I finally bit the bullet and had Hoof Grid installed in my two 40 foot runs and in front of my gate to the sacrifice paddock. We’ve had steady rain for two days, and there’s no mud!
Merry Christmas to me!
I can tell this will change my life.
Ya gotta give it up for all of us living with wallows and planning on installing an all weather surface soon–why’d you go hoof grid instead of just geotex? What all was involved? Just what did it cost? (PM me?)
My horses stayed in today due to the muddy ground and to say I am very, very jealous of your wonderful footing would be putting it … mildly 
Enjoy it! Congrats! What a wonderful Christmas present.
I shore wish I had me some hoof grid. We have had pretty decent precipitation for for the past weeks and paddocks are 4" deep in mud/poo right now. I’m trying to dig it out but it is only me a shovel and a wheel barrow. At least the paddocks are on a slope so the water drains away. Stalls adjoining paddocks are high and dry with wood pellet bedding. Turn out area is dg and damp but not mucky.
I’ve been thinking about finding a solution for inside our gates the past few years. The mud right inside the gates drives me nuts every winter! This is the first I’ve heard of the HoofGrid, so I’m also curious to hear why you chose that instead of geotex!
I’ve had my horses home for 8 years and the mud issues just about did me in every year. I did lots of research, but knew that whatever solution I came up with I’d have to hire it out since I live alone…armed with lots of info from previous threads on COTH I made phone calls and couldn’t get anyone to even call me back, let alone come out and give me a bid. I tried excavators, landscapers, etc.
The MD Barnmaster rep here had Hoof Grid on their website and I called them. He gave me a price, and showed up here a couple of months later with five guys, a dump truck and backhoe. It took them two full days. There was no way I could have done it myself.
So basically I did Hoof Grid because I couldn’t get anyone to come out for such a little job with the geotex/gravel/etc. We’ve had an unusually dry fall, and I couldn’t really tell how it was working until we had a ton of rain this past weekend. The only caution they gave me was that I’d need to keep the manure picked up so it wouldn’t clog the grids. No problem there. I pick twice a day anyway. They excavated down and removed all the dirt from the runs then put down a foot of gravel, then the grid, which they filled with gravel, then put squeegee on top (never heard of that before but it’s great for sifting out the manure).
I did it in front of the gates and under their water trough, too. Both were at the low end of the paddock so a mucky mess in previous years. Not any more.
Do you have photos or a website for the product you used?
I also have Hoof-Grid, which we installed ourselves for paddocks attached to the barn. We had previously done the geotextile/rock method, which worked well for my retired horse, but the young warmblood made it his life mission to dig huge holes in the rock and tear up the fabric. I was tired of both the holes and my SO complaining about them, so I bought the Hoof-Grid to redo one paddock completely plus the top half of another paddock (ran out of money to do the whole thing – I think the HG alone was ~$2/SqFt IIRC). There are both standard and heavy duty versions and we were able to use the standard, which is a bit lighter and cheaper, since we already had a great base and don’t need to worry about frost heave much.
We already had a great base of gravel from the previous paddock installation, so just had to grade that to slope away somewhat from the barn for drainage and then lay the grids. Top with pea gravel (the recommended), which fills the grid holes too, and then release the warmblood and watch his frustration at not being able to dig.:lol:
There are a number of similar products under all different names, and sometimes the best price is the one that is available close to you, due to the shipping costs. Equi-Terr and Stable Grid are the two names that come to mind, but there are others. I had looked at different versions and the HG was available from someone nearby so that is why I chose that one.
UGH HATE IT
I have it in my stalls. It sucks. The urine does not drain at all through it and the stalls have dips where the pee spots are. I had to put stall mats in all the stalls.
I would NEVER use Hoof Grids in stalls. I worked in a barn with a friend for one day and every stall stank to high heaven despite being wide open to the air.
I’ve seen the Grids in use at a Horse Expo in the driving rain and they were great. You could walk between outside venues without having your boots sucked off.
If I ever get my own place, Hoof Grids will find a new customer.
I wouldn’t want them in stalls either.
If the website is as bad as it was when I last looked at it, don’t judge the product by the website. Also worth exploring the other products I mentioned (Equi-Terr, Stable Grid…there are others too but those are the names that I remember).
There’s a new one I’ve seen advertised locally called Lighthoof but I don’t know much about it besides seeing the ads and checking out the website (lighthoof.com) – it looks interesting as it is a different approach with these expandable honeycomb things rather than the bulky panels – I’m sure shipping would be cheaper but curious to see how it actually compares in installation and use.
Looks like erosion control grid you can probably buy a lot cheaper because it isn’t marketed specifically to horse owners. Google “permeable grass paver grid” and you’ll find similar material.
[QUOTE=gypsymare;7923797]
Looks like erosion control grid you can probably buy a lot cheaper because it isn’t marketed specifically to horse owners. Google “permeable grass paver grid” and you’ll find similar material.[/QUOTE]
seconding this. look for similar marketed to dairy farmers.
Honestly, if you look at the price of erosion control grid stuff, which I did at one point, it didn’t seem that much different. And if you do find some that are cheaper, I’d look carefully at how durable it really is, as it is a lot of trouble and $$ to go to, then find out the first time you drive the tractor across it, the connectors all break.
[QUOTE=gypsymare;7923797]
Looks like erosion control grid [/QUOTE]
This – there a LOT of different options out there for a geotextile grid to hold stabilizing material for trails, parking lots, you name it. One of our local state parks did a phenomenal job with it stabilizing stream crossings on their bridle trails (stream biologist so happy, yayyyy). I’d suspect like many other products (like a freaking T-SHIRT!) they put a horse related word in front & do a 200% price markup.
But the concept is still a good one. The difference between a grid vs. plain geotextile material is that they can be made out of the same plastics/polymers (geotextiles) but the latter is a fabric, such as you’d put down under rip-rap, where the former is an actual geometric plastic grid to hold your fill material in place.
This year we put a large section of used carpet at the gate, then crushed gravel over top. Worked perfectly as a temporary solution for the fall… we’ll see how long it lasts, but I didn’t want to do anything too fancy at this point, since we might move some fencelines/gates around in the future.
As I’m facing the mud right now this sounds great. Do you use the hoof grid (or equivalent) with the geotextile fabric, too? Or does the hoof grid work on its own to stop them from sinking in and thereby not making mud?
My mud is in an area that during the nicer seasons is all grass, just gets turned to mud when the grass gets chewed down. Can you use this stuff (grid and / or textile) in an area that grows grass or do you need to have the stone on top for it to work?
What a great thing it would be to not have mud!!
