Astro turf mats

darcip

darcip

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Has anyone used these? Looking at getting some for my turnout pen. It is used 24/7 and is quite muddy atm, do they go well on top of mud or go squelchy and muddy? (Mud control are way too expensive for the area I need to fill)
 
We've had some astro turf mats put down in the american barn. I know there are different types, but we have to make sure all the mud is washed thoroughly off the horses legs and feet before taking them over ours to avoid it getting slippy.

Personally wouldn't use the type we have in the field as I could see it becoming quite problematic 😬 I'd recommend having a close look at the type you want to use - would it be possible to get a smaller sample before decking out your whole turnout pen?
 
I looked into heavy duty matting for (muddy) tracks and turnout areas but there wasn’t any safe solution except those thick expensive mud mats or using hardcore/stone. I went with hardcore in the end, hundreds of metres of it, costing far less than mud mats which would have required re-mortgaging!

Astroturf would be likely to pit into soft areas, and become uneven, especially if laid into a uneven softish muddy surface. It then would become a trip hazard for horse and man.
Unless its very thick, strong and stiff 1 inch astroturf mats, most astroturf is bendy matting and IMO too weak for horse hoof wear and weight if laid onto soft soil ground.
Any matting would need pinning down, which becomes difficult.
Pins for carpark grass matting are usually 8inch long metal spikes. On firm ground. You wouldn’t want to use metal pins for horses, just in case one lifts loose and could impale.
Plastic pins are suggested for animals - but i couldnt find any long and strong to pin deep into firm soil. Only the thin weak 6 inch plastic pins used for agricultural black mesh sheeting are generally available, which i use and snap often trying to get them in!
 
PurBee said:
I looked into heavy duty matting for (muddy) tracks and turnout areas but there wasn’t any safe solution except those thick expensive mud mats or using hardcore/stone. I went with hardcore in the end, hundreds of metres of it, costing far less than mud mats which would have required re-mortgaging!

Astroturf would be likely to pit into soft areas, and become uneven, especially if laid into a uneven softish muddy surface. It then would become a trip hazard for horse and man.
Unless its very thick, strong and stiff 1 inch astroturf mats, most astroturf is bendy matting and IMO too weak for horse hoof wear and weight if laid onto soft soil ground.
Any matting would need pinning down, which becomes difficult.
Pins for carpark grass matting are usually 8inch long metal spikes. On firm ground. You wouldn’t want to use metal pins for horses, just in case one lifts loose and could impale.
Plastic pins are suggested for animals - but i couldnt find any long and strong to pin deep into firm soil. Only the thin weak 6 inch plastic pins used for agricultural black mesh sheeting are generally available, which i use and snap often trying to get them in!
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Did you cover the hardcore with anything? I have used road planning’s previously but it just turned back to bog again after a month or so
 
darcip said:
Has anyone used these? Looking at getting some for my turnout pen. It is used 24/7 and is quite muddy atm, do they go well on top of mud or go squelchy and muddy? (Mud control are way too expensive for the area I need to fill)
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You can obtain used AstroTurf mats (incredibly heavy, won’t need pinning against wind, only against a lot of vehicles turning on them), as from school playing fields, sports centres etc, where they want to upgrade.
Various commercial companies offering this, often for matting on cow tracks, caravan parks, type of thing.
Word of warning, they are incredibly slippery if any mud gets on them and then rain.
I would NOT turn ponies onto them, only tiptoe a horse across them if slightly damp, and you will need some decent lifting equipment to install.
Brand new ( with a longer pile and better grip), probably prohibitive for what you intend. Often contain a lot of sand in the rolls, from whatever substrate was originally laid below.
Ecologically, will cost you a fortune to get rid of, so be very sure this is what you really want!
 
darcip said:
Did you cover the hardcore with anything? I have used road planning’s previously but it just turned back to bog again after a month or so
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I used large 8+inch pieces (had smaller bits mixed in here and there) of hardcore as 1st layer - approx. 8inches deep - drove over that with heavy digger tracks to bed-in and level - then used finer hardcore on top, tracked-over to form a more level surface.

Having a thick enough ‘floating rock pad’ knitted together by driving over it to compress it with heavy 3.5ton mini-digger tracks, is what has helped it stay as a solid surface, rather than sink.
It depends on the soil profile - we are capable of 8inch hoof ruts in winter on some of the lands, so i ensured my ‘rock pad’ was the depth of the worst mud.

Hiring a guy with a 3.5ton digger, and truck loads of hardcore mix from your local quarry, can make it a quick job, that gives a long-lasting mud-free surface.
 
