Making an Maintaining a Horse arena

[jdgreg]

SAO, I team-rope, so I know how important good footing is for horses. Barrel horses (and rope horses) can be very, very $$$$$, it'd be a shame to cripple due to bad footing. Almost every top notch event I've been to, has the Ground Hog listed above, or a brand/model that does basically the same thing. These things really manacure the ground nicely. The rotary harrow does a decent job, but not near a good as the Ground Hog, which is the route I would go.

 

[KaiB]

A team-roper in Warrenton???

 

[jdgreg]

You betcha. We got a lot in the area. There's a jackpot/association roping to go to every weekend.

 

[Soundguy]

Been dozens of posts on this in the past.. at least one of them reaching 'hst vs gear' flame level.

In short.. everything from dumpster-free old bed box springs to 6k$ dollar rotary areena groomers are available.. with a chain drag harrow falling in the middle somewhere..

Soundguy

 

[KaiB]

Wahoo...things change slowly.

I grew up there (FHS '71), knew every dirt road in the three county area; what a wonderful place to be. The folks are up in Hume.

 

[sao]

Thanks to all. I am getting a 9 ft groundhog since I can pick it up myself saving the shipping. It looks like the way to go but I am prepared for the fact that no matter what I do it probably will not be quite right for the picky horsewoman of the family. How those things ever survived in the wild is beyond me.

 

[donais]

amen on that one...... now i just need a water truck!!!!

 

[zubin6220]

SAO:

I was just inquiring on how the Ground Hog is working out for you. I live in Oklahoma as well and my barrel racer wife is pressuring me on the same implement. btw - I just purchased the 4-wd 7520.

 

[N80]

I may be faced with this same problem in the near future but the ring would be for jumping rather than barrel racing. I'm assuming the requirements would be similar.

But I'm confused. There have been a lot of recommendations but some of them sound like they are for maintaining, rather than building the ring. I'm assuming there is a big difference. The OP said he had hard dry ground. Drag harrows would be pretty useless on that in terms of actually making the ring...at least they would be around here. And even a heavy disk would have a hard time unless the ground was wet or prepared by something else.

Does this Ground Hog thing actually prep unprepared ground for a ring? The one where my daughter rides seems to have multiple layers of material with fairly deep sand on top.

 

[Mike120]

George,

There are a lot of variables to consider. A decent sized jumper arena (150'X300') can easily cost about $30K to put in. A good reference is "The Equine Arena Handbook" by Robert Malmgren. It'll save you a lot of money and trouble.

Because I'm on sandy loam with no rocks, I was able to take some shortcuts. I don't get perfect drainage on the big one, but it's pretty easy to dry out and I have plenty of equipment to do it with. I can get much better footing out of loam than I can out of pure sand and it's very simular to what we compete on at the "A" and "AA' shows.

We had sand arenas at our old place. They drained well but over the years the sand breaks down and needs to be replaced. That can be a major expense. It's also easy to get it too deep and then you risk injuries. My happiest day was when I got rid of the rotary harrow!

The TR3, the Ground Hog, and a few others are pretty much the top of the line for maintaining an arena (look at what they use at the shows). However, what you actually need depends on the soil conditions you're working with. To build an arena is a different story, there you can be talking about bulldozers, vibratory rollers, etc at one extreme and a chain harrrow at the other.

Mike