Mud, mud, I love mud!
I'm absolutely, positively wild about mud.
I can't go around it. I've got to go through it.
Yes, we had rain!
Hooray!
We have a 30-40% chance of rain
each day this week...
lovely (I think?!)
Pippin - hoping for a treat!
Doc is practicing religion...
he kneels on one knee, sticks his head under the fence,
and prays that the grass is close enough to reach.
That is why he is wearing a mud knee sock!
I find it so amazing that soil just 30 miles apart can be so totally different. At our original house the soil, uh, if you could call it that, was very sandy. Here we have gumbo clay. Even in the worst rain storms or snow run off, the paddock the boys used to have would be firm and drained, if not dry. Here.... well, it appears we have a different story!
Since all of this was grass a few days ago, I'm wondering if it will drain better once it has a chance to be compacted by the boys' little feet. It is on a slight slope, so water does have a chance to leave the area.
Do any of you have similar footing? Do you have suggestions? Should we invest in some decomposed granite?!
Oh boy, that's lovely mud. I'm on sand here so don't know much about dealing with clay, though, I wonder if you might have to put in some drains.
ReplyDelete"Doc is practicing religion" . . . OMGosh - you are so funny!! Love it!!
ReplyDeleteIt's raining here too.
~Dea
Pippin and Doc are so pretty. Their color is beautiful. Pretty horses plus all that mud? I wonder what could happen. Do they like the mud? SaraJane would be covered in it if she were there.
ReplyDeleteYay for rain! A little mud is a good thing, especially for my horse's rock hard dry feet. We have a blend of sand and clay, with some areas being more sand and others being more clay. The areas with more clay get dangerously slippery when wet.
ReplyDelete~Lisa
Just wondering, why do you not let them graze?
ReplyDeleteMy horses love to roll in mud. You're doing good if Doc only has mud to his knees.
ReplyDeleteThe decomposed granite may make the clay less slippery when wet. May not help with drainage though, hasn't here anyway. One good thing about Haflinger feet being so big is they do flatten the mud out as it dries rather than leaving craters. At least that's been my experiance with Camryn.
ReplyDeleteGood question from Gail... it seems unreasonable to have all of that grass and not let the boys out on it!
ReplyDeletePippin foundered two years ago, just before I got him. The fellow we bought him from said it was concussion founder.... but just to be on the safe side, we limit his intake of fresh, green grass in the spring. New grass and grass after rain are both higher in carbs and can cause laminitis, which then causes founder. Heavy horses are also more prone to founder, so there is another reason to be cautious.
In the spring, as the grass begins to green up, we severely limit the horses' access to the grass. Then we gradually increase their time on pasture. We moved from a more arid area and our new pasture has grass that is more lush. So, again, we are limiting exposure and gradually building up more time on pasture.
Dreaming, we limit grazing when the grass is so rich for fear of laminitis, just like you do. We have runs attached to the barn, and we use pea gravel in them to keep the mud away. It works really well.
ReplyDeleteFarmTek sells something called an underliner that I am dying to try. I believe it goes under the gravel and is supposed to be really good for keeping paddocks from turning into mudpits. It's on the list *laugh*.
ReplyDeleteI am struggling to be thankful for the rain storm we had yesterday; a massive "gullywasher". Terribly dry conditions here in the South, and sometimes those torrential rains do more harm than good (I'm still saying thank you though :o)