Waterlogged field - oily residue

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Remi'sMum

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Hello wise HHO’ers.

We are on clay. My field is in bad shape after the winter, and worse than it might be due to new ponio enjoying galloping about in the mud. But that’s another story 🙄

I’ve walked round my field today and in some areas there is an oily residue sitting on the water that’s filling the poached areas. Filmy rainbow appearance like, well, like oil. Slightly scummy too.

We’re not near any of the farm buildings and the last machine in my field was early autumn when I had it topped.

Is there anything anyone can think of that might cause this? It’s not everywhere, only in areas. But I’m concerned it’s something nasty in the soil that will affect the grass (if the field ever recovers...)

Thanks in advance for any thoughts.
 
Mine gets like that in parts normally around the muck heap where there is some run off but can be in other areas where it is very wet, it looks oily but is not as I know there has been no oil spill in the area for many years, if ever, it tends to disappear as it dries out and the grass grows normally.
 
No idea, but several years ago I rented a house which had a shared private water supply from a well. The water from that had a slight oily film on the surface but when I got it tested, they said it was fine for healthy people just not to use it for infants or sick people
 
The only time I have seen this is in my spinney after they built quite a few houses nearby, they added a soakaway and controlled discharge (Like a sluice) and every so often usually after rain I see what looks like fuel on the surface and it also runs down the stream, the corner of my spinney then looks like a bog with rainbow water on the surface, as I don't use that area as it has now become a *loose your welly area* and no animals have access to it I don't worry too much
 
Most oily sheens you will see on wet ground will be ‘humic’, caused by microbial action breaking down vegetation. There are two simple ways to tell it apart from petroleum based oil sheens. 1 is to smell it, petroleum sheens obviously have the typical smell whereas natural ones do not. The other way is to poke it with a stick or drop a pebble into it. If the sheen ‘fractures’ into pieces it is natural, if it sort of ripples with the water and reforms it is more likely to be petroleum based. You often see the humic sheen on streams in the autumn as leaves degrade on the surface of the water. The fractures are really easy to see in these cases if you drop a pebble in.

So it’s most likely that yours is entirely natural in a waterlogged field. Whether it is good for the horses is another matter entirely but it shouldn’t affect the grass.

Definitely not likely to be sitting on an oil field! (Some expert would have drilled it already!!). I once attended an incident where oil was coming up through the road surface. You walked on the road and it was literally oozing up through the cracks. Turned out a house 50m away up hill had lost its entire supply of heating oil which went down into the soil and as the water table rose in a period of heavy rain it was being pushed up under the pressure of the water table. Very odd!
 
Thank you all for your replies.

I mentioned it to the farmer, he said maybe we’d struck oil!! But he didn’t offer any other explanation just told me not to worry (typical) but didn’t have any idea what it might be (also typical)

I will do the sniff test and the ‘fracturing’ test but your replies have put my mind at rest, thank you all.
 
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