All weather turnout ideas

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jenz87

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Because of this vile weather, im having thoughts about some small turnout areas for next winter where i can tie up haynets and they can spend some time outside without all this mud.
What immediately comes to mind is, sand, stone, bark etc.
Do any of you have any of these small turnout areas? What works best for you? It needs to be reasonably economical as we would need to make a few of them (too many horses!). In an ideal world it would be stone underbase and then a surface, but thats way out of the price league. Does bark work? Is it cheap? Ideas?
It would be a few hours a day with a haynet kind of thing when the worst weather hits.

Pictures welcome! :) Thanks
 
Bark, or any organic material, will turn to mush very quickly. Ours are all pea gravel surface over drainage stone and field drains set in the base. Been going 10 years+ now and working very well indeed. The fields have been closed since the end of November so we rotate every horse (and a mule) out every day/night in the all-weather for at least 8 hours, plus whatever work they are doing.
 
I've converted the site of an old tennis court into an all weather turnout area. As the drainage was all ready in place I put a sand and rubber chip surface on top of the porous Tarmac. The horses have no other turnout at this time of the year (on clay) so I felt it was important to have a surface they could have a buck, fart and a roll on !
 
I would avoid sand. A lady on here lost a horse to sand colic from being on sand turnout. I'm proposing treated bark on top of 4-6 inches of stone and possibly membrane. Will also be putting in a land drain into ditch. Bark will disintegrate over time but I don't like the idea of being on hardstanding for long periods and hope they can have a roll and play about on bark.
 
Agree, avoid sand, unless you have a membrane it will clog your drains and turn to mush, i am trying to arrange to have sand removed from my turnout, which has road planings underneath-a much better idea.
 
I have done bark and it works well, not too expensive and not slippy but it does break down quite quickly. I found that digging some of it up a couple of times a year and replacing with a topping of new chips was the most efficient way to keep it going. I used it for turnout for a laminitic pony who could only manage a few hours per day on grass.
 
Ours is road planings on top of 2' of hardcore. It's the best thing that we ever did. The first thing I'd make if I were to move to a new house.
 
Honey08 said:
Ours is road planings on top of 2' of hardcore. It's the best thing that we ever did. The first thing I'd make if I were to move to a new house.
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Ditto, however I found that after time the hay pulled from nets infused itself with gravel, which of course can't be swept up, and mud transferred from fields to gravel. Solution was to put rubber matting down on top of that where hay was fed. And I also doubled this up as a washing area.
 
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