FIELD RECOVERY? (Any body have any photos?)

[Forget_Me_Not]

So first winter with horses on our own yard, although we've always rented private yards, until last March when I moved to livery, I'm panicing at the sight of mud and puddles!

Anybody have any photos of fields during winter and summer to give me an idea how well they recover? Our ground should be pretty good, it was owned for quarying the gravel but they never did so its basicly gravel under. (Very annoying if you want to but anything in the ground mind, say a electric fence post, like concret!)

 

[madhector]

I was exactly the same last winter when it was my first winter with my own yard, it all recovered fine and there was really no need to panic

 

[*hic*]

You wouldn't know there'd ever been a puddle there now!

The grey is intended as an eventer - she has NO problem with water

 

[Forget_Me_Not]

The floody type fields, which just hold water tend to make brillant summer turnout. (Been on flood plan before!!)

Oh I do like the grey.

 

[Indianhazard]

I've very limited grazing so in the winter, rather that trash the whole field I keep the horses within 2 half acre paddocks I don't have a photo but the whole area is now like a ploughed mudbath, an area of hardcore with a hay ring on it keeps them from standing in the deep stuff. In the spring I get the whole field rolled, fertilised and the 2 'mud baths' resown. 4 acres are split into 8 paddocks in the summer and I rotate the horses around them. The first year I panicked but now, in the 5 year its something that seems to work and I have plenty of grass all summer. Although I pick up poo all summer I don't bother in the winter. Just try not too look at it until spring time!

 

[Honeypots]

My paddock gets trashed every year..in summer it get grazed within an inch of its life by mt fatties, in winter, because its on a slope it gets ripped apart. When I moved here it was October. I had 5 on less than an acre for the rainiest month ever. It was liquid mud!! It still came back after a spring rest:

The following winter with just two of them on:

and this year atm..

It'll recover..it gets a bit weedy but its great for my fatties..