Urgh...Mud!

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proctor

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It seems to be making a return in my field, but we did have alot of rain yesterday. Anyone else seeing the unwelcome return of the dreaded brown stuff?! :(
 
Does this answer your question? :o

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Ha ha love the pic just spent an age chipping it off one of mine could definitely enter a muddiest horse comp don't know where he manages to find it none of the others do ?
 
Any recommendations for poached gateways....? My field-sharer wants to put rubber matting down but as the ground is sloped won't this make for a horribly slippery option? Or have others found this works..
Was also thinking of bark chippings - anyone used them?
 
well im going to try putting down the rubber matting with the holes in and then the solid matting on top of that, a friend of mine did this last winter and he said it worked a treat but the mats are expensive :( so if anyone else has any ideas im all ears :o
 
Glad to see I'm not alone! I'm not kidding my horse looked like a hippo yesterday, and it was so thick on his face that when he was munching his tea, it was cracking and falling off into his feed!!!
 
DougalJ said:
Urgh...Mud exactly! I went flat on my hands and knees in it today. I said "fancy that!".....
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I bet you said more than "fancy that" lol :D

I have used rubber mats at my gateways for the past 4 years, bought old second hand ones off of ebay so cheap and cheerful, they have done great, just have to sweep the mud off them sometimes if they get a bit mucky, but have definitely stopped them getting all poached up.
 
Oh ok good to hear rubber mats get the thumbs-up and presumably the holey ones underneath give some grip to ground that's already poached.
I've not had my boy in winter yet, but so far he seems to be one of those with a mysterious ability to keep mud-free, whilst his companion is covered...bet this won't last though!
 
myrddinwyllt said:
Oh ok good to hear rubber mats get the thumbs-up and presumably the holey ones underneath give some grip to ground that's already poached.
I've not had my boy in winter yet, but so far he seems to be one of those with a mysterious ability to keep mud-free, whilst his companion is covered...bet this won't last though!
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My boy was the same when I first got him, the others would come in plastered, yet Lukey would be spotless, then one day he decided that it was time to stop trying to prove himself to me and came in with a face pack!!! :D
 
We've just put a couple of spare mats down in our muddy gateway. Two grass mats in the not so wet areas (holey ones) and one stable mat over the wet stuff. It has helped, but won't do for too long, as they will sink a bit. It depends on the extent of your mud. Ours is clay, so gets very wet and thick - the mud on the horse in the picture looks more earthy mud, so hopefully is not as "sinky" as clay soil, and may work with the mats.. (Sorry my technical explanations are awful!) The best system is to put down a few tons of hardcore/road chippings in the gateways, get it rolled flat, then put the mats on that (or leave it hardcore). We tried the woodchip/shavings route once, but it turned into a deadly swamp after a couple of months!
 
proctor said:
Glad to see I'm not alone! I'm not kidding my horse looked like a hippo yesterday, and it was so thick on his face that when he was munching his tea, it was cracking and falling off into his feed!!!
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They seem to take it as their personal mission to find the muddiest patch just for us!!!......and then grumble whilst you're brushing it off! :)
 
Not yet TG! We are hoping not to have this year as we now have so much space and separate fields that we should have room to be able to avoid it by paddocking in small numbers, fingers crossed!
 
We've got wood chippings in our gateway and I think they worked fine last winter - am sure margerita11 will be along to correct me otherwise - but then they are put down quite thick (there's a bank level of them instead of a sprinkling type). We used hardcore at our old yard and it didn't work as well at all when it got bad.

Another one joining the face pack brigade as of yesterday (he got it from beyond the gateway, obv). He's grey - there's no hope anyway :o
 
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haha it has made a return my TB was undistinguishable between his neck and rug think he had been rolling in puddles so bad i had to wash his rug before taking it off. I have now relented and put his neck attachment on his thinner rug to allow him to still be ridable!!
 
My Y/O has just had 200 tonnes of hard core dumped in our gateways in an attempt to prevent them getting muddy this year! Our gates are all at the bottom of the hill so it can get really bad - fingers crossed this helps - it was so deep last year that I lost count of how many times I lost my wellies!
 
it was so deep last year that I lost count of how many times I lost my wellies!

- oh no I fear the worst for this happening every time I cross the 'bog'! Not to mention going a**e over t*t!!!!!! :D
It happened to me earlier this year with the dogs in a cow-bog..deeply unpleasant! I had strict words with my greyhound for sloping off and forcing me to cross it in the first place...
 
Is rubber matting really that good then in gateways? Both of my fields get so poached, in fact one of them gets poached throughout! They're at the bottom of a slope and there's no drainage!! I don't want to spend out on doing it properly (digging hole and filling with gravel) as we only rent, however will be doing when we build our own soon!! The soil here is clay, so literally everything just sinks! Just got visions of matting sinking down! It's a bit like the bog of eternal stench (but without the stench!!) from Labyrinth!!
 
Babybear said:
My Y/O has just had 200 tonnes of hard core dumped in our gateways in an attempt to prevent them getting muddy this year! Our gates are all at the bottom of the hill so it can get really bad - fingers crossed this helps - it was so deep last year that I lost count of how many times I lost my wellies!
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How do you work out how many tonnes to order for one 12 foot gateway on slimy boulder clay? Should it be level, or slightly mounded (on the side away from the gate opening, obviously!) - and do road planings bind together or stay loose? Are they very difficult to clear droppings from?
 
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