Rural Heritage August/September 2025

Duke stays out of the mud standing on straw covered concrete.

to eat and no place to go. Some movement is better than none for all horses, and this is why I prefer loose housing to stalls at a time like this. In addition, I have a variety of paths that lead away from the barn to pastures and paddocks that horses can be turned out in until they get too damaged. I am constantly battling the mud in these paths, roads and paddocks. I will discuss my varied strategies for fixing or improving these spots in a later article. For now, suffice it to say; by late winter and early spring some of them can get pretty muddy and pugged up. Here is the most important takeaway: horses that travel through this muddy path to get to a more distant pasture or paddock don’t suffer the hoof

problems they would if I left them standing in the mud. If you can find a dry patch of ground, or an area with better drained soils, make a lane, road or path to get there and back from your horse barn. When I started writing about mud in the beginning of May, little did I know this would turn into one of the worst spring and early summer mud seasons ever. I had hoped to include a few photos and descriptions of the horse turn-out path improvements I am planning to make. Like adding some drainage, some fabric, maybe even some experiments with burying wool. Alas, I have barely been able to turn horses out much less make any road improvements. I hope I can follow up this “Mud: Part One” this fall with more road and path photos.

Rural Heritage

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