Gate opening mess

[bird dog]

With all the rain we have had this fall my gate openings between pastures are a mess. Its so bad that the cows don't want to even go through them unless they are sure I'm going to feed them. We've now been dry for two weeks but the mud in the openings is a series of holes about a foot deep. Soil is blackland gumbo and the terrain is flat.

Usually when it gets like this I can take the front bucket on the tractor to drag it back smooth when it dries up but it was still to sticky to do anything today.

Any reasonably priced suggestions to help with this? Rock has to come from a long way so is somewhat expensive and it would take a bunch. Would adding lime to the soil help any?

Thanks

 

[greybeard]

"Would adding lime to the soil help any?"
It has to be powdered..quicklime I think it's called. It will help, but it too makes a mess......turns the area into a slick mess at first. Absorbs about 40% it's weight in water.
Can't be just poured on top either, it needs to be incorporated into the mud. I most recently used it on a roadway between where the county maintenance stopped and my property began that had turned into a quagmire of dirt, clay, and decomposing leaves and pine needles. Always in the shade so it couldn't dry out.
I found it took a whole lot more lime than what the bag recommended.
Problem comes when it gets more rain on top of it. It can get wet and soggy again.

I fixed one muddy gateway with about a dozen 80lb sacks of sackcrete at $3.50/bag. Used my garden tiller to incorporate it in a little at a time. It's held up good now for 3 years. your results may vary.
(the tiller didn't survive the endeavor.cement got past the seals and ate the seals, bearings up)

If it's not a very big area, broken up sheetrock will work, assuming you have an area around there where they are building new homes and you can get the scraps. Wasn't worth it for me to go digging thru their big dumpsters.

 

[BRYANT]

if you have a cement batch plant close by sometimes you can buy their wash out really cheap, around here they will give it to you free a lot of the time if you haul it your self. I might would look at something like that, don't know if something like that would work or not but its cheap filler for mud holes.

 

[M.Magis]

I deal with this from Nov to April every year. I'm sick of it already this year, the rain just never stops. The only thing I've found to stop the problem permanently is a truck load of gravel.

 

[slick4591]

if you have a cement batch plant close by sometimes you can buy their wash out really cheap, around here they will give it to you free a lot of the time if you haul it your self. I might would look at something like that, don't know if something like that would work or not but its cheap filler for mud holes.

If I were using the wash out I would dig out some dirt and spread it thick. I got three semi loads of it back in the summer to try and make a drive and parking area to the barn. Wash out was free but had to pay trucking. I tried to stretch it out and had a few thin spots which showed up during all the rain we had. Thick part made a good base. I'm in the process now of getting flex base (crushed concrete) to help out those thin places and make it a little wider.

 

[greybeard]

Lots of redi-mix cement plants around here but washout is hard to get.....everyone is on to that and you pretty much have to 'know someone' or grease some palms to get any. Contractors that buy the redi-mix are also getting most of the washout nowadays.

 

[Silver]

Sometimes there are places / landfills that stockpile old torn up asphalt. That stuff packs in nicely and lasts well.

 

[Jeanne - Simme Valley]

Around here, a truck load of gravel is nice, but it is definitely NOT permanent, unless you clean it out & put fabric down.
Someone on here said they put logs side by side in a bad muddy area and that held up for quite a while.

 

[True Grit Farms]

Old tires filled with sand and gravel hold up good.

 

[ddd75]

Sometimes there are places / landfills that stockpile old torn up asphalt. That stuff packs in nicely and lasts well.

hard to find now as they are reusing it for new blacktop

 

[ddd75]

I deal with this from Nov to April every year. I'm sick of it already this year, the rain just never stops. The only thing I've found to stop the problem permanently is a truck load of gravel.

only about 4 months to actually get anything done around here!



i'm finally running concrete to concrete to feed .. its nice

 

[bird dog]

True Grit, that is an interesting idea. Maybe use those along one side of the opening to create a sidewalk for the cows to walk across while the rest of the opening could be used for tractor traffic. Would the cows be smart enough to use it?

 

[M.Magis]

Around here, a truck load of gravel is nice, but it is definitely NOT permanent, unless you clean it out & put fabric down.
Someone on here said they put logs side by side in a bad muddy area and that held up for quite a while.

Permanent may not have been the best term, you're right. But when dumped deep enough it does last a good while if the soil around it can hold up.

 

[Katpau]

Our soil is black mud and we have about 6 months of rain in these parts, so gate openings quickly turn into the same conditions you describe. It is not far to have rock hauled to our property, but many of the pastures can only be accessed by tractor or ATV, so we often need to transport the rock up to a mile in the bucket of a tractor or in the dump bed of our Kubota RTV. We bought some road fabric and have laid it down anywhere we need to control mud. You can make a pretty good road that will last for years with fabric and just a few inches of rock. The fabric prevents the rock from working its way down into the ground so you need much less and you won't be needing to haul in more every few years. We also used it to set up places where we feed in winter.

 

[76 Bar]

Thanks for that info Katpau...greatly appreciated. Please share the brand of road fabric, where you purchased it and your experience with its longevity. TIA.

 

[Silver]

I'd probably go with a woven cloth if you're going to keep it fairly shallow. Less likely to puncture.
Up here any road building company usually has some in stock, might have a part roll you could get for cheap. Any company that is a Nilex dealer will carry whatever you need. Not sure if Nilex is in the US or not. Just google geotextiles.
I would suggest a bare minimum of 8" cover over any textile. It has a way of popping up and making a mess. Also, the more cover you put on it the better "bridge" your material will form on top of the fabric. 2" of cover tends not to pack to itself. 12" would be best if you could do it. Even 8" good clay with a 4" gravel cap.

 

[Nesikep]

I'd consider trying to put some old fenceposts laying flat in the area.. if one layer sinks put another layer on the opposite way.. would be cheap if you got some laying around

 

[Katpau]

Thanks for that info Katpau...greatly appreciated. Please share the brand of road fabric, where you purchased it and your experience with its longevity. TIA.

We purchase our road fabric at Flury Supply, a logging supply company that is located just down the road from our ranch. I don't know the brand but it is a heavy woven plastic. Our Farmers Cooperative also has it. We first built a cow road using it about 15 years ago. At that time we were calving in a flat pasture on the other side of a small creek from our feed barn. We had made a hardened crossing over the creek years ago that held up well, but the trail from the main pasture traveled past a swampy area, through several gates and down a trail that turned into mud so deep the little calves would be lunging through mud up to their bellies. We rolled out about 500 feet of fabric about 10 feet wide and covered with 6 to 8 inches of rock. We would have liked to put it on thicker, but hauling it in the RTV a few bucket scoops at a time, discouraged that. That road is still good today. We do haul rock in when ever we get a spot that is puddling or shows exposed fabric, but there has not been as much maintenance as we expected. We have added many other roads and pads since then.

We can buy the fabric by the foot, but we now keep a roll on hand, so we always have some whenever we decide to work on another project. This is a large ranch and there are always more projects.

 

[Katpau]

I should add that the first road was made using rock we excavated using the backhoe from a nearby hill. It was of poor quality and broke down pretty quickly, but it has held up well despite that. We have purchased quality rock for later projects, like around buildings, and that works even better. It also meant we did not need to spend all of that extra time working up rock.

 

[76 Bar]

Thanks for the detailed comments Katpau...very helpful!!!