Arrrgh this rain!! Anyone else suffering from poached fields?

little_flea

little_flea

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It rains. And rains. Winter fields get totally water logged. Horses have to stay in until it dries up. Horses get turned out. One day later it bl00dy starts pouring with rain again. Repeat ad infinitum.

I am absolutely fed up and so are the horses. The last two weeks we have managed to get turnout for two or three days. Is it going to be like this all winter? WHY OH WHY ARE THE WEATHER GODS MAKING US SUFFER LIKE THIS?

If anyone knows of an online course in Anti-rain dancing, please let me know.
 
And I can't believe its only November - it seems like there is soooo long til summer again
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My guys are on our own field at home - so they do get turned out every day - normally go out at 7 and come in at about 4 ish - but yesterday my 2yo trampled the electric fence to get in at 12!! She was having none of this standing out in the rain malarkey!!
 
Ours are out 24/7 too and the top field has turned into a swamp
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Ponies are totally fed up, so we have had to open a new section further up the hill!!!

Not sure about an anti-rain dance, but would happily settle for a bit of cold and frost.......
 
Our fields are wet and mine is about 8 inchs of deep mud by the gate- its not usually that bad but my new horse has poached it to oblivion!

Im fed up with it too!

I usally dont mind winter but im not a happy bunny at the moment.
 
I live in Norway and the weather here is pretty miserable from Sept-April. The beginning of Autumn it rained for 110 days straight!

Luckily today we have lots of snow and that makes it easier on the fields as the horses dont sink into it and create muddy areas. When there is a good covering of snow they are turned out on the top field parallel to the sandschool.

I have tried all sorts of methods over the 6 yrs of living here on our 66 acre farm, but conventional turnout leaves the field and horses in such a state.

I have the sand school which is perfect and the only way to give exercise in winter, but also in addition right outside the barn we have made a fenced area large enough for my 15.3 grey and Welsh A to gain daily turnout on gravel with access to the barn with rubber matting to eat out of the weather and gain some shelter.

If the weather is good they stay out there, if bad they are stabled at night. The area is approx the size of the sand school, perhaps a little smaller. Not ideal but we all stay sane and mud fever free, with fields that still stay perfect for spring.

Moving to Norway had a teething process for me and a change in lifetime horse ownership, I had to change my routines and ways of thinking.
 
Mine are out 24/7 too, fields are wet and sloshy but luckily our field has 'a dry acre', so they stay on that, now with added hay too. The gateway is bearing up, but if this continues for much longer then we will have a bog to wade through.
Iam all up for an ''anti rain dance'' and can't wait for the frost.
 
Its not nice i no for you all, not good for me either but im affraid its something we have got to get used to, all this climate change and freek-ish weather we are having, its only going to get worse before it gets better!!!
 
we have kept all ours in this weekend. We have fantastic grass but the fields are now water logged so I need to keep the horses off it for a few days otherwise they will poach it into liquid - then that is it for winter - so better they stay in now and can then have grass later on through winter when it drys a bit. We have not kept in till now so our liveries are lucky really.
 
Mine are out 24/7, and yes, the rain is proving a little wearing on the paddocks, but they're holding up quite well - largely because of the wind drying them up a fair bit. At the moment they are on the 2 less well drained paddocks and I am hoping they will stay there until new year, but we shall see...
 
The fields aren't too bad at the moment but the horses are floating on top rather than anything else! It's as black as night here and CHUCKING it down here in Hampshire
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ours are pretty good. We have really good grass cover as we let it grow up long from end of june and then they moved on to it begining of october which means it is well protected so only the gateway. Can ride round the rest of it though it was very soggy hacking out today but lots of puddles to jump
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My paddocks are paddy fields at the mo. Everywhere is poached like mad, we are on clay and so damage gets done pretty quickly.

I've never seen my ground so bad this early in the winter!

Ho hum!
 
Flippin' horses! But I think we should also (sorry if I'm sounding preachy here) pity the poor farmers who're having to deal with stock out in this weather. There's a sheep farmer who rents part of my land and he's had to take his sheep off the field coz they're just standing in a bog, poor things, and they're soaking wet through. He tried to get a LandRover onto the land, but couldn't!

WHY, will somebody tell me, why it is that the wetter it is, the more the friggin' horses have to gallop around it and churn it up even more? It seems directly proportional to me, the wetter it is, the more they scoot around on it.
 
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