Prepare Your Horse Farm for Winter

If you prepare now, you and your horses will be ready when the first real winter weather hits.

The winter season is difficult for most horse owners. A little preparation on your horse ranch can go a long way toward making it easier to face the coming winter challenges. And early fall is a great time to get a jump on these horse ranch preparations-before driveways get slick and horse pastures turn to mud. Here are some things you can do around your horse property now to ready it for whatever winter can dish out.

1. Bring in footing material for paddocks, confinement areas, and other high-traffic regions. Laying down some kind of footing material, usually sand, crushed rock, or some type of wood product, will help eliminate mud and cut down on erosion. This spells easier chores for you, and a safer, healthier surface for your horses to spend the winter on. You can use footing in sacrifice areas, paddocks, walkways, in front of gates, and in other high-traffic areas.

Check around your area to see what materials are most commonly used and available for footing-and don't wait too long. It is much easier for delivery trucks to back into paddocks and drive through pastures in the dry fall than it will be once those areas have become slick and muddy. Footing materials may also become hard to find later in the winter when the demand is high. Getting footing now will help you prevent a mud mess later on.

2. Check gutters and downspouts. Now is the time to think of repairs or additions to be made to your roof run-off system. Keep rainwater clean by diverting the water away from your paddocks to areas where it won't get contaminated. Good places to divert the rainwater include a grassy ditch, a dry well, a rain barrel, stock watering tanks, well-vegetated woods, or an unused portion of your pasture. Doing this will greatly benefit you by reducing the amount of mud your horse spends his winter standing in and by making daily chores easier. Also in the fall, clean leaf debris out of gutters and downspouts so they flow correctly-don't wait until the first deluge when everything is overflowing.

Now is the time to review your winter prep list. Are the gutters clean? Are your downspouts channeling water away from barn and paddock? Is the heating unit working in your automatic waterer? Do you have ample footing material in paddocks and high-traffic areas to eliminate mud and erosion?

3. Bring your horses in off your pastures. If you're lucky enough to have pasture, fall is the time to baby it. Pastures grazed too closely in the autumn are subject to winter damage and slow growth in the spring. For winter protection, it's best if you allow the grass plants to produce a good amount of leaf, at least 4 inches. During the winter months, pasture plants are dormant and unable to regrow, so pastures can't survive continuous grazing. Also, soils are saturated and easily compacted during soggy winters. The best option for managing your horses during winter is to create a winter paddock or sacrifice area. Confine your horses to this area during the winter as well as in the summer when pastures become overgrazed.

4. Tarp your manure piles. This will help keep the nutrients you are trying to save in the compost and prevent them from being washed out into the surface waters, where they can cause a potential problem and contribute to more mud and yuck.

Be sure to store manure as far away as possible from streams, ditches, and wetlands to avoid potential environmental problems, as well as away from fence lines to be a good neighbor. And while we're on the topic, if you don't already pick up manure on a regular basis, now is the time to start doing so. A horse creates 50 pounds of manure per day. When mixed with rain and melting snow over the winter months, this quickly turns into 50 pounds of mud per day. Picking up manure on a regular basis will greatly decrease the amount of mud that you and your horse have to deal with over the winter months. Manure should be picked up at least every three days in stalls, paddocks, confinement areas, and high traffic areas.

5. Spread compost. Fall is a great time to spread compost. Compost is a rich soil enhancement that adds micro- and macronutrients and replenishes natural microbial life. All of this will greatly improve the health of the soil and plants. Spread compost in pastures during the growing season, no more than a half-inch layer at a time or a total of 3 to 4 inches per season in the same pasture.