Anyone's turnout located on wetlands?

[prosefullstop]

We just bought a place with 20 acres, and I am so excited to put up fencing, erect a field shelter, and finally buy some ponios!

The property has two obvious places for turnout--a 4.5 acre field, a 2 acre field, and another patch of half an acre (which I'd probably use for schooling). There is a swathe of about eight flat acres, but on it there are two small ponds and a brook flowing through. There are strict guidelines about what you can and can't do on wetlands (we're in America) but as long as the brook can flow through any fencing (and it will) there is no legal problem.

Main problem I can foresee is the place getting terribly boggy, terribly quickly.

Does anyone have a pond/stream in their turnout? Do you just use such an area in summer? Should I even bother trying to do something with this land, or maybe just put up some jumps in the areas untouched by water?

 

[dilbert_uk]

Difficult to say how wet is wet. It is quite common that a brook flows through a field with horses on. That doesn't necessarily mean that the surrounding area is wet.

But we have been on very wet fields, too. One had an area in the middle of the field that was very swampy, even when all the surroundings were really dry.

The horses tried to avoid it. The same as people as it was really difficult to walk there even with Wellington boots on.
The place around the gate was also muddy to the degree that it was hard work to lead a horse out of the field. Some people, including our daughter, slipped and fell into the mud. But I never saw a horse slipping ...

 

[SuperH]

Mine have a spring in the field, it is very wet and deep mud around it at the moment but the bottom of the field is dry. We also have fields with streams, pools and ponds. They get boggy round the edges but that is all. Ponies and cattle drink from them so they churn the edges but otherwise no problem. We do have marshy patches but I just stay out of those and generally the ponies do too.

 

[NeverSayNever]

if it helps, my previous field that i rented was on a flood plane and bordered by a small river. It used to flood really badly which is why I no longer have it as the cost of re-fencing each time got silly. However, it always amazed me that within a couple of a weeks of it being underwater it was dry enough to ride on again!!

 

[prosefullstop]

if it helps, my previous field that i rented was on a flood plane and bordered by a small river. It used to flood really badly which is why I no longer have it as the cost of re-fencing each time got silly. However, it always amazed me that within a couple of a weeks of it being underwater it was dry enough to ride on again!!

That's good to know (well, you know that I mean--sorry you had to re-fence so frequently). It gets hot here in the summer with little rain, so at the very least it should make a decent enough field for riding. Hmmm, I think I know what I'm going to do with the umpteen trees that were chopped down in recent storms