We were lucky enough to get large pieces of industrial doormat offcuts, the sort of thing that goes in bank and supermarket doorways. We were not sure how to lay it, so we put down used carpet from a kind livery's house renovation, pile side down, with the mat on top. It has lasted four years up to now, but needs scraping and cleaning as the horses walk up and down on it daily.
 
Highmileagecob said:
We were lucky enough to get large pieces of industrial doormat offcuts, the sort of thing that goes in bank and supermarket doorways. We were not sure how to lay it, so we put down used carpet from a kind livery's house renovation, pile side down, with the mat on top. It has lasted four years up to now, but needs scraping and cleaning as the horses walk up and down on it daily.
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Is that coir matting? Like coconut fibre?
That should be a lot better than AstroTurf, they used to fit it on horsebox ramps.
I think it was just hosed off / hosed through, to clean, and lasted ages, altho what it might cost to cover a large pen - can’t imagine it would be cheap?
 
Exasperated said:
You can obtain used AstroTurf mats (incredibly heavy, won’t need pinning against wind,
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Are there different brands? My experience is that they dont stand up to wind.
We have small London back gardens. Ours is mostly uneven crazy paving. Lawns dont stand up to the wear and tear. Our neighbour with a well paved area designed a mediterranean garden and used astro turf panels for a lawn.
They went on holiday leaving spare turf panels on the ground and along their back fence. There was then a storm and high winds blew two panels up and over our wall. They caught in the wind like sails and in the end, I rolled each panel up, secured it with string (like bailer twine) and shoved the rolled up panels back into his paved side passage. The panels are like carpet.
 
We put a leftover piece of artificial grass in a muddy gateway. It was a nightmare for a while, floating on the mud and rucking up but it gradually sank and formed good footing above the more solid mud so whilst squelchy it wasn't sticky, and you certainly knew when you stepped off the edge.

Fast forward a couple of years and it's broken down into pieces likely to be eaten if any grass grew there. And in dry summer any that cones to the top does spread into the grazing.

I'd never touch it again for an area used by horses. Useful for under the horsebox or our pathways and needs to be rolled and disposed of before it starts breaking down.
 
Skib said:
Are there different brands? My experience is that they dont stand up to wind.
We have small London back gardens. Ours is mostly uneven crazy paving. Lawns dont stand up to the wear and tear. Our neighbour with a well paved area designed a mediterranean garden and used astro turf panels for a lawn.
They went on holiday leaving spare turf panels on the ground and along their back fence. There was then a storm and high winds blew two panels up and over our wall. They caught in the wind like sails and in the end, I rolled each panel up, secured it with string (like bailer twine) and shoved the rolled up panels back into his paved side passage. The panels are like carpet.
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If that’s your experience, fair enough, but not ours! Your product sounds like something lightweight, for domestic gardens?
I’m talking about heavy duty, synthetic turf as laid in football / sports stadiums. The rolls are very large and heavy, absolutely no question of shifting in a gale (and there have been plenty of storms!), although if you regularly circled a tractor on top, they might get shoved out of alignment. Requires something like a telehandler to move and lay them.
 
Exasperated said:
Is that coir matting? Like coconut fibre?
That should be a lot better than AstroTurf, they used to fit it on horsebox ramps.
I think it was just hosed off / hosed through, to clean, and lasted ages, altho what it might cost to cover a large pen - can’t imagine it would be cheap?
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No, it's the thick horizontal rubber slats that are bonded together at intervals. Very heavy, and take two or three of us to shift them.
 
I bought some from professional rubber surfaces, in squares.
I’ve put them in front of my field shelter - we get a lot of water run off as it’s mostly hardcore then just 1 patch in front of where the shelters are, isn’t (we put the shelters on an existing concrete pad). Last year it was knee deep mud.

We layered it up and it’s doing the job perfectly. It’s not pinned and as they were squares, we didn’t need machinery. The horses quickly lost interest in trying to pick them up.

They’ve slipped a little as it’s on a slope but now stabilised and it’s still completely firm underfoot. I’m not finding them slippery at all, even in the snow and ice we’ve just had.

I’ve had less success when I put them over an area that’s a bit rutted as they’ve moved and sagged but I wanted a temporary solution and for a couple of hundred quid, I’m very happy.
 
We got some Astro-Turf which was being taken up from a sports pitch. We put it down in our muddy gateways a good few years back now.

Yes people will throw up their hands in horror at Astro-Turf but it has fulfilled a useful function for us. I am aware there are toxicity concerns about the stuff.

It has got a but ruched-up where it was in the field now, and it would be a considerable job to get it out and lay it down again.

That said, if more came up, we'd probably go for it again. We've tried the laying-fleece thing; it worked for a month or two but on our Devon clay it wasn't really as effective as we'd hoped, and was very labour-intensive.
 
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