Best implement/method of conditioning a sand arena

[RickNC]

Pable,

Mine is a 4WD with turf tires, but I seldom use 4WD. I use the tine harrow to keep a sandy training track that my wife uses with her horses. The only suggestion that I may make is to attach whatever you decide to make your drag from to the 3-point hitch so that you can take a little weight off of the front of the drag. Sometimes my drag will load up at the front and cause the rear tires to spin. So, I will lift the 3-point hitch enough to take some of the weight off of the front of the drag and put it a little more to the rear.

 

[Poncho]

Pablo... our Horse clubs I've been in we have used something similar to what Mark4510 uses... a chainlink fence weighted in the front with post, I-beam etc, but we just used a pick-up to pull it around the arena.

 

[PabloT]

Thanks for all of the responses, I think I will forget about using the blade and look into the drag harrows or make something similar up.
Cheers /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[Soundguy]

Wow... 12 messages so far.. and no one has suggested that the fellow buy a new tractor.. expensive rear implement.. and then put in a 'real' riding areena... /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

Course.. the ever popular reailroad tie/mattrass spring is also late too.. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

My votes' on a drag harrow.


Soundguy

 

[Fireman_dcb]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( WOW!!! Over $1k for a 6ft with lift!! )</font>

$345.00 at TSC no lift, when done - unhitch it, use the FEL to roll it over and then pick it up, drop it on ? for storeage. Reverse the steps when ready to use it.

Keep in mind that the drag harrow is flexible and will follow the contour of the ground - something that's solid will dig in or go over low spots.

 

[Mark4510]

Soundguy, I was just getting to that. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

Some of those sophisticated drags from Kiser work really well assuming that your arena is pretty flat to begin with. In my opinion there is nothing better on the market assuming you can afford one and find value in it.

Box springs from a mattess work well as long as you dont need to flatten a large area. I can tell you that they work really well in a round pen since most round pens are too small to get a bigger tractor in. And yes, I know this because I drug one around by hand for hours. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Good to hear you like the chain harrow.....I just cant seem to get the results I am looking for.

 

[cowboydoc]

Mark you can't beat a Kiser. I wouldn't give mine up for anything out there. Also a rotary harrow works excellent for roundpens. My roundpen is 60' and I have no problem getting my 4600 in there with the 8' rotary harrow and working it.