MUD MANAGEMENT METHODS (MMM)
BOOTSUCKIN’MUD™-Blog Series #1
Losing your good boot or horse’s shoe in mud was a recurring event for me. Hiring or gassing up your heavy-duty equipment to extract an ATV or tractor from a mud bog stretches human resources and is time-consuming. Mud indisputably creates safety, health & potential litigious issues. It can be more severe when it is life-threatening, how a limb breaks, subsequent emergency room fees, downtime to heal & loss of earnings.
After a wet season of mud, are you left with a stack of farrier or vet bills for rain rot, infected cracked open wounds, abscessed hoofs, greasy heal, or white line disease? You or your horse may experience tendon soreness or ligament injuries after a class ride in a muddy arena, paddocks, or pastures. The bills and health issues may serve as a reminder to find a remedy for your muddy areas.
Don’t we all hold our breath when our animals race up to or through a muddy gate to be fed, hoping they don’t slip under a fence or get bumped & and slide? And then there is the hardest: deciding to put down a valuable companion animal with a broken leg after a fall in mud is heartbreaking.
Mud has no boundaries or Seasons when it is not a nuisance, health or litigious issue, or much worse. It may be time to tackle your mud mires.
In the Fall of 2023, the mud in my friend’s pasture was like quicksand and swallowed a mare up to her thighs; she was trying to use her forelimbs to get out. Nancy returned to mobilize a team but got stuck before it could reach the scene. Nancy traded in her dually for a tractor, blankets, and a rope. I walked into the mud willingly, trying to keep her mare calm, knowing she would need all her remaining energy to help pull her out. Soon, I was stuck up to my calves. We both felt uneasy, uncomfortable, and helpless.
After we got her out, she was caked in mud, cold & shivering like a leaf. This scene happens more commonly than you would think. It could be a new foal, its mother, your cattle, or yourself. As a precaution, I always take my phone when heading into someone else’s muddy pasture or hunting a missing animal, more than likely stuck in the mud, hypothermic, caked with mud, depriving them of the ability to hold heat. That day, I lost another boot, but not the mare.
You may have been in similar scenarios, you could add. I would like to hear & share them.
Mud is more than a nuisance. Mud breeds parasites, viruses & insects. Who wants to train a horse or ride in a swarm of hungry female mosquitoes and blood-letting horse flies ripping your skin to get their meal that developed in your mud puddles?
You can only blame the mud puddles and manure piles for breeding the females, as they are the only ones that require blood. Horseflies use a plunger called a proboscis thrust into your skin to slurp blood. Female Horse flies painfully TEAR skin with a laser-like cutter and then secrete an anticoagulant with their saliva to keep the blood flowing. Her saliva may cause an allergic reaction in humans or your horse, or she may share a virus or a disease with her dinner host.
If it’s time to gain some MUD MANAGEMENT METHODS Bootsuckin’MUD™ Blog Series
1-7 will answer your questions & share MUD MANAGEMENT METHODS that work.
We will cover:
Where does MUD come from? How did I get mud?
Why do I have mud? What makes mud? How do I get RID of mud?
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