Cassie LeMaster 0:00

Welcome to the Extension Connection Podcast. I'm your host, Cassie LeMaster, Livestock and forage agent for NC State Extension in Polk County, North Carolina. And today we are tackling a topic that might not be on your mind yet since it's been pretty dry out, but strategies to mitigate mud on the farm should be considered now ahead of wet winter weather. Mud is more than just a seasonal annoyance. It's a major farm management headache, a health hazard for our animals, and a drain on our time and resources. So today I'm digging into effective mud management strategies for your horse and livestock farm arm. First, let's define why mud is so problematic. For one, it's a health hazard. Besides being a nuisance, muddy conditions can make daily farm chores dangerous and less efficient. While it's stressful for the farm manager, there is a greater effect on the animal's health and nutrition status. Animals use more energy standing and moving across soft, muddy ground than hardened or dry surfaces. The increased difficulty of traveling through the mud for feed and water has a compounding effect. By decreasing intake and increasing energy requirements, which can decrease animal performance up to 25%. This can affect profitability of production animals such as cattle or sheep. The Alberta Feedlot management guide reports that cattle standing in four to eight inches of mud can experience an eight to 15% decrease in feed intake. And a 14% decrease in daily gains. In hock deep mud of 12 to 24 inches, a expect reduction of 30% in feed intake and a 25% decrease in daily gains. For our horses, deep mud can lead to thrush, a bacterial infection in the hoof and scratches or past dermatitis, which is a painful skin condition on the lower legs. Muddy coats also lose their insulating properties, forcing animals to burn, more energy to stay warm. Additionally, muddy conditions can lead to abscesses, poor utter hygiene, increased calf sickness, and calving problems. For equine slick conditions can increase the risk of injury as well. For our pasture hooves churn up saturated soil. It kills the grass and compacts the ground, and this creates a cycle. Compacted soil drains even worse, making the mud problem even more severe the next time it rains. It also accelerates erosion leading to nutrient and sediment runoff into nearby waterways. Also, think about the extra time spent bathing, treating infections, and pulling out stuck equipment. It all adds up. The good news. Effective mud management is entirely possible, and it starts with water control. So now I wanna talk about water diversion and drainage. Mud is essentially a mixture of three things. Soil, organic matter from either hay or manure and water. You can't control the rain, but you absolutely can control where the water goes. And this is the foundation of any good mud management plan. So first you need to divert your roof runoff. This is a huge one. A barn roof collects thousands of gallons of water during a single downpour, and it often dumps that water right into your highest traffic areas, like around your gates or alleyways. One solution is to install gutters or downspouts on all barns. And run in shelters, and then direct that water away from your paddocks and sacrifice lots. You can use solid pipes for this or a French drain system to channel it to a safe, well vegetated area, farther out in the pasture or in your farm yard. You also need to think about surface grading and the slope around your barns and heavy use areas. When you're building a new structure or pad, always locate them on the highest, naturally well drained ground. If it's not already on the highest area and you're already having drainage issues, then consider having some grading done to correct that slope. The ideal slope, you want to aim for a gentle slope of about two to 5% to encourage that surface water to run off. Around here we probably have some steeper slopes to contend with, and those steeper slopes can end up causing erosion. Number three, we wanna think about French drains and then swales as well. So French drains are just trenches filled with gravel. Often they contain a perforated pipe that collect that subsurface water and then channel it away. Swales are shallow, wide vegetated ditches designed to slow down surface runoff and filter it before it leaves your property. By intercepting and redirecting the water, you're preventing the soil from becoming saturated in the first place. So this next one I'm gonna talk about is very big, especially on a lot of our farms that are small acreages. But this is the construction of a high traffic pad, a sacrifice lot. Or a heavy use area. There's a lot of different names. But once you've managed the water, now you need to protect the areas where your animals are gonna congregate the most. This is typically around your gates, around your water troughs, any feeding areas, and your shelters. We consider these all your heavy use areas. The concept here is to create a permanent hard-wearing surface that water can drain through while keeping the animals' hooves off the native soil. You can do this in a number of ways. option is to build a high traffic pad using gravel. First, you would excavate the area, dig out the top layer of muddy soil, dig down to hard clay, typically six to eight inches. Then you wanna make sure you put down a geotextile fabric. Now this is the secret weapon This is going to act as a barrier preventing your expensive gravel from sinking into that clay subsoil, and it's gonna keep that underlying mud from pushing up, and it significantly extends the life of your heavy use pad. After your geotextile fabric, you're gonna add a layer of large crushed stone and compact that down well, and this is your drainage layer. And then you wanna top it with a finer, angular, crushed stone, or Granite screenings or some sort of footing layer. This material, is an inch or smaller. This locks together and provides a firm comfortable surface for your animals to walk on. And then alternative stabilization. So for less permanent or extremely muddy spots, you can look into mud control grids or geo cells. These work on hillside as well, where the gravel tends to get pushed down the hill. But these are plastic honeycomb structures that are laid on top of your geotextile fabric. And they keep the aggregate contained and distribute the animals' weight over a larger area. So this helps keep the gravel where you put it, especially when it's on a slope. But please remember that your sacrifice lot is gonna be very important to maintaining your pastures, especially if you have, smaller paddocks or something like that. So even if you don't have a constructed permanent dry lot system, take a pasture that is well draining and this is gonna be your feeding area. This is gonna be an area that tends to get abused more so that you can protect your larger pastures from being permanently damaged. So that will kind of lead us into some pasture management strategies for our wet winter weather. So a thick, healthy stand of grass, of course, is gonna be the best mud Defense. Research in New Zealand documented a 50 to 64% reduction in spring pasture productivity following wet winter treading damage. So just the walking across wet pastures, the damage that animals do by doing that. Strategies to reduce the damage and encourage quicker recovery should be the goal. So deep root systems, which are characteristic of healthy forage stands, create channels for water to soak into the soil more rapidly. So you want to avoid overgrazing, never let the grass get grazed below three to four inches. The taller the grass means the deeper the root system, and they're able to create those channels for the water to soak in, and it's gonna act like a sponge. Taller grass blades slow the water down as well, allowing it to soak in rather than run off. And then you're gonna need to rest wet pastures. This may be difficult because we want our animals to be able to go out, but when a field is saturated, the animals need to be kept on your sacrifice lot or your dry lot. Hooves on wet ground do considerable damage to your grass. And then we need to talk about manure management. So manure is organic matter. It holds water and it becomes mud. So in your heavy use areas, your sacrifice lots, you need to clean the manure out of these areas daily, weekly, as often as you can to keep that manure from turning into mud, especially when it gets mixed with hay they refused. These areas can quickly turn muddy. Then you wanna store your manure away from an area that's gonna drain into your pasture. And ideally you're gonna wanna start a composting system. Composting that turns that waste into a valuable soil amendment that you can then apply back onto your larger pastures. So in conclusion, mud management is a year-round commitment, even though we tend to think about it more in the winter when it's wet. And we're out there feeding more often, but thinking about it ahead of time, investing in proper water diversion and constructing a durable high traffic pad, practicing smart pasture and manure management. All these can drastically reduce the mess and prevent costly health issues and make your farm a safer, healthier farm for you and your livestock this winter. So if you're just getting started, don't try to fix the whole farm at once. But these dry spells in the fall, do make it easier to bring heavier equipment in if you do need to do grading or install french drains and that sort of thing. But start with your most critical high traffic areas around your gates, your entrances, in and out of your barn, and you'll be amazed at the difference that it makes. So that's all I have for you today. Thank you for tuning in to the Extension Connection Podcast.