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Re: [RC] Stove Pellets? - Julie FullerBobbi,I should have known someone would ask this! The pellets I am referring to are for burning in pellet stoves.... those funky (and in my opinion, worthless) stoves used for heating. The pellets around here are made locally...... Bear Mountain is one company, Lignetics is another (Im not positive thats a local company) I know for a fact that Bear Mountain uses ONLY pine/fir/cedar in their pellets..... A friend of mine checked on this after having a gelding mysteriously founder. He wanted to rule out black walnut. So, be sure to check on this before using stove pellets. Here it's not a problem because we don't have a lot of hardwood trees anyway. (Pacific Northwest... Washington) Around here you can buy stove pellets at grocery stores, hareware srores, feed stores and private dealers. Generally speaking I had found them cheapest at feed stores by the ton. They come in 40 lb bags, so you get 50 bags on a pallet. This workes great.... you bed down all your stalls, 5 (or more) bags per stall and stack the rest for use as you go, or when you finally have to strip. The bags are plastic, so no worries there. I use them for the chicken pen, to keep it from getting muddy..... I've had a billion people ask me how on earth I keep my pen dry in all this rain! I HATE seeing any animal floundering around in mud! I occasionally dump a few bags in front of the gates as well. I have used them in rabbit cages, and I use them for turkey houses too. Basically, any animal does well with these. One small caution..... when you bed down a stall for the first time, be sure to wet the pellets down and let them fluff up before putting any horses in the stall. The pellets roll and the horses can slip, especially if the floor is concrete or matted. It'll take you a few times to figure out how much water to spray on them. I spread them out first, spray them quite well, then let them sit about 10 minutes before spraying more, and/ or raking them around a bit. They are not very dusty, unless you live where it's very dry, and have your horses in alot... they have a tendency to grind them into dust! It's not a problem here.... it's humid and wet all the time in the winter. I've never been one to stall anymore than absolutely nescessary, in fact, I have no barn at all now, and it's great! (Except it's harder to put manure on the garden when I have to haul it from somewhere else!) Julie ============================================================ ...but then, I do ride my horses a lot more than most people ~ Karen Chaton ridecamp.net information: http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/ ============================================================
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