[bazzais]

You cant really solve it when its poached already, its something for next year.

You sound like you've taken precautions to stop your horses gathering for food or comfort in the muddy areas.  Thats probably all you can do while its still muddy.

I did a quick search on google and found this document which has some great advise on it - well I enjoyed the read and got some interesting ideas out of it:-

http://www.surreycc.gov.uk/sccwebsite/sccwspages.nsf/LookupWebPagesByTITLE_RTF/Gateways+advice?opendocument

Ta

Baz

[tazbabe]

good article!

we have a very wet field entrance, the water drains off the hill and across the road into it.

[Hardfeather]

It is amazing how field gates and heavily poached areas recover, so don't panic. I've seen my wee paddock near the house in some pretty bad states if I've had to keep the horses in there for some reason or other when it's wet. It really does recover well after the frost, sun, wind, and even more rain have worked on it for a while.

[faith0504]

thanks for all the input,

bazzias          that link was interesting reading, food for thought.


im definately going to sort the drainage out in the field next summer, the worst gateway is blocked off with electric fencing now, i have taken down some fencing and made a temp gateway on a drier bit of the field, my main concern is my horses hurting themselves, i.e pulled muscles in the mud, and with it only being the start of winter, its only going to get worse.
but you guys have given me plenty to think about and things to do to get us through till i can sort it out properly
thanks so much

[waterhouse]

Yes of course you can.  We like the stuff that comes from scraped-off road surfaces when they resurface a road.  You can get special rubber mats with lots of holes but its an expensive way.

This year we've also gone for multiple field entrances to try to reduce the damage.