Swamp field in Winter

[William09]

Our field is on clay and the ponies live out(though we are having a barn built hopefully by the end of october)last winter was dreadful and the ponies where ankle deep in mud , we have a hard standing area but even that was really muddy,hay mixed in with the mud on the hard standing where we fed them, is there anything that we can do to stop it getting as bad as it was this year?

 

[Hairy Old Cob]

Clean out the ditches under drainage and mole plough.

 

[SuperH]

I'm also on clay, we had an awful winter. The mud was well over the top of my wellies, I can't believe mine managed to keep her shoes on. Two springs appeared in the field and the field drains were overwhelmed by the shear amount of water we had. We have repaired the field drains and will be installing additional ones both along the field and across the top to try and prevent a river of water from flowing down this winter. Do you have field drainage? You need to check it isn't blocked or install some as that will help a huge amount. Can you feed the hay in a ring feeder or something similar to prevent it becoming muddy/stood on?

 

[Triskar]

Our 4 were only out during the day and were brought into their boxes at night, but we extended our hard standing and put in a new gate and fencing to the field, then our 4 were confined to the hard standing (which includes access to the field shelter and water trough). We fed hay in small holed nets in the field shelter to keep them occupied. It wasn't much fun for them, I guess, but none of them got mud fever, they had each other for company and mutual grooming and could see traffic and passers by for entertainment - we just fed them soaked grass nuts and sugar beet with carrots as something succulent. At least it wasn't so cold that I had to break the ice on the trough and take out the sheets of ice more than a couple of times!