I’d like to hear about any ponds your horses have access to in their paddocks.
What’s the size, depth, steepness. Ice concerns or do they stay off?
Thanks!
I have one in mine. Im in australia so dont have to worry about freezing over. Mines currently fenced off as the water quality over summer is not good enough. Its abot 5m wide and about 4m deep so quite steep. We plan to dig it out more and make the slopes easier access. Then plant water plants and add fish or marron so the water improves quality over time.
Every property my family has owned has had dams as drinking water. We’ve only ever had one fatlity in the water and that was a young bull that got his head stuck in a hay ring and dragged it over 200m into the dam and drowned 
The slope, soil type and water quality are always my focus. Clays can get boggy and too steep a slope is an obvious issue
Check with your local Farm Service Agency.
The new EPA overreach into every body of water on land is now regulating all kinds of, well, waters.
Anywhere water puddles is fair game for government regulators now.
Now owners that may do any to alter any structure that holds water, without jumping thru all the new regulatory hoops thru that government agency, even if they already have state permits, are at risk of being taken to court:
You don’t want to get into that, the one example there just was lucky to get by because the EPA got too greedy and common sense won in the face of that injustice, not always the case when fighting the government.
Get your ducks in a row by asking first in the right places what you can do.
Just having them swimming around in your pond is not enough.
That local office may also have some good ideas of what you may do and how that has helped others with those ponds where you are.
a pond (called a tank around here) besides the EPA your insurance agent might want to have some say so as a pond (as well as a horse) is considered an attractive nuisance … so really depends upon your location if its a good idea or not
We have a “pond field”
The horses love it. We keep them confined to the non pond end once there is ice on the pond.
By its design it makes almost a paddock paradise track. Hills and different footings and lots of circles for them to move around. I
To not their only field but it’s one they, and we, like.
The main pond in there is about 4 feet deep in spots and the horses like splashing in it and eating pond grass. They love bullrush greenery.
Thanks for your accounts so far, guys.
Bluey, I’m in Canada but will still look into government regulations. Also, my insurance agent did a farm visit and is aware of the pond and our potential plan to incorporate it into thr paddock, but I’ll give them a quick call, too.
It’s fed off our own land and a couple drainage ditches around the property, max 5ft. My only concern is other than the two ends where water enters and exits it’s a bit steep - only like 1ft drop to water, but doesn’t really taper. I mean it would be a 30ft walk for them to get to either end and walk out, but do you find they tend to use common sense? Lol
five foot may freeze solid (everyone here in Texas thinks all of Canada is frozen in the winter… we actually moved from Kentucky after two harsh winters when we had freezes to the depth of 48 inches )… freeze depth here is measured in inches
As for using the pond as water access for the horses, sure they will learn to drink from it…even our nothing but barn raised show horses learned to drink from mud puddles when converted to competitive trail horses
is the bank of the pond gradually sloped into the water?
[QUOTE=clanter;8662623]
is the bank of the pond gradually sloped into the water?[/QUOTE]
Some is, some isn’t. It has an entrance and exit point for run-off. The two sides where the water doesn’t flow in and out have steep sides that are about a 1ft drop to water.
The ends where water enters and exits have gradual slopes where the ditches meet.
Will the horses be using that field in the winter? I know of one horse who went through the ice and the fire department had to get him out. He survived. At another place with the pond they found that one horse liked to roll in it which was quite a concern when the weather was cold.
We have a pond in our winter pasture. It is groundwater. It fills in the winter and early spring, and is dry in the summer. The horses use it at will. It freezes solid in the winter, and gets a good layer of snow on top of it, which gives good footing. They drink out of it too, which makes me ill to even consider this, but horses do what horses wish to do. They have pool parties in it, everyone gets in, splashes about, digging, sloshing water about, has a roll, and drinks the slurry. Geese and ducks poop in it, as do horses. So the slurry is really NICE. Their clean water source in the shed has less use than the pond it seems.
This pond is about 2 or 3 feet deep at it’s deepest time of year, with a muddy bottom. It grows a type of pond grass, which is tasty, and horses go into the pond to eat the grass like moose. When it dries up in summer, the grass grows thick (all the fertilizer), and when horses come back into this pasture, THAT grass is the first to be cropped. So the pond is very popular. They love their pond.
We always had a pond/tank at our home farm and at my farm in TX. Horses loved to swim/roll in it in the summer and never had any issues with it in winter time. I’m not sure about the regs/concerns with new construction.
My horses lived for six years in a pasture with a small pond at the best boarding farm. I loved it. It was not very deep, but the bottom was very mucky, which made it hard to gauge the true depth. I’d estimate it at three feet at most, but I may be way off, since the mud would suck you in.
The horses would graze around it, drink from it (even though they had a trough), occasionally wander in to the shallow area. It had a steep side with a drop of one or two feet and a level side. The steep side had a lot of willow trees and shrubs to keep horses away from the edge; it was never an issue.
Since I’m in a pretty mild climate, freezing was not much of a concern. It only froze over entirely once in my six years at the farm and the horses stayed away.
Where I live, there isn’t a lot of government regulation. I don’t think there was any additional insurance required by the farm owners and there definitely weren’t any EPA regulations enforced. But I’m sure that varies location to location.
Overall, I loved it. We are property hunting right now and I definitely want something with either pond or stream access on the property. I love the peace of mind of having a constant source of water. We currently rent a small farm on “city” water and I do worry what would happen if we ever lost water for an extended period of time.
I basically have a small lake in mine. It’s available to the horses in the summer but not in the winter. I keep them in a “winter paddock”. They all hate water so never go for a swim, I’ve also never seen them drink from it either.
We have a large pond … more than an acre… that we ‘share’ with our neighbours.
There is about 1/2 acre on ‘our side’.
My horses are turned out in that field (8 acres) from June to September.
They never, ever try and go in the pond … it’s very boggy on the edges and probably up to 4’ deep once you’re out in the middle.
I never, ever turn horses out in that field in the winter.
Once we have a decent snow cover … which could be November… this year it wasn’t until late December… there is no way to tell where solid ground ends and the boggy pond edge starts.
The pond does eventually freeze over… but not until mid January.
And I would just be a nervous wreck worrying that they’d fall through.
[QUOTE=Parrs Gold Bar;8662492]
I’d like to hear about any ponds your horses have access to in their paddocks.
What’s the size, depth, steepness. Ice concerns or do they stay off?
Thanks![/QUOTE]
I don’t have any and I would not give them access if I did. Too many water quality issues.
It can wreak havoc on their feet if they spend time in it drinking or splashing/playing. Being wet constantly can make their feet shelly and the mud can lead to pulled shoes.
Just wanted to add to the comments about not letting them near it in winter - had a horse near here go through the ice as well - successfully saved, but definitely not safe in the winter, IMO. They don’t seem to be able to judge if the ice is thick enough or not.
We had a spring fed pond in our winter mares pasture and thru decades never had a problem.
We quit breeding and that became our gelding winter pasture.
All horses would stop and drink there, then come into the pens and drink from the troughs there.
They also pawed and played in the pond as they went and came.
One winter, the pond was old then and only holding maybe 2’ of water at the deepest spot, it froze over solid.
Horses normally didn’t walk out on it then, but this one horse evidently did, the frozen ice broke thru and he started trashing and dug himself such a deep hole in the muck that he had to swim to stay afloat.
I found him and ran to the barn to get a halter and ropes and call for help, the vet and neighbors, we didn’t have mobile phones then.
I crawled on my belly on the ice and could put a halter on him, then was breaking ice in front of him so he could get closer to the edge and by the time help arrived, he was just coming out of the pond.
He was wobbly and in shock, the vet attended to him and said it was touch and go.
He was fine after a couple weeks, but his legs swelled up like stovepipes that first day and he was a very sick horse for a few days.
We had a neighbor that lost 40 head of cattle that walked onto a deep, frozen pond, that broke thru and found them all dead next morning.
I would not use any such water that may freeze solid for any critters to have access to in the winter.
Thanks for all your input, guys.
My gelding comes home this weekend (I’m super excited!!), he’s 17 and fairly sane, so we will see how it goes with just him and the water during the warm months. I’ll definitely put a temp fence around it in winter rather than risk anything.
At my old place I owned half a pond. It was only about 6 feet deep, one of my sides had an easy slope going into it. Initially, I fenced into the pond, but not completely across it, thinking the water would make a natural border. Yes, this works for three out of four horses. Horse four swam to freedom twice in one day and took off to see the neighbor horses down the street. From that point on, I put tape fencing across it. He still had access to water, but not free run of the thing. We don’t get cold enough here usually to have it freeze over, so that never worried me-BUT last winter my neighbor had a yearling fall into a frozen over pond at his place and it took a ton of people to finally get him out (he ended up being fine, I wonder how he feels about water now).
My biggest concern was that my water lover would spend every day in the pond and I figured his feet might rot right off. I have a few persistent puddles in my pasture now that have gotten deeper and deeper over time. I cluelessly thought the local birds were using the mud to build nests (somewhere there is a condor sized mud nest), turns out my gelding gets in them and paws daily and wears the mud out on his coat. So that’s where their new depth is coming from.
Water quality in the pond ends up being a concern for any fish you might have if there is constant runoff from pastures and horses mucking it up with their swims. But if you want the pond for your horses don’t put fish in it.
