Is your brand of pellet bedding ‘not as good as it used to be’?
Perhaps your usual brand of pellet bedding is not as absorbent as it used to be or it breaks down to dust more quickly. Maybe the colour is just not quite right or it smells rather odd.
We probably know why.
Most wood pellet bedding on the market today is imported from Eastern Europe or Russia. There is plenty of choice out there but beware, not all imported wood pellet bedding is the real thing – some bedding is just compressed sawdust which breaks down to create a very dusty, non-absorbent bedding which can have implications to your horse’s health.
Imported bedding pellets will probably contain an additive which will give the bedding a chalky feel as it breaks down. This is because a substance has been added to the bedding in order to keep the pellets ‘whole’ during transportation from Europe… this stops the bedding breaking down partially to dust as it arrives in the UK.
Today, there are only a handful of wood pellet producers in Britain. Sorbeo is one of the few, true, UK wood pellet horse bedding brands.
Top brand Verdo no longer makes its own wood pellets in the UK as its two main factories are closing. All of their bedding will be imported from Europe and beyond.
A true bedding pellet is created by slowly ‘roasting’ virgin softwood over a long period of time. This process will not destroy the natural resin in the wood which is vital to form the finished pellet. A bedding pellet should have a lower density that an energy pellet.
When you open a bag of wood pellet bedding it should have a fresh pine smell. If it smells odd then it may not have been made from virgin wood stock. And visually there should be:
- No dust
- No small pellet fragments
- A uniform pellet length
- A consistent colour
- No contaminates
- No clumps of pellets
If your bedding shows signs of any of these you should contact your supplier as their quality is questionable.
Sorbeo sources its wood from sustainable Scottish forests and woodlands and is made in our very own dedicated factory in Girvan on the west coast of Scotland.
When you can’t find your usual pellet bedding brand – trust Sorbeo!