We've seen a few people ask about getting rid of the grass on tracks for laminitic and grass affected horses for Spring and Summer. Our track systems cover 18 acres of land which makes up about 1 and 1/2 miles long all together. There's a few things we do that keeps the grass from growing through.
1) We purposely let the track get trashed in Winter. When the bad weather comes, we let the tracks get churned up to a degree and then move the bigger herds onto the 'Winter' portion of the track. If the weather is too bad, we'll open the track gate up to the centre fields where we let the grass grow to really bad quality, standing hay. This is normally an option for us if the tracks have flooded from constant rain as we are on undulating ground. They do not stay on here for very long however (average 4-6 weeks) as Laminitis is always a risk - not just in the summer with short, lush grass.
2) In the drier portions of the year, we use a self made square looking thing we call 'the pully or the big square thing' to scoop up muck which does tend to take a small layer of dirt with it too. We also regularly use a harrow, again when weather permits.
3) We have wide tracks for machinery but we also have bigger herds to use the track daily - our herds range from 10-15. If you only have a small amount of horses on your track system but really wide tracks, think about changing the width to better manage your grass. As long as they can get around safely, you don't need super wide tracks. On average, we work on 1M per horse for width.
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