round pen/ lunge pen surface

[Befnee's Hero]

Didn't really know where to put this so mod's please feel free to move this...

After the disaster of not having anywhere mud ridden to exercise the horses last winter I have decided I have enough room to fit a 20x20 lunge pen in. Just wondering what surface people would advise for this??? I was thinking wood fibre and have been leaning away from sand/rubber as I definitely don't want it getting deep for lunging.

Anyone had any experience with this? thoughts would be great.

P.s drainage was all dug out and area levelled before when the area I am going to use was being prepared for a 20x40 school a few years ago when YO was pro-active :happy: so no issues with drainage as it seems to stay very dry (just slippy with weedy grass there) really need to use the other half to carry on storing trailers so will only be using half of it for lunge pen.

 

[EnduranceAli]

I personally would always go for a really good quality rubber strip, which I have never seen get 'deep'. Not sure about wood fibre nowadays, but in the past I have found it dusty, but also slippery in wet weather?

Ali x

 

[joosie]

Our round pen has normal drainage and a sand base layer but the actual surface that the horses walk on is about 6 inches of crushed shells. I've never seen crushed shells used as a surface before but it is FANTASTIC - far nicer than sand, doesn't get dusty, doesn't get squidgy after lots of rain, drains extremely well and is very resilient.

I'm on a competition yard so lots of lunging and looseschooling goes on in there, sometimes 4 to 6 horses in a day for 20-30mins. Despite such heavy use it only needs to be flattened with a tractor once a fortnight.

 

[Remmy]

Joosie - are you able to find out more about the crushed shells? What kind of place supplied it? I know you're not in the UK but this sounds a really interesting idea for a surface. Don't spose you could take a close-up pic?