ideas needed please for a hard standing!

jackessex

jackessex

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hi all im interested to no what you guys do in the winter (i know its a while off yet)we have 5 acres with 3 1/2 horses on,we are on clay soil and every yr they end up standing knee deep in mud.so this yr we where thinking about building an area to turn out on crushed concrete or something like that outside the stables so they can wander about without getting covered in mud,obviously they would have ad lib hay and hard feed,i would appretiate your ideas and also if i should put a membrane under crushed concrete?thanks in advance!:)
 
This is what we did:

Turnout2.jpg


Turnout1.jpg


We removed the top soil, keeping a gentle slope in the direction the water naturally tends to drain, added 40mm clean hardcore, compacted that, then added a 10mm to dust hardcore blinding layer and really compacted that. This way the larger stones won't come up and make the surface really tough on horses' feet, but keep in mind this arrangement won't drain through, it will drain on the top and down the natural slope.
 
We don't have any hard standing in our field, but we are very lucky that it does'nt poach that badly, at the moment we onley have three horses on just over nine acres.

You could try chalk compacted down, this give a hard serfice, and should drain as it is porouse (sp). Although it may become a bit pasty with a lot of water on it.
Or you could try wood chip/ bark, which will need topping up over time. If you live near a forest it will be cheaper to buy straight from them, than to buy from a garden centre.
 
hi fii ive got a bark area we school on when grounds rock hard but its not good in the winter as it gets just as muddy
 
jackessex said:
thats really helpfull booboos do you use at as turn out?thanks.
Click to expand...

Yes, we intend to. It's not quite finished, we need to add the electric tape and also we are now in the drier part of the year until about November so we will leave it unused to bake in the sun and really set hard which should make it more hard wearing when the bad weather starts again.
 
It looks good,we allready have an area in front of our stables that is crushed concrete of about 1 1/2 ft deep which we wacker plated down,which worked well last winter to walk the horses up and down on but im worried if they start messing around on that sort of surface it well get churned up,also ive just been quoted £270 per 20 tonne,which is £100 more than last yr!!so your way sounds like it will be cheaper aswell.
 
We used a layer of road planings and then sand on top. It works quite well though I would use a thicker layer of planings if doing again and probably a membrane between the planings and the sand. Means I have rested fields which aren't poached, I could never graze my fields all winter, they would be trashed.
 
Yes we are on clay and my local farmer brought loads of road planings and its made a brilliant driveway in my field and outside the barn where I store hay and horses.

He put only about 7 inches of the stuff down but did drive over it with really heavy tractors to compact it down. The good thing is he did offer to top it up but it was done 7 years ago and not needed.

Cheap way to do it. We didnt even dig it out. If it is swampy I would put in a french drain or proper pipe and drain it properly
 
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