Is the bedding shortage only in Texas? With all this cold weather lasting longer than we are used to I guess everyone has bought all the bedding. Local TSC says they will be lucky to have some by April.....

Hay shortage now bedding....

Here is another thread on this subject:

http://www.equinecolor.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1785

I had no idea it was getting that bad in certain parts of the country at all! Up here in Canada clients are being told middle of February before any more pelleted bedding comes in, but April??? Wow ...  

Try this website:

http://www.hayexchange.com/bedding/search_bedding.php

It might seem like over-kill but getting in a semi load is quite easy.  Our equine vet would coordinate enough people for a load.  Start asking around and let everyone divide up one load and save some huge money!

We paid up front and then arrived and loaded up our share.

I absolutely can not remember where I read this, but I did read somewhere on the Net that:

There IS a bedding shortage.  Allegedly because WalMart and other similar stores are buying up the shavings and somehow, some way are selling them over seas - I think in one of the Oriental countries, for something that isn't horse related and they're making a big profit. 

If that sounds sketchy it's because it is, not to mention stupid.  It was months ago I read that blurp,  thought it was baloney, and it didn't pay any attention to it

Now I am beginning to wonder, because some of the feed stores in my area are having trouble getting bagged shavings, and this thread isn't the first one I've seen lately talking about a shortage.

I hope someone that's in the know comes in and posts.

Well we just signed on a new dealer for the Streufex product and he has been in the shavings business for 15-20 years, supplying all of the major shows and barns up here in Canada as well as the Florida circuit, etc and according to him, literally the end is near for wood based bedding products and hence his decision to start aggressively marketing the Streufex to his clients instead.

The Far East IS buying up huge amounts of wood pellets for wood pellet stoves and it makes more financial sense for the manufacturers to load up ocean containers and send it overseas and now the North American market is simply getting the leftovers and thats it ...

It is going to be extremely interesting to see if all of these stories and comments are correct and as 2007 progresses if shavings and wood pellets become harder and harder to come by ...

Like anything though, it is supply and demand.

If Pestell and/or Magnum and whoever else manufactures the wood pellets has a huge demand in the Far East and Europe and wherever else that they cannot satisfy with their existing production facilities, do they then look, in 2007 and 2008 into areas like PA and MD who appear to have a plentiful and cheap supply of  sawdust and simply set up production in those areas as well?

Maryland would make perfect sense as you have the major ocean port in Baltimore and shipping would be very cheap from that point

Years ago my husband and I looked into purchasing a machine in the UK that shredded corrugated cardboard and produced lovely, fluffy, easily biodegradable livestock bedding. The end result was just perfect and I thought there would be a huge market for it in North America. Plus - we had a whack of empty, scrap cardboard cartons - right?

Well - yes we did, but the scrap cardboard carton market (as we found out rather quickly) is controlled by a certain element of the Italian population, and the Chinese come over once a year and bid and buy up every scrap bit that is dumped into the metal waste containers. I was in the shipping and logistics business and we then bid on close to 400 x 40' ocean containers, PER MONTH, of scrap cardboard going to China and that was for the top 3 companies that handled it - and didnt even touch on the remaining dozens that were smaller than the Top 3

I think rather than smugly going along thinking your cheap bedding supply will always be there, consider that tomorrow it may not be.

I know from looking around the internet there are a few other products that merit consideration as well as the Streufex. Equidry is one - a clay based product, produced in IL and Kenaf is another - produced in the Carolina's   

TrueColors,  I tip my hat to you in BIG way

Thank you for not only sharing that very important information, but delivering it in a way that I am not capable of

I have a neighbor who made a similar comment as those from PA and MD.  He said it doesn't matter if TSC and other feed stores can't get bagged shavings, he will just call the sawmill 1-1/2 hours NW of us and order a dump truck load.

I silently argued all the reasons you have stated, including the one about cherry and walnut, and dropped the subject.  I am just a woman and don't know anything, dont-cha-know

Thanks again very much! 

Thanks PAWALKER! I try!!!

I know up here as well, referring to your comments about the potential "bad" wood mix in the pellets, a person up here in Canada recommended that people NOT pay the exhorbitant prices for Woody Pet, Pestell, etc which are made specifically for livestock bedding, but to go with the *cheap* wood pellet products available at WalMart, Canadian Tire, etc

A lot of people came on and said dont be so stupid. NO ONE (and that includes the wood pellet manufacturers as several people called them to ask) knows exactly what the mix of woods used in the wood pellets is for wood stoves, because it simply doesnt matter. The wood stoves will burn it whether it is cherry or black walnut or pine or whatever. And even minute, trace amounts is enough to cause founder and/or death and NO ONE KNOWS if there is a smidgen of black walnut in this load or not ...

We had a barn up here last year that bought bulk shavings from a certain supplier because they were "cheaper" than the rest. Well - guess what. I guess the load before that was going goodness knows where had some black walnut in it, and when her load was dumped into the truck I guess there was still some black walnut bits in the corners that inadvertently got mixed in with her shavings and she ended up with all 54 horses on the property being affected, some worse than others and I believe that 2 or possibly 3 did end up being euthanized and several cannot be used in the same way they were before this happened 

So - it IS a very real concern and one that horse owners need to be more cognizant of because one bad batch is all it takes and there is no going back and saying "Oops. Maybe that wasnt such a good move after all ..."

I totally agree about the black walnut.....but we do have a lot of cherry here in PA and that sawdust has never bothered my horses or anyone else's that I know of. Most of the sawdust I get is a mix of pine, cherry, and maple.

Anyway, I get my sawdust from two different local mills and neither of them have ever even cut black walnut.  There is not much of a demand here for it and not much supply either.

When I was a kid growing up on a farm in Minnesota, we use to bed down our livestock with chopped/shredded cornstalks or straw.  It was great bedding and very biodegradeable when we put it back out onto the fields in the spring.

" chopped/shredded cornstalks or straw"

Now there's a great thought!  Someone needs to jump on that bedding bandwagon and think about marketing it

Under the heading "For What It's Worth"...we run a pellet stove and pine is not a preferred material. Pellet stoves (or so we were told/believe) really don't burn soft woods well, without complications of dust, etc. Godd woodstove pellets are from hardwoods such as oak. They also don't dissolve worth a darn if used as bedding-tried that. The pine pellets will fluff up when watered, my woodstove pellets just sort of made a mush. Now, that doesn't mean they aren't making pellets out of pine and selling them as hardwood. As someone above commented, how would you know, but the markets should be different.

Why/how does black walnut have adverse effects on the horses?   I know oak is bad as well... but my 2 QH's were out in a big 20 acre pasture this spring/summer, and there was one oak tree, and one HUGE black walnut tree in their field.  There was pleanty of green grass + supplemental grain etc... but they really enjoyed eating the lower branches of BOTH the black walnut and the oak tree...    My vet said it doesn't affect some horses.    Any insight??  Are my 2 really lucky or something, or do they just have bad taste? 

I figured they wouldn't eat it if it wasn't good.

We have several saw mills around here. there was a time they practically gave the stuff away- delivered it too. But there is a power plant that burns sawdust. now the mills are making money selling the sawdust to the plant. Do I blame them? Heck no, keeps the mills in business. Makes it harder for us as a dairy farm to get sawdust but I can certainly understand why they sell it to the plant. There are smaller mills that we can get truckloads from and I bale up 200 bales of wheat straw which I live in the winter, not so much in the summer. Some of you might want to consider finding a source for straw.

Has it improved any in your local areas as far as wood pellet availability?

Apparently up here in Ontario, Canada the feed stores are being told March and April in some cases. In some cases it due to the CN rail strike and in other cases, the manufacturers simply have nothing to send to them ...

Of course I am looking at it very much as an opportunity for the Streufex product, but I can never recall it being this bad for wood based products before either even before I was selling the Streufex ...

Here is another update on this bedding shortage situation:

http://theoutsidecourse.com/index.php?showtopic=1372

I just finished a 3 day trade show and found out some VERY interesting information as to where all of the North American wood is going which I have outlined on this thread...

One feed store that I call on, said on Monday that they have been waiting for about 5-6 weeks for their order of pelleted bedding to come in and they were 9th on the list and would hopefully have it in April.

But truly - thats ridiculous. They need to source an alternate source now, instead of waiting and hoping they will have enough to service their clients and leaving them in the lurch when they cannot do so.