Raking arena by hand

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hairycob

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I know a quad & leveller would be easier but it's not my yard & I'm not prepared to spend a fortune (& don't have the £) so it's going to have to be done with a rake. What's the best sort of rake? I only have the sort you use to scrape up leaves - would that do or do I need to go & buy another sort? Arena is sand & rubber.
 
You can buy an old seed harrow on ebay for ish £50 and you can tow that with any car - ideally with a towbar but I'm sure you could rig something up if a tow bar isn;t available.

I've done mine for years with car and up side down seed harrow

By hand would take forever!
 
With sand and rubber I find a bog standard mucking out fork the best.

You may have to litterally dig the compacted sand out from the boards initially and this is by far the easiest tool for the job..
 
Buy hand takes forever, believe me we had to do it after every time we rode regardless if you were going to ride another ...I have 3! Now we are allowed to do it once a week and drag round old sheep hurdles, it works quite well actually.
 
Whatever you use on your arena, generally the boards still need digging out by hand every once in a while. I can do out 20x60 arena in half an hour by hand. I do it once a week which is enough to stop the track imitating the grand canyon...
 
Half an hour a week I can cope with. I am at a very small livery yard but am realising that if I want this doing (& I do) I'm going to have to do it myself.
 
hairycob said:
Half an hour a week I can cope with. I am at a very small livery yard but am realising that if I want this doing (& I do) I'm going to have to do it myself.
Click to expand...

I am in the same situation as you... and have been on a much bigger yard too - that was NOT fun.

The first time may be a bit more back breaking as , as I mentioned, you may have to dig it out from the boards but do a few metres per session over a week and the next time you have to do the whole arena it will be much easier ;)
 
I have 6 hens who do a lovely job of digging out the sides ;) I harrow with the car but usually need to level the track a bit, so I use a plastic snow shovel, but mine is rubber chips so moves easily
 
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