Bedding & Forage covers shavings, straw, pellets, and hay for stalls, coops, calving pens, trailers, and more. Clean, absorbent bedding in bagged and bale quantities keeps animals dry and comfortable, and dry animals are healthy animals through a Western Slope winter.
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Bedding & Forage Feeding Guide
What makes good bedding?
Three things: soaks up moisture, insulates, and starts clean. Straw does all three. It's the classic choice for calving and lambing pens, stalls, and coops, and doubles as garden mulch. Shavings and pellets soak up more with less dust in closed-up barns. Whatever you use, it has to stay dry: wet bedding chills animals, breeds bacteria, and wastes the money you spent on it.
How much bedding do I need for winter?
More than you think in October. Winter means animals spend more hours inside, water freezes and spills, and deliveries get harder when the roads turn. Stock up deep before the cold sets in. Straw bales stack well and keep, so buying ahead is cheap insurance. A dry, deeply bedded pen is one of the best investments in winter animal health there is.
Pellets, shavings, or straw, which should I choose?
Match the bedding to the building and the animal. Straw suits calving and lambing pens and anywhere warmth matters. Shavings work well in stalls and coops where you want absorbency with easy cleanup. Pellets soak up the most per bag for trailers and wet spots. A lot of operations use more than one, straw in the pens, shavings in the barn.
Bedding quick guide:
- Straw: warmth + absorbency; calving/lambing pens, mulch
- Shavings: absorbent, easy to clean; stalls and coops
- Pellets: most absorbency per bag; trailers and wet spots
- Hay: feed the good stuff, bed the rest