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Mud Control?

Wondering if anyone has had any success combatting muddy pastures in the spring with matting? Not looking to do a bunch of digging or refooting but looking for something straightforward and cost-efficient that prevents that “mud hole” around the gate during spring melt. Something almost like a construction swamp-mat. I’ve found the following but looking for other options as well:


Let me know what you think!
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I bought 20 of these after I lost my temper at wading through the ankle deep soupy mud from barn ro ring. Literally put them down on the mud with zero ground prep and tapped them together as an almost 4’ wide walkway in less than an hour. They’re holding position through more rain and horses marching over them with no issue.

When you factor in the cost of rock delivery, and the necessary equipment to get the rock in place? These are faster, equal cost or cheaper and probably last longer. Rated for 5.6 tons/sq foot.

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Oooo, really? how long have they been in place? What is your mud base? Was the footing allowed/able to dry and harden a bit, after they were in place, before traffic was on them? Or was it mud, mats, still mud, ponies ponies, and all is good?

Didn’t see this for a while JB.
Our ground is high clay content and its been regular rain with occasional freezing. There’s been no drying opportunity, none whatsoever since I put the grids in. There was no settling time, a horse was on them within a few hours of putting them down.

It was mud, grids installed, wipe mud spatter off face from kicking grids into position, shake fist at the sky for most of the past two months and occasionally take a shovel to scrape a small layer of mud off that has compressed through and remove manure because the horses like to stand on it to be in the sun and out of the mud.

They’re still where I put them and an absolute godsend.

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Thank you! I feel your fist shaking in my soul! We are all clay. Where I’d like to put these is a slope that goes 2 ways, down and across, so I was wondering if they might just slide off the earth LOL Awesome, thank you, I’ll definitely look harder into this.

The more of them you have, the more stable the whole thing is as the slip/compression forces spread over a bigger area. At least if they aren’t working in the area you want to cover you can pry them up and re-position to a better spot or add crushed stone to ‘stiffen’ the mud. Gravel you just wave goodbye and have to order more :sob:

@Synthesis thank you so much!

I need to look into this. I don’t have a lot of mud but the gate area of both pastures is pretty mucky right now.

omg, now I want some of these for a small area I struggle with. Now I will have to fight with myself about money I don’t have…

I have a bad spot in my arena… gumbo clay is coming up under the base and the base fails right there…
Looking at their catalogue… really interesting. I have thrown a lot of money at this arena and I’d like a final solution…

I bought 5 grids today and made one line through some deepish mud that freezes into holes and sharp edges. Curious to see if my two choose to walk the grid instead of the mud chunks. If not I’ll buy more
and widen. Will post back later with the experiment results.

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i use rock. Once i build the area up and they stomp it in, i add more. I keep adding a bit at a time until the area by the gate (or waterer or shady corner) is as high or higher than the surrounding ground. Then, problem solved!

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How are the grids working out?

Never got em down. The ground was too frozen. BUT, think coming right up at some point I can get them down and will report back.

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