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Winter Paddocks- Part 2

By Alayne Renee Blickle (from www.myhorse.com)

Solid Footing

Footing is the next important consideration for paddocks. In high traffic areas especially, you want to use some type of footing that will reduce mud by keeping your horse off the soil surface and that helps to prevent erosion.

Hogfuel or wood chips can provide an excellent top layer. These wood products can be good environmental controls, too. Through the natural composting process, they contribute to the breakdown of the nitrogen in the horse’s urine and manure. This process eliminates the urine smell often present in outdoor confinement areas.

Gravel (crushed rock, no larger than 5/8″) works well particularly in wetter conditions where hogfuel will break down quickly. Gravel surfaces are very easy to pick manure off of.

Sand is also a popular footing choice and is more available in some parts of the country. However, you’ll want to avoid feeding on sandy surfaces as ingesting sand (or mud and dirt) with hay can result in horses with serious sand colic problems and expensive vet bills. Sand also drains poorly and is dusty in the summer. A good sand choice would be a coarse, washed sand.

There are many possible footing materials available in different parts of the country.

In choosing a footing, some considerations include:

•Will it be a suitable, safe surface for my horse to run, stand and lie on?

Can I easily pick manure from the footing material?

•Will the footing material contaminate my compost pile in any way?

Will it be very dusty in the dry months?

•What is the cost and availability?

•Is the material in any way toxic to horses, humans or other animals?

You might want to try a combination of footing types, perhaps using the gravel in the high traffic areas and hogfuel in the rest.

Controlling Run-off

Installing rain gutters and a roof run-off system on your barns and shelters, and diverting rainwater away from your horse’s confinement areas, is another consideration. This technique will seriously reduce mud and will prevent manure and urine from being washed out of the paddock. In an area that gets 39 inches of rain annually, 8,125 gallons of rainwater would run off a double-stalled run-in shed in one year!

You can begin to imagine that if you divert that much water away from your horse’s confinement area, you are greatly reducing the amount of mud you have around your horse! Divert clean rainwater to an area on your property where it can percolate back into the natural hydrology of your land-a vegetated area or an unused corner of your pasture.

As you choose the location and size of your paddock area, keep in mind that there will still be some surface run-off from your sacrifice area. You can help control run-off by locating your paddock areas so they are surrounded down slope by at least 25 feet of lawn, pasture, woods or even a garden.

Vegetation in these buffer areas will act as a mud manager-a natural filtration system to help slow down run-offs and reduce sediments and nutrients. The size of a confinement area can vary from that of a generous box stall, say 16 feet x 16 feet, to that of a long, narrow enclosure where a horse can actually trot or even gallop about to get some exercise.

If you want your horse to be able to run or play in his paddock, an enclosure of about 20-30 feet wide x 100 feet long is usually recommended. The amount of land you have available, the number of horses, their ages, temperaments, and the amount of regular exercise they receive, all play an important role in determining the size you choose to make your sacrifice areas.

Using a sacrifice area confines manure and urine to a smaller space where you can have better control of it. Picking up the manure every one to three days will help reduce your horse’s parasite load as well as reducing flies and insects by eliminating their habitat. Regular removal of manure also greatly reduces the amount of mud that develops.

Eliminating mud in the winter is your key to reducing dust in the summer, too. Reducing mud and manure will help prevent contaminated run-offs from reaching the surface and ground waters in your area as well. The manure you pick up can be composted and reapplied to your pastures during the growing season, another plus for your pasture management program!

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