Mud-hole paddocks, geo-textile, gravel, cost...help?

[kashmere]

I board my horse, so this is me prospecting around on behalf of my BO, looking for info.

Our sacrifice paddock is a mess. It’s bad. It’s pretty usual for it to get mucky and icky, but this year takes the cake. Mud everywhere, and then when it gets cold again like it did this weekend, frozen mud ruts that the horses don’t really seem to care about but that give me heart palpitations looking at.

The horses spend the winter in the sacrifice paddock and mostly just stand around the roundbale feeders, occasionally making their way to the bigger pastures for a wander.

The barn opens up at opposite ends into the paddock, and the roundbales are sort of in-line with the doors, about 20 meters away, so kind of in the middle of the paddock. The paddock extends maybe 8ish meters from one side of the barn and another 20-30 from the other, and is irregularly squareish. Basically the horses come out of either of the doors and pretty much beat a bee line down to the roundbales and then back and forth between each bale, and between each door. So the heaviest traffic area is sort of a rectangular track from door to bale to bale to door.

Is it insane to think of laying down gravel and geotextile just sort of covering that high traffic area, and maybe a decent sized pad around the round bale feeders? The paddock is an irregular square-ish shape and likely too large to completely convert into a dry lot, but it would really be great to improve things for next winter.

For those of you who have gone the route of geotextile and gravel and dry lots - what was your process and - if you don’t mind - what size area did you cover and what was the $$ involved? We can excavate and haul material and lay material down ourselves.

[RedmondDressage]

I will let you know My paddocks are also a mess this year so I’m redoing them as soon as it dries enough for me to scrape them. My paddocks are about 65’ x 100’, fairly flat coming off the barn, then sloping downhill at a decent grade. I’m going to do the 65’ x 24’ flat area in Geotex with 5/8" minus on top.

What area are you in? I’m waiting for some more quotes but I’m east of Seattle and locally I was given a quote of about $400 for a 15’ x 300’ roll of 6 oz geotex. For the 5/8" minus I was given a quote of $405 for a 10 yard load.

[JoZ]

RedmondDressage, have you figured out how much 10 yards of 5/8" minus will cover? Did you do a calculation (width x length x depth)?

[kashmere]

Ooh please let me know how it goes, Redmond! I’m in eastern Canada, so pretty far away! Your quotes seem pretty great, though. I’d ideally just like to pony up the $$ for it, since I’m the one mostly bothered and my horse is the most princessy of the lot, so I’d be happy to just pay for it and get it done if it’s within my range.

[airhorse]

Don’t forget many municipalities are getting very involved with “non permeable” surfaces due to runoff. Anything over 5,000 square feet around here needs a full storm water review and engineering plan. That number is cumulative and could also include areas under roof already.

[Calvincrowe]

Those prices are pretty accurate for our area, RedmondDressage. I did an area about your size 10 years ago, and it has held up very well. I need to add more screenings this year. I prefer that size gravel over 3/4 minus as it’s easier on feet and to pick up manure. Cleaning up all organics (hay, manure, leaves, mud from feet) is essential to preventing your gravel paddock from turning into a gravelly mud mess.

I used permeable geotextile to allow water to pass through, but no exchange of soil with the footing material.

Your best source of geotextile is an erosion control company. You can call the quarry or gravel supply company and give them your dimensions and depth and they can calculate how much gravel you’ll need. Or my math teacher husband can do it for you.

[eponacelt]

We’re just finishing three small drylots, each of which is about 40’x50’, and a total of about 40’x130’.

We had the excavator (who was on site for another job) scrape off the topsoil and did just 57 stone with stonedust on top. Total depth is probably about 6" of stone + stonedust. We chose to not do geotextile because of the problems I know some people have had with horses tearing it up or punching through it. That may or may not be a problem with the installation, but for the utilization these paddocks will get on my farm, I didn’t think it was worth the time, money and potential problem.

Anyway, if you exclude the cost of the fencing we’re doing, the stone has cost about $2000 and I think we’ll need to spend another $500 or so on another truck or two of stonedust.

[costco_muffins]

[QUOTE=airhorse;8564655]
Don’t forget many municipalities are getting very involved with “non permeable” surfaces due to runoff. Anything over 5,000 square feet around here needs a full storm water review and engineering plan. That number is cumulative and could also include areas under roof already.[/QUOTE]

This is so true in the PNW. One way that our county conservation district has worked with the county permitting is that we have specific rules you have to follow with your “High Use Areas” to keep them classified as “non-native permeable surface.” This means you can scrape and put down geotex but then your top surface must be permeable. This includes sand and pea gravel and CLEAR gravel only. Any minus and you are now no longer considered permeable since it can compact.

If you need a firm base around here and need to get away from the permeability issues you have to go with an engineered grid, such as hoof grid, to give you stability.

[costco_muffins]

[QUOTE=Calvincrowe;8564715]
Those prices are pretty accurate for our area, RedmondDressage. I did an area about your size 10 years ago, and it has held up very well. I need to add more screenings this year. I prefer that size gravel over 3/4 minus as it’s easier on feet and to pick up manure. Cleaning up all organics (hay, manure, leaves, mud from feet) is essential to preventing your gravel paddock from turning into a gravelly mud mess.

I used permeable geotextile to allow water to pass through, but no exchange of soil with the footing material.

Your best source of geotextile is an erosion control company. You can call the quarry or gravel supply company and give them your dimensions and depth and they can calculate how much gravel you’ll need. Or my math teacher husband can do it for you. ;)[/QUOTE]

I found that a 10 yard load covering 25x60 in the PNW was not sufficient for my horses. It came down to the fact that my young horse spends all day running around, the entire paddock wasn’t graveled (1/2 was left in native sand for a roll spot), and these particular horses aren’t tidy with their manure habits. It didn’t matter how often I picked, their poop was ground in due to excessive silliness and playfulness. As a result, we have had to scrape out our gravel and are installing hoof grid.

[Mosey_2003]

[QUOTE=JoZ;8564405]
RedmondDressage, have you figured out how much 10 yards of 5/8" minus will cover? Did you do a calculation (width x length x depth)?[/QUOTE]
Here, JoZ, enter what you want to cover (in feet) and how deep you want (in inches) and choose Rock with Fines from the drop down. 1 yard = 1.4 tons

http://www.triconmaterials.com/calculator.php

[JoZ]

So 133 tons = about 95 yards, so that’s going to be kind of expensive, huh? Gulp. I guess I won’t be doing that. That was a rough estimate if I got a roll of the geofabric and used the whole thing, with a depth of 4", which seemed insufficient. Until I calcluated it!

[Calvincrowe]

JoZ–how big an area are you doing?? I get a 12 yard load of screenings and it covers an area 60x 40 4" deep or more. That calculator seems a bit off…I found a different calculator (remember a yard is a cubic measurement) and for a 60x60x4" area, you only need two 12 yard loads, which around here would cost about $550.

Call your local gravel company (or ask my husband to calculate it for you! he was super accurate for my project!).

[JoZ]

I haven’t quite decided. I have three pastures. Not just sacrifice paddocks. I kept the horses out of one of the pastures for the winter, but I have to go into it in order to feed, so I would like to reduce mud in there. The three pastures meet and it’s that area that gets muddy, probably from years of that being where the horses congregate. My horses don’t congregate there, which is kind of funny! That is the least trafficked area, for good reason. But I have to go through it to get them in and out, so unfortunately I can’t ignore its existence entirely. So anyway I’m thinking of doing nice dry paths, for me and the horses. If you broke up 40 x 60 into three paths of 13 X 60 that seems like it might be about right. Your numbers are much kinder!

[Mosey_2003]

[QUOTE=Calvincrowe;8567756]
JoZ–how big an area are you doing?? I get a 12 yard load of screenings and it covers an area 60x 40 4" deep or more. That calculator seems a bit off…I found a different calculator (remember a yard is a cubic measurement) and for a 60x60x4" area, you only need two 12 yard loads, which around here would cost about $550.

Call your local gravel company (or ask my husband to calculate it for you! he was super accurate for my project!).[/QUOTE]
The calculator is the more accurate of my two, but it really IS for tons. I am not as well-versed at the putting it into yards bit. We only sell by the ton here. There very well may be a different way to calculate if you’re doing yards.

[Calvincrowe]

Gravel is mostly sold by the yard here, and I found another calculator that translates tons into yards-- and you’d be amazed how far a cubic yard of gravel goes! (that’s 3 feet by 3 by 3–spread out it’s a lot!! and it’s heavy!! ).

JoZ- I’d think you could do that for much less than you think. If the horses aren’t going to be standing there, milling around, then geo over dry, rock hard August soil with 4 inches of gravel (3/4 minus for a path) should be good. Do you have access to a tractor? Because you will kill yourself wheelbarrowing all that rock (ask me how I know…ugh…)

[Mosey_2003]

I don’t even know how they measure out yards when they’re selling, if they’re doing it by volume instead of weight, there could be a lot of wiggle room there.

[JoZ]

[QUOTE=Calvincrowe;8568219]
Gravel is mostly sold by the yard here, and I found another calculator that translates tons into yards-- and you’d be amazed how far a cubic yard of gravel goes! (that’s 3 feet by 3 by 3–spread out it’s a lot!! and it’s heavy!! ).

JoZ- I’d think you could do that for much less than you think. If the horses aren’t going to be standing there, milling around, then geo over dry, rock hard August soil with 4 inches of gravel (3/4 minus for a path) should be good. Do you have access to a tractor? Because you will kill yourself wheelbarrowing all that rock (ask me how I know…ugh…)[/QUOTE]

I have access to a guy with a tractor! One of the first relationships I forged when I moved here. Vet – check. Farrier – check. Guy with tractor – check!

It’s a bit of a catch-22… I don’t know if the horses aren’t standing there because it is so muddy (so perhaps drying it out would make it into the favorite gathering place). But based on the layout it will never be a high-SPEED area so the churn-up should be minimal.

I am hoping to permanently fence off the area of pasture 3 that I walk across to feed, so it would NEVER get pooped upon. That would give me a staging area – fenced but unused. My heart pitter-pats thinking of it!