At Pine River Bedding, we take a lot of pride in providing our customer with only the best animal bedding on the market. Today, we wanted to spend a few minutes explaining how our product gets from the lumber mill to you, our valued customer. We have now spent more than 20 years perfecting the process of selling only the best shavings made. If you have heard of our brand, then you already know we are known for excellent quality shavings, pellets, and sawdust.

So here it is. This is our "top secret formula" to making great shavings! To quote someone much wiser than myself, "The difference between good and great is in the details."
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• Quality Lumber- Our process begins with only the best lumber. We use only the highest quality white pine planks to ensure a consistent and beautiful shaving for your animals. All planks of wood are 100% natural (no additives) and virgin (no pressure treated wood) white pine wood.
• Kiln Drying Matters- We use a kiln, and an air drying process. One of the reasons that our product is so much more absorbent than others is because the kiln drying eliminates excess moisture from the shavings. Our Eastern Sweet Pine shavings are only approximately 6-8% moisure. Kiln drying also helps prevent mold and mildew from forming in our product bales.
• Foreign Object Screening- Once we have selected the best lumber and have shaved off some shavings during the planing process, our shavings are then screened to remove any unwanted debris or larger wood pieces that don't belong in the bag. We check to ensure that our product quality is superior BEFORE putting our shavings in the bag.
• Dust Free Screening- Airborne dust particles can be hazardous to the respiratory health of your animals. We screen all of our wood shavings a second time for particle dust. If we wouldn't put our animals on it, we wouldn't sell it!
• Premium Bags- We use only the highest quality paper and plastic bags. They are considerably thicker than most of the other brands on the market. Better bags make sure that all of our premium quality animal bedding is not broken open during transportation and storage. We want our product to show up to your door in the best condition possible.

We have openly said it (and posted it on our website) multiple times. We are not the least expensive shaving you can purchase. There are much cheaper options available.

We offer a higher quality and more absorbent shaving than other companies do. It costs a lot of money to get only the best shaving to your farm or retail store. If you or your customer needs the best product on the market, call or email us and let us price our product delivered to your door.

Great pure virgin wood shavings, pellets, and sawdust. Pine River Bedding.​ 

Most customers are looking for one of two types of wood pellets. They either want heating fuel, or wood pellets for a pellet stove, or horse bedding pellets for use in animal stalls. While there are two very different uses for wood pellets at a retail store, let's take the time to distinguish between each for your customer.

The retail customer that is looking for wood fuel pellets is laser focused on 2 things. Economical price points and a good, clean burning source of heat. Most customers look for little to no odor while burning, and also expect that their wood stove maintenance will not be increased. Little to no soot is always preferred.

For the customer looking for animal bedding, or horse bedding wood pellets, this customer may or may not be as concerned with price. It is a factor, but not the only determining factor to purchase. Since the wood pellets are not used for a fuel source, horse bedding customers prefer that the pellet break down quickly and easily. This will help keep the ammonia odor under control in the stall. Horse bedding wood pellet customers are also looking for ease of storage, convenience, and ability to clean a stall out quickly.

So what does all this mean to your retail customer? It may be perfectly normal to show wood pellets in multiple locations throughout the store. You may want to showcase your best selling wood fuel pellets next to the pellet stoves and also have a display of sawdust and wood pellets for horse bedding customers somewhere else. Try mixing up the display a little bit with all your best selling items located on an end cap for example. Your customer will be impressed that you understand their needs better than somewhere else does.

​​Great pure virgin wood shavings, pellets, and sawdust. Pine River Bedding.

Pine River Bedding has been the most recommended brand of shaving for pig bedding several years in a row now. More people have recommended our brand to their friends and colleagues than any other brand of shavings on the market.

Honestly, we are humbled and amazed sometimes by all the response we get. We often receive phone calls, emails, and letters (yes, those things actually written on paper) all the time talking about our shavings being used as pig bedding. The comments are very complimentary. How did this happen to us?

For the Pine River Bedding brand, somewhere around 2009 things began changing in the pig bedding industry. Show pig farms begin using our Eastern Sweet Pine shavings at a much larger rate than ever before. We have always sold the solid white pine shavings (PRB Eastern Sweet Pine) to farm and feed dealers, but we were told that "show pigs" were becoming a larger part of those specific retailer's business model. When we started talking to the end user directly, we found out why this was the case.

It turns out that most farmers were using the standard yellow pine shavings for pig bedding because that was what was readily available at their local store. As our Eastern Sweet Pine began to be seen in use at more farms, fairs, and competitions, more people began asking questions about what they were seeing being used by their friends and neighbors. They realized that the white pine shavings were NOT staining the hooves of the pigs like the cheaper yellow pine product did. This is how our brand began building a reputation within the show pig community.

By 2012 things had really taken off for us in the show pig bedding industry. We were now getting mentioned online at forums such as showpig.com and we began advertising to show pig farmers in various catalogs throughout the country.

Now, what started in pig bedding has spread to all sorts of "show" animals. We are sold for farmers of pigs, horses, rabbits, chinchillas, chickens, turkeys and more. We still get phone calls every week asking about our product that they saw at a local fair, contest, or at their friend's farm.

As always, thanks for taking the time to read our post. We appreciate the business over all these years and are so grateful that you enjoy our product.

​Great pure virgin wood shavings, pellets, and sawdust. Pine River Bedding.

When it comes to proper horse bedding, you certainly have plenty of options on the market to consider. Even with all the modern additions to the horse bedding industry, shavings and wood pellets continue to make up a majority of the purchases made for horse bedding inside the walls of the stall.

Some less than conventional materials have burst onto the scene in recent years, including rice and wheat hulls, shredded newspaper, straw, and peat moss, but none of these alternative bedding options offer an economical and reliable option for a majority of the consumers in the United States.

The alternative bedding choices may actually serve you fine if you are more concerned with saving money and have the ability to get the material fairly cheap. Unfortunately, different parts of the United States do not have access to all of these different horse bedding options.

Educated consumers should know that Pine River Bedding offers 2 very different products as economical and readily available options inside your stall. Our Pine River Bedding Double Quick Pick and Pine River Bedding Gold Stallion Pellets have both been on the market for years at this point. Both products are purchased for different reasons.

Both of our products are available in poly bales with caps for outdoor storage. This allows you to keep your inside storage space clear for other needs throughout the year.

Pine River Bedding Double Quick Pick is preferred for the customer that wants to do less coat maintenance on their horses. By using 100% all natural pine sawdust, the feces is coated in sawdust as the horse moves it around the stall. Should the horse roll in the feces, or lie down on top of it, then the sawdust keeps most of the feces from getting onto the coat of the horse.

Pine River Bedding Gold Stallion Pellets are preferred by the customer that is willing to pay a little more for convenience and ease of use. Pellets involve much less labor cost than other horse bedding types when it comes to handling. Additionally, the pellets take up less room to store, and there is less waste to handle as compared to straw. We do recommend that you spray the pellets with some water to make them lighter and fluffier for the horse to lay on.

No matter what choice you make, we are sure that you will love the horse bedding options we have on the market. 

​​Great pure virgin wood shavings, pellets, and sawdust. Pine River Bedding.