Bale in the Lorry: Hemp Bedding for Away Shows and Overnight Stays

There's a moment, usually around 10pm in a lorry park in the drizzle, when you realise you've brought four shavings bales for three horses and one of them has already been used as a doorstop. Away shows have a way of exposing the difference between a bedding system that works at home and one that actually travels.

Hemp has quietly become the answer for a lot of yards making that trip. It's compressed, it goes a long way, and — crucially for anyone who has spent an hour shovelling wet shavings into a barrow at a county show — the muck takes up less room. But it does change what you pack and, more importantly, what you're allowed to leave behind. Here's the practical version.

The phone calls to make before you put a bale in the lorry

Do this in the week before, not at the gate. Four questions, one email, and you'll sleep better.

• Does the showground supply bedding, and what kind? Some do, some charge per bale, some forbid you bringing your own for biosecurity reasons. Ask rather than assume.
• Are there restrictions on what goes on the muck heap? A growing number of venues run a bedding policy — often a no-straw rule, occasionally an everything-must-be-bagged rule. Hemp is usually welcome because it rots down with the fibre content, but "usually" isn't "always".
• Is there a charge for muck removal? Some venues build it into the stabling fee, some charge per barrow, some simply point at a skip and wish you the best.
• What sort of stabling is it? Permanent blocks, temporary stalls, trailers bolted together. It affects how deep you can go and whether the floor drains.

A realistic amount to take

Most manufacturers quote a bale as covering a stable to a sensible depth once it's broken out. In practice, at a show:

• One night, tidy horse: half a bale is a generous bed.
• Two nights, or a wet one: a full bale, plus a top-up.
• The traveller who box-walks and sweats: take a bale and a half and stop pretending otherwise.

The trap is volume versus weight. Hemp bales are dense — a 20kg compressed bale feels like a bag of cement when you're wrestling it off a ramp. Take fewer bales than you would shavings, but break them out into heavy-duty bags or a builder's sack at home so you're not trying to split a compressed bale on a wet ramp in the dark.

The packing list

• A pre-broken bale, split into two or three sturdy sacks
• A small rubber skip or scoop for carrying bedding across a showground
• A proper fork, plus a shavings fork if you're banking
• Rubber gloves that you don't mind ruining
• A watering can for damping down
• Bin bags for wet bedding, if the venue wants it bagged
• A spare sack of hemp for topping up
• Your own disinfectant and your own tools, full stop

That last point isn't fussiness. Shared forks on a showground are one of the cheapest ways to move a bug from one yard to another. Own tools, own barrow where you can, and clean them before they come home.

Setting up in ten minutes flat

Banks at the back and sides, thinner at the door, same as at home — hemp holds a bank beautifully once it's damped down, and it stays put when a horse turns. Two things worth doing differently from your yard routine:

1. Damp it. Hemp can be dusty straight out of the bag if it's been sat in a warm lorry all day. A light water from the can settles it, and it doesn't reduce absorbency meaningfully.
2. Check the floor. Temporary stabling often has poor drainage. Deep bedding over a damp floor becomes a mud pie by morning; a thinner layer with a mat under the water bucket tends to be the better compromise.

Absorbency is where hemp earns its keep on the road. Travel stress and strange water mean a lot of horses produce a wetter stable than they ever would at home, and a hemp bed copes with that without needing half the lorry's payload in shavings.

Muck heap manners

This is the bit that catches people out. Ask at the office where spent bedding goes, and follow it — including when the answer is annoying.

• If the venue asks for bedding to be bagged, bag it. Hemp doesn't blow about like shavings, but a heap full of unbagged wet bedding is still someone else's problem to clear.
• Don't tip into a straw-only heap because it was nearer. Mixed heaps cause real headaches for venues that compost or sell on.
• If there's no facility at all, be prepared to take it home. A night's hemp bedding compresses down decently, but it's heavy — plan for the weight, not just the space.
• If you're staying on a working farm or a livery yard en route, ask before you add to their heap. It's their field that gets it back eventually.

The overlooked bit: fire and damp

A bag of damp hemp shut in a hot lorry is a genuinely poor idea — damp organic material heats, and you don't want that behind the living. Keep bales dry, keep them out of the tack locker, and if a bale gets soaked on the way home, break it out and dry it rather than stacking it in the corner of the barn.

Would we do it again?

Yes — with the caveat that hemp rewards planning and punishes improvisation. It's heavier than shavings and you can't casually borrow a bale off the next lorry, because they'll almost certainly have shavings. But you'll use less of it, cart less muck, and the stable will look like someone thought about it.

The honest arithmetic for a two-night stay: one and a half bales for a dirty horse, half a sack of top-up, one email to the secretary, and one conversation with the muck heap. That's the whole system.