Educate, Inspire & Inform

Horses and ponies vary from breed to size.

You may have an overweight pony suffering from laminitis where certain waste wood based products such as small flake from saw mills can affect the hoof, leading to the chemicals seeping into the hoof wall causing the lamini not to heal, to certain types of straw which horses will eat which can lead to impaction colic or respiratory issues. 

You may have a very wet messy horse who needs an absorbent bedding.

We spend a lot of money on our equines and we need the best products for them to survive and for performance horses, it's been proven the wrong environment will cause a horse to suffer.

Plants that are grown for seed (grain) production are very mature at the time of harvest. This means that straw is very fibrous and it has high lignin content.

The lignin fiber is the type of fiber that give plants their rigidity so they stand up right in the field. If we compare normal maturity grass hay to very mature straw, we find that grass hay has a NDF (fiber) content of 62% with a lignin content of 5.8% while straw has a NDF content of 73% and a lignin content of 7.5%.
 

Lignin fiber is completely non-digestible in the digestive system of horses. If horses eat a large volume of straw, this lignin fiber accumulates in the digestive system and it can plug (impact) the digestive system. This results in severe colic and even death if not properly treated.

Horses that are well- fed normally do not eat large volumes of straw bedding. In situations when horse owners notice that horses are consuming straw, they should remove the straw bedding and choose a different bedding material.

Please Note:

While straw is commonly used for equine bedding, The Commercial Feed & Shavings Company does not recommend straw for bedding if an animal has the tendency to consume the straw.

We have created this page to help assist you and we have trained BHS3 and UKCCL2 staff who are experienced to assist you with the safest most reliable products,

Did you know rabbits are best suited on a bedding of hay?

Straw based products aren't always the best as they are prickly, and certain pine products can trigger the respiratory tract.

Did you know that some pine based bedding can affect your small pets respiratory system? 

We have created this page to help assist you. Get in touch with our trained staff who can help.

Chickens have been proven to not be best suited to pine based bedding and we have found that thousands of our poultry farmers have put our CFSC Happy Chicks bedding in with excellent feedback.

Great for pheasant rearing and large chicken farms.

We have created this page to help assit you.