old carpet for knee deep clay mud?

[PonyIAmNotFood]

As above! Does putting old carpet over work? Knee deep is an exaggeration, it's not over my wellies and good old pig oil is my friend for the horses at the mo. It's not the end of the world if nothing can be done, but it would be nice if there was a quick, easy fix like a strip of carpet over the top.

 

[AnotherNewbie]

Be careful if you try - my friend did this a few years back, we thought it was a fab idea at he time, but the mud still sinks underneath you. I guess if it's hard mud you'd prob be ok, but sloppy or sinky mud not so good. It was doable for humans cos you understand what's going on but the horses didn't like it. Also disappeared quite quickly...pretty sure it sank, cos I don't remember moving it!

 

[PonyIAmNotFood]

It's quite wet as well, maybe not. I'm gonna see if any other liveries want to chuck in for grass mats next summer before it gets bad. Winter is rubbish!

 

[gnubee]

I think it might help as part of a solution to stop field turning into deep mud, but would think it will just sink pretty quickly once the mudifying has already started.

 

[Spottyappy]

I have put down hardcore which is the only real solution.
However, THIN planks of ply board have worked well around areas that human onlys go, once it's got mud on it, it doesn't seem to sink, and isn't slippery. It will, I imagine rot after several years. Been down about 3 years now, and is fine. You can't see it as mud covers it, but only on the surface and only a small area.

 

[laura_nash]

I used to do this at a previous yard with the same problem and it works very well IF you put it down over the grass before it gets muddy. If it is already churned up and muddy I'm afraid the carpet will just disappear into the mud very quickly.

 

[_HP_]

I put some old rubber stable mats down in my gateways a few years back...they work a great 😃

 

[Pebble101]

I put carpet over the road planings I had put down. It stopped holes developing in the planings where they stood on a regular basis and from stones kicking up. Carpet doesn't work on mud alone.

 

[MotherOfChickens]

I've used heavy matting over those plastic grids that you can buy, they interlock and the system really got me out of trouble in 2013.

 

[Slightly Foxed]

If it's really heavy clay, like I have, hardcore is your only solution. Anything else will sink over time.

 

[Ceriann]

It won't help now but in our last place we did a good horses length of hardcore around the fencing and gate - we were on deep clay. It worked really well as water, feed and hay all provided there so I knew they were off the clay a good amount of time. The rest of the field was less churned too. Before that we tried lots of options - nothing really worked.

 

[Honey08]

If the mud is already there and welly dee it's too late. A lot of hardcore is the only solution at this point.