How can i fix up my horses muddy paddock?

Question

My horse, that i lease at my barn that i've been at for a few years, the paddocks are in seriously bad condition.
The paddock is complete mud, somtimes up the their knees, if the rain recently was bad enough. The other paddocks have have huge loads of woodchips thrown in there, and htats worked very VERY well. But, the position of my horses paddock makes i impossible for these people to dump to woodchips in the paddock (ie. can't get through gate, and can't even get truck near gate.)
I wanted to know if there was a way i coul help this paddock, maybe clean it up a bit, dry it out, or at least drain out the excess water.
I was going to shovel drainage ditches in the side of the paddock, for the water to drain, but, in the area that its the worst, is right above a hill where the ring is, and i don't want the wanter to go from the paddock, and then drain into the ring. Anyone have any solutions i could do? (Not my barn, i'm just going to voluenter time to fix it up.)

Answer 1

I've been think about this all day. Maybe you cound get a lot of bales of straw (not hay) and spread it out in the paddock. If the paddock is not too big, this might be workable. It would be fluffier and not as difficult to put in like the wood chips. You'd be able to scoop out the manure instead of it mixing with the mud and the pee will most likely drain through. You'd probably have to make the straw very deep and it will still get muddy after a while but you can always add more straw.

Answer 2

You can't do much at the moment if everything is flooded. And I can't give you exact numbers for fixing it. When the water starts going down I would scrape out the mud you can and put down pea gravel. We use that in a lot of paddocks at our barn. If you use the gravel though you have to make sure there is a soft area for your horse to lie down. If you can use the mud to make a bit of a slope and let it sit for a little, then put the gravel in. The water will drain through the gravel rather than soaking the paddock. Three inches of gravel max for depth, too deep and it's hard to walk through.

Answer 3

Be careful with digging holes near a paddock. That can spell disaster. You could totally forget about it and then your horse could get seriously injured. As for the mud, if you can't get shavings in the paddock there isn't much you can do. As for your horse there are some things you can do. Mud can do many things to horses, such as mud fever and thrush. Your horse will need much more attention. There are multiple things you can do such as picking out hooves regularly, hosing down their legs, and brush them a lot. There are many websites and mags you can read to help. Hope this helps!!!

Answer 4

I would get a curtain drain either under the paddock, or just around it, dont direct the water into the arena though, then I would maybe get some stall mats, they will provide a solid base for your horses, and can be used with or without shoes. probably wanna wait until the paddock is dry before ya put mats down though, or else your mats may conform to a muddy and hilly ground level, making it difficult to keep them flat in the future.

Answer 5

As has been already said, holes near horses=broken legs=dead horse. I would personally not advise large amounts of sand either though. The reason is that i beleive that horses can die if they ingest too much sand or sandy dirt (i may be wrong though). My suggestion is spreading a type of seed (maybe rye grass) generously in the padock and taking the horse out of the padock until it can grow a good amount (if possible). We just did that same thing to a portion of our pasture that our horses are on and the mud feild is now pretty green grass and i dont sink when i walk there :-)

Answer 6

HI if it is really that bad you need to move in a different spot which you could make a smaller version next to the muddy barn put gravel on top of the mud let it set for a couple of days and then put wood chips on top that is the best thing no point putting concrete on top because the mud will lift it all up OK

Answer 7

Carefull with digging the holes around horses. Has anyone tried to use a wheelbarrel to get the wood chips to where they are needed? how about a hand tractor? Ok bins and buckets?
You may want to try gravel first. Large fist size then choak it down with a ID2 type Smaller then apply the wood chips. Rocks will choak up the mud yet allow drainage. The wood chips will cover the rocks.

Answer 8

Yes, let it dry out, and then bring some SAND in.....i dunno how large your paddock is, at least sand isn't outrageously expensive.