Horse Walker - Concrete or Rubber? Please help!

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lusitanio

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Hi, I am about to put a horse walker in (just a 36ft standard mesh type) and will be using concrete as a base. This is very budget orientated for me as it is just for my personal horses at home and although I am not looking to cut corners, I do need to watch the pennies! I wondered, what do people put on the track? Someone said I didnt need rubber (it can be slippery apparently) and to just use concrete. They will only be walking round so not going at speed! Thoughts please! Many thanks :)
 
I wouldnt want concrete, too harsh on joints for me, going round in a circle even in walk, potentially slippy when wet especially with shoes on and not great if they start buggering about. How about the textured rubber mat tile type things you can get? A place I used to work at had small ones on their walker. Looked like the small brick sized 'driveway' style mats....if that made any sense!
 
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I wouldn't want concrete, too easy to slip and one vets bill could easily outweigh the rubber cost
 
Rubber 110%! Definitely not something to scrimp on!

Rubber will reduce the pressure on their joints, not to mention how much quicker their shoes will wear out if the base is concrete - so you'd lose any savings from no rubber matts on having them reshod early!
 
The problem with rubber is it doesn't allow the horses foot to slip as it lands, putting more pressure on the joints. We have road plannings on ours, has a bit of give but also some grip, they do make a track in it but 10mins with a rake and back to flat
 
We had road plannings on a temporary basis at work. Over winter (with I suppose fairly heavy use and heavy rain) it ground down to awful tarry dust with adhered to the horses legs like glue. It was truly awful and I almost left my job over it ;)
Actually not joking! Took 10 minutes to wash the damn stuff off each horse every mind numbing day.
Rubber, absolutely definitely no doubt
 
I worked somewhere with concreate as the base. We had no 'incidents' but we did get through a lot of shoes! It was a big 6 walker, and they were not on it every day.

TBH, when it was changed for rubber bricks, I am not sure that was much kinder on the legs, as the concrete had some slip in it so the joints were not twisted as much. The shoeing bill did go down once it was rubber though.
 
There was a study published somewhat recently which stated that the torque on joints from a walker surface where the foot can't slip can cause rather significant damage long term. I have tried to find a link to the research but can't right now - will keep looking as I thought I'd bookmarked it - I seem to remember they recommended rubber crumb as the ideal surface.
 
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