorkshire, the North East and North West, the Borders, Scotland and in other areas of the UK on a request basis. Find out more at strawmax.co.uk