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With the cost of living and keeping a horse becoming increasingly expensive, we’re looking at ways you can cut costs but still maintain your commitment to high standards of equine health care.
Our top three tips for cutting the cost of keeping horses are:
- Choose a more cost-effective bedding.
- Look at why Strawmax could be the best option for you for saving money.
- Reduce the risk of potentially expensive health problems, such as respiratory disease and hoof disease, by choosing the most appropriate bedding for your horse.
For horse owners the cost of keeping a horse can quickly rise. The cost of production and distribution of feed and bedding, the price of equipment and the cost of services such as livery, vets and farriers, are often on an upward trajectory.
Your horse’s wellbeing comes first
We know that the great majority of owners put their horse’s wellbeing first and foremost. Our latest equine health survey showed us once again that this is the absolute priority for owners when they’re deciding which is the best bedding to buy for their horses.
Cost comes a long way down the list.
But in these uniquely tough times, we would like to suggest that you cut the cost of keeping horses by choosing a cheaper horse bedding without jeopardising your horse’s health.
You can cut other costs, such as vets’ bills, for example, by improving stable management.
Choose a more cost-effective bedding
A cheap bedding can be both a cost-effective horse bedding and a healthy bedding for your horse. In fact, we have a straw pellet bedding called Strawmax which could be the most cost-effective horse bedding on the UK market.
Strawmax is also a high-quality horse bedding, an environmentally-friendly horse bedding and a dust-extracted horse bedding.
The majority of owners in the UK today use purpose-made shavings like Bedmax or Littlemax (and other brands are of course available). But about 20% still use traditional straw and many use wood pellets.
Straw varies hugely in quality; it can be full of dust and with pressures on farming costs it is going to be very expensive this year.
Wood pellets are mostly made from imported timber, which in turn makes them cost more.
The benefits of Strawmax
We have developed Strawmax absorbent horse bedding to combine all the best benefits of straw and pellets, while avoiding their downsides.
Strawmax is made from high quality straw locally sourced in the UK. We crush it, dry it at sterilising temperatures, and thoroughly dust extract it, and it’s compressed naturally into dense pellets.
Unlike straw, you can buy it from your local retailer in handy 15kg bags which are consistent in quality and price, and really easy to handle, store and use.
We’ve put together a handy step-by-step guide to using Strawmax here.
What makes Strawmax such a cheap bedding option?
The simple answer is that you need less Strawmax to maintain an optimum bed. It lasts a long time, and because it’s so super-absorbent, it concentrates urine in neat, isolated patches that can be removed with very little excess waste.
Once you’ve made your initial bed, you only need about one bag a week to top it up.
So rather than calling it a cheap bedding option, a better description is that it’s an economical, cost-effective, and more affordable choice at a time when most of us who don’t own a money tree are trying to cut costs in every sensible way we can.
Don’t incur costs you don’t have to
This is our second suggestion for cutting the costs of keeping a horse. We’re talking about big costs here — the costs of health problems you might be able to prevent with better stable management.
Nearly 1,000 owners responded to our 2022 survey, and 45% of them reported that their horses had suffered health problems that needed veterinary treatment and/or box rest.
Over 50% of these 450 owners had paid vets bills of more than £1,000, and 25% had paid over £2,000.
As with every previous survey, the biggest health problems identified were respiratory disease and hoof disease.
Both these problems can be avoided or at least mitigated by using high quality, hygienic bedding, and managing it properly. As any good equine vet will tell you, prevention is far cheaper than cure
So even when you pay a bit more for a bedding such as Bedmax shavings, you could be saving yourself a much bigger bill down the line.
Plus now you have the option of paying less for Strawmax, a cheap bedding solution with high quality equine health and human wellbeing benefits.
For more information by visiting Bedmax and Strawmax.
