"It Rained" and now its Muddy

 In these winter months when its muddy outside, we take some time to analyze the situation before just jumping in to change things. 

The other day, after a hard rain we found all the horse pens had several inches of water. Each horse had a small area to stand (about 10 feet square) that stayed pretty dry.

At first we wanted to go right in there and move dirt around, create canals to drain water from the pens and build up the low side so the water didn't sit there. 

However, instead of making any changes right away, we decided to mark the calendar with "It Rained" and then check the ground each of the following days to see how long it took for the water to drain on its own.

As it turned out, the pens dried out fairly quickly without any help from us. Sure we got muddy boots for a few days, but from what we have read the mud and water can actually help keep the horse hooves stronger...as long as they also get a chance to get dry as well.

While we waited for the pens to dry, we continued to check each horses hooves every day to be sure they weren't getting soft or spongy, which can indicate that they are staying too wet.

After several days we found a few places that still needed a little work, but it was a lot less than we had originally thought...and the changes we made were different than those we would have done in the wettest weather. If we had moved dirt too soon, we very well might have caused the water to run into the "dry" area that each horse already had...making it worse before it got better. 

So much better to wait and see first, then make small adjustments.

What are your wet weather suggestions that you use for your slice of ranch? We'd love to hear from you!