121 Impact of environmental conditions and dragging schedules on changes in moisture content in equine arena footing

Abstract

Each equestrian disciplines have unique footing needs, but all disciplines require a stable and consistent footing to train, ride, and compete on. Managing footing properly is key to maintaining this surface and water application is a common treatment to control dust as well as increase the shear strength of the footing. The bulk density of the footing mixture is an important material characteristic for determining how a surface will compact, how much water it can hold, and serves as a target moisture content. While bulk density is the target, there is little information regarding how moisture content in arena footing changes over time. The objective of this study was to examine how the change in moisture content over a 5-d period was impacted by different environmental conditions and varying drag schedules. Representative footing models (RFM) were built for 3 different footing types: sand, sand with fiber, and sand with organic material. The environmental conditions were winter (7°C/75%RH), summer, humid (30°C/80%RH) and summer, dry (30°C/40%RH) and the drag schedules were daily, every other day (MWF), and weekly (W). The starting gravimetric moisture content for the each footing was determined by the bulk density: sand with fiber 21%, sand 12%, sand with organic material 14%. All footing types were statistically significant for the environmental conditions (all p-values < 0.01). The average (expressed as least squares means) moisture content decrease over the 5 d for the 3 RFM under each environmental condition are provided. While the drag schedule was notstatistically significant for the change in overall moisture content, there was statistical significance or a trend toward statistical significance in the difference between the moisture contents of the top and bottom layers of the RFMs for the sand (P = 0.066) and sand with organic material (P < 0.001). In addition, the environmental conditions were statistically significant for all 3 footing types (sand with fiber (P = 0.033), sand (P = 0.088), sand with organic material (P = 0.004). Understanding how