I have battled with my mare to find a bedding which suits her. She likes to roll, you see, and furthermore, she likes to dig the bed with her front foot before she rolls. I have rubber matting down, but it took me an age to find exactly the right bedding for her.
I settled on a deep litter system using Easibed (which will get its own post shortly!). But this presented a conundrum to me. The digging and the rolling has the unfortunate side effect of breaking up all the droppings into itty-bitty tiny pieces and it made me crazy that I could not pick them up with my shavings fork.
I had resisted buying the new Pellet Master fork by Fynalite because when I looked at the picture online, it looked to me as though the tynes weren’t any closer together than those of my shavings fork. Then I went to Your Horse Live and saw one in the flesh. I measured it against a shavings fork. And I handed over £25 for one. At this point, I have to confess I have a guilty secret – I sort of collect mucking out tools. If I see something I think will make life easier, I buy it. I currently own: one shavings fork, one fork with curved tynes for straw, two different brooms with different bristles and head sizes, a plastic rake for leveling the bed and cleaning under the haybar. And now a Pellet Master.
Pellet Master on the left (blue) and shavings fork on the right (red). You can see the Pellet Master has tynes really close together – I was assured they are slightly closer than a five pence piece, but I confess I haven’t checked!
It has revolutionised my mucking out. I can now scoop up all the bits of poo and merrily fling them out of the stable. I am thrilled I bought it. And if you use bedding in tiny pieces or have a horse which turns nice neat mounds of dung into tiny bits, you should buy one too.
Thank you for this wonderful review. We are really pleased that all the effort of designing it over the last three years have been worth it!