Green Mile has created a new corrugated cardboard animal and horse bedding, which it claims is better than previously available cardboard and other traditional beddings.
Previous complaints about cardboard are that it’s dusty, that it lies flat making an uncomfortable bed, that it sticks to the floor making it difficult to scrape up, and that it’s difficult to separate wet from dry bedding so mucking out can be wasteful.
The Green Mile bedding claims to deal with all these problems. “We’ve created a unique, highly absorbent alternative bedding,” says Joey Kinnersley, managing director of the Green Mile Company.
Green Mile’s strips of corrugated card mimic the binding properties of straw, forming an irregular but secure structure that resists crushing. Its hollow nature makes it highly absorbent, say its manufacturers, around five times more absorbent than wood shavings and six times more absorbent than straw.
It is also, says Kinnersley, more environmentally friendly than shavings. “Most wood shavings come from trees felled purely to become shavings, rather than as a by-product of, say, furniture manufacture. Our cardboard is made from recycled paper.
“The after-use environmental impact is better too. Shavings have to be stored for two years after use, before they can be spread on fields, to prevent them leaching nutrients from the soil. Our cardboard will break down immediately to make a good mulch, or, like straw, a frost shield for strawberries.”
Kinnersley says that although the cardboard theoretically could become moldy, all batches are rigorously checked to ensure this hasn’t happened.
Jacky Cook, yard manager at Pool House Equine Clinic says: “We use Green Mile for all our COPD horses, horses that eat bedding, and laminitic horses because once it’s down it stays down. It’s cheaper than shavings, and, if you muck out properly, there’s hardly any dust.
“The only downside I can think of it that it can become quite heavy, but all round it’s a good bedding. A lot of racing yards are turning to it.”
Prices start at £4.50 for a 20kg bale, plus VAT. For more details visit www.thegreenmilecompany.co.uk or call 01785 282830.
