Hello! I am trying to plan how to manage the mud in my paddock. I am planning on doing this project in the summer when the mud is gone… I am looking into a non woven geotextiline fabric. Where should I purchase this? I know I need a “tough one”. Is there a standard toughness measurement I should look for? Also, what type of gravel/ substrate should I place on top of it? I have read everything from crushed gravel 1"-1/2" and then smaller on top of that… to a gravel that compresses to a harder base… Any ideas?! Direct links to products is GREAT! I am located in the north east USA.
I was planning to do a similar paddock renovation this summer. However, after speaking with a local farmer, he strongly advised against geotextile fabric (I know, I know, people swear by it) as the second a horse gets to it and pulls a tiny piece up you’re toast! Even if you put a good amount of stone on top. Instead, he recommended large stone, like 4 - 5" rocks then topping with screenings (stone dust, fines, etc.) then packing it down. It locks together and forms a super solid surface. He said he did this at his own barn and it’s very hard but also permeable for water. The screenings settle and some rocks may work their way up but re-packing and re topping with screenings will eventually get you the perfect surface.
Now, it’s super important to keep it clean of manure and hay but that would be the same with fabric. Just an idea!
ETA: I am also north east
Thank you so much for the reply! I will try this and look more into it. I appreciate it! I do have rambunctious crazy boys and they WOULD get to the fabric.
THANK YOU for this post, and the reply! I’m only a boarder, but I’m doing what I can to help my barn owner around the barn(she’s taken very good care of me and my horse over the years). The mud mud this past winter was insufferable!
I put in a dry lot at my new barn. The area that I improved was a 36’x50’ area. The contractor scraped away the topsoil, placed a french drain, and created a slight grade to direct any water from a deluge to move away from the barn. They used a layer of larger rock, then a layer of stone dust. I brought my horses home mid July last year. Having been through the wettest year in recent memory, I feel the dry lot held up well. We had a MAJOR storm that created a tremendous amount of destructive flash flooding right after the dry lot was installed. I lost some stone dust during that event.
The horses stayed in a 36’X150’ area almost exclusively from Mid November through March. The area beyond the 36x50 was mucky, but only a few places had deep mud. Most of the hoof prints in that area were only 3" deep. I plan on adding gravel and crush and run to the back part of the paddock this summer. The horses went in the mucky part of the dry lot , as evidenced by their footprints, but they spent the majority of their time on the pad and under the run in.
All this to say, if you have a soil type that is fairly well draining and the horse’s hooves won’t leave deep prints if tracking over it consistently, then you can probably get away with doing gravel and then screenings.
I’m curious, have you used crush and run on your property before? The stuff with that name that I get here is angular and has a lot of sharp edges. I can’t use it anywhere my barefoot old guy needs to walk.
We do have it in front of the garage, and it does pack down well and lock together, so I can see the appeal for stabilization. (Maybe this is an application where I would want the geotextile, which I’m otherwise not a fan of, to keep it down where it belongs, with plenty of crushed granite (M10) on top.)
But generally now I get the nicer rounded gravel, which costs more, but is also more attractive, so there’s that.
Yes, the crush and run does have some larger angular rocks, but what we have here has a pretty heavy ratio of rock dust and slightly larger material involved. Since I’m just adding it to the top of the soil that is already in place to help with drainage and soil stabilization, I don’t think it’s going to cause many issues for me.
I’m looking to increase the amount of room they can move around during the worst of the mucky weather. I have 2 OTTBs that are in shoes so that covers the hoof issue and they do need to move around a bit to blow off steam. I watched them quite a bit these last 8 months in how they used the space and things that I could do to make it better. During the worst of the mucky footing they would bolt out of the run in and trot/canter to the edge of the improved part of the dry lot. I noticed footprints out their, but that was mainly them moving at a walk, nothing that would help blow off a bit of steam. My hope is that by adding a bit of crush and run, I will firm the back 60’x36’ of dry lot enough that they will want to canter to the end and back.
We put in a dry lot last summer and it was SO nice to not have the horrible mud issues this winter. We have a mare that had laminitis last spring, and another that needs to watch her weight. We did use the fabric, but we put 5-6 inches of class-I sand which is crushed limestone (so many different names for essentially the same material gets confusing!) The class-I sand is the same thing we used for the base in our arena. It packs down well. The key to not having problems with the fabric coming up is having enough material on top.
If you put larger rocks underneath, they will migrate up and make picking out the manure difficult without also taking big rocks with it. Also, my mares run all over the place in there, and I don’t want big rocks causing bruises. We had an excavator do the project. If you have it sloped enough to drain well, heavy rain will wash some out, but if it’s deep enough you won’t get down to bare fabric, except maybe around the edges a little. We use our arena drag to smooth it out every month or so. A chain harrow would work fine too. I think it’s important to consider the ongoing maintenance, and plan to have to add more material at some point in the future. Picking out manure may not be something that a contractor considers.
