How Horse Arena Footing Affects Performance

A lot happens when hooves hit the ground. Even a healthy horse can get hurt on rough, compacted, or loose footing. Let’s talk about different kinds of horse arena footing and what you can do to keep your horse and riding arena in top condition.

Sand Footing

Sand is cheap and low impact, making it perfect horse arena footing for horse shows and horse training. Recent studies show a link between serious horse injuries like lesions and hard riding surfaces. In general, sand avoids these occasionally fatal and often expense injuries.

As a footing material, sand isn’t perfect. It can get muddy and compacted, or too loose and dusty when it’s dry. Inspect sand riding arenas frequently, rake out compacted areas, and consider adding additives for a smooth but bouncy track.

Stone Dust

Stone dust tracks share sand’s benefits, but it’s a lot dustier. While stone particles can be sturdier than sand, resulting in a more stable track your horse might perform better on, the dust is more irritating to you and your horse.

Minimize this by watering at least two inches into your stone dust horse arena footing. When you lay fresh footing, mix it with crumb rubber to prevent it from breaking down. There are also dust control treatments you can use but test them first. Sometimes, the chemicals are tough on hoof health by making hooves dry or brittle.

Soil

If your track is surrounded by stable natural soil with the right make-up (a good amount of sand), it can make for great horse arena footing material. However, most topsoil is a mix of clay, silt, and sand, making it prone to drying out and dusting up. The organic material in soil leads it to breaking down much easier than other options.

Rubber Mulch

Rubber mulch is expensive, but it doesn’t break down as much as organic material. It’s also stable with the right amount of give, so you’re less likely to have dust problems or compacted horse arena footing.

It gets very slippery when wet, though. In dry or very hot areas, rubber mulch can also dry out and harden. Both factors hurt horse health. Consider mixing rubber mulch with sand to get the best of both worlds.

Improve Horse Arena Footing with Additives

No matter what material you choose for your horse-riding track, the right additives can make it a dream to run on. TruTex horse arena footing solutions tighten loose sands, give your track the right amount of cushion without being too weak, and improve upper-level footing for competition show horses.

Install it yourself or have a professional analyze your track and make the right call. Either way, you want your horses and riders happy and healthy. With proper horse arena footing materials and routine maintenance, they will be.