Mattress is essential for a horse who does hard work all day long, and also good food because they both restore lost strength and activity lost during the hard work. The mattress is usually placed for the horses to lie on during the night, but some horses have habits that require bedding during the day as well. Some of them do not urinate unless he feels the mattress under his feet, so that he stops himself from the urine for hours on end, so the bladder is filled and symptoms of excruciating pain appear on him and it is not possible for him to stand up Any work.
It has been observed that some horses arise and have this habit from the presence of weakness in the feet and a predisposition to abstinence and skin diseases, so they refrain from urinating on paved ground, fearing that the spray of urine will reach their feet, although the damage that results from the urine spray is not measured in addition to the harm of not urinating.
From the horses, when they scrutinize the ground with their feet, they break the nails of the horseshoe and cause damage to the tissues of the hoof itself. Including horses whose feet are weak, they limp if they stand on dry ground without brushes. Among them are horses that cannot resume any work if they do not lie during the day for a little while.
The best types of mattresses were what was easy to obtain, and this ease of course varies from the things that are used for the bedding of cereal straw, such as wheat, barley, rice, reed straw, branches of some soft and soft trees, sawdust, the area of wood, and many other things that vary according to the circumstances and the environment.
The most important thing that must be taken into account is that the bedding is dry, not wet, and the dung is simple and easy, free from everything that destroys the animal’s bed or harms it, and therefore lifting the dung and the wet bedding every morning when the animal leaves its stable is necessary, and it must be transported away to the compost heap and then the rest is raised to spread it. In a well-ventilated area exposed to the sun for ventilation and renewal.
