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It seems mud is inevitable;
here it is again. There’s an old
ranchers’ saying; “You have to have mud
in the corrals if you want to have grass in the
pastures”. True, but it would be nice to
have as little of it as possible. Besides being
miserable to get around in, it can lead to
thrush, scratches, lost shoes, and even injuries
to tendons and ligaments if very deep or
slippery.
What is it exactly? Dirt, water, and a way to
stir it up. If we mix the ingredients in a bowl,
it’s easy to recreate it exactly. Add in
some manure, urine, shavings, and hay and
it’s perfect barn mud. So how to minimize
it? Take away one or more of the ingredients. The
first and  most
important to be rid of is water. How? Drainage.
How? When building pens or improving a highly
impacted area, it’s vital to divert the
run-off from the area. This can be done with
ditches, drains, or some combination. Improvement
can often be made with some work with equipment,
or even a shovel, to change the way the water is
running during heavy rains. A ditch-witch can be
rented at a local equipment rental place for a
fairly nominal cost. Gravel (drain rock) and
perforated pipe go into the ditch, and voila!
Less water. The top of the pipe should be at
least a foot under the surface of the pen.
Raising, and crowning or sloping a pen or areas
around gates and water troughs helps, too. This
can be done with the addition of drain rock with
road base or blue shale over it. Talk to your
local quarry about the products available in your
area.
Maintenance of highly-impacted areas makes a big
difference. It would be nice to do it once and be
done with it, but unfortunately it doesn’t
work. With all the forces of water and horse
hooves mixing up the surface, holes need to be
filled and material added periodically. It’s
helpful to have a back-up supply of gravel
available for quick access with the tractor
bucket or wheelbarrow. “A stitch in
time...”
Using shavings outside just doesn’t work.
They are too absorbent and end up making worse
mud in the long run. Bark or wood chips can be
used if desired. When selecting wood chips it is
important to avoid black walnut and any mixture
that contains sharp pieces. Many types can be
seen at your local landscape materials seller. Cedarest
is a product designed to be used outside; their
ads can be seen in many horse magazines.
A big factor in making mud more or less stinky
and miserable is how much organic material it
contains. Imagine sand mixed with water - drains
well and packs hard. There is no organic matter
in it. Sand does make a good corral footing, if
one is very careful not to feed on it. That can
be hard to do. It’s doable if the horse is
fed in a stall, and the adjacent pen is separated
by a curb of some sort from the stall. Some
horses will pick around in the sand quite a bit.
Feeding psyllium may very well help, but
it’s still risky.
A clay soil with sand and gravel is the best
base. If manure is picked up regularly and the
drainage is good, it will not get terribly muddy.
Filling in holes that occur from peeing or pawing
will help, too. Keeping hay, manure and shavings
out of the dirt keeps the dirt from being
as absorbent.
So we’ve minimized water and organic
matter... what else? The stirring action of
hooves. That can be done by making
highly-impacted surfaces as hard as possible with
the addition of gravel, sand, bark, or a
combination based on local availability and your
preferences. If the hooves can’t punch down
into the surface, much less “stirring”
will occur. In pastures, water and organic matter
are a given, and the only way to minimize mud is
to minimize stirring. This can be accomplished by
limiting turn-out time, rotating pastures,
reducing numbers of horses on an area, and even
exercising horses before they are turned out. All
these procedures will cut down on the
horses’ impact on your pastures.
There is no perfect recipe for mud management.
Each facility and area is different. Material
availability and cost varies in different areas,
and so do soils. If you keep in mind the three
ingredients of mud; dirt, water, and stirring,
and work to minimize each element, you’ll be
able to find what works best for your unique
situation.
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"We've greyrocked most of
the areas that used to get boggy. The real
challenge is to manage the water flow and keep it
a-flowin'! We're blessed with sandy soil
around most of the farm so it isn't the mudfest
that a lot of places endure." -- Anne
Howard, American Sporthors
"I think the rock and road
base will work well depending on the type of soil
it is under and the degree of drainage. I have
had some horses need to be shod when on that
footing if it is too much for them barefooted. A
lot has to do with drainage and lack of northern
exposure for good light exposure." -- John
Madigan D.V.M., UC Davis
"I really like Fibar, it
works well. I'm trying the permeable fabric under
rock as well this year" -- Cassandra Schuler
D.V.M., Petaluma
"We have a 160 X 65 foot
arena we use for turn out, feeding and work. It
is native clay soil with some natural sand. We
are trying products by Dry Nest. The
shredded hardwood creates a mat that does not
move easily with stomping feet. Our grader also
found its hard to spread because of this. However
this also means your horses will not be tracking
back down into the mud". -- Susan Manley,
La-De-Da Farms, Hayward Hills
More Horse
talk on this subject
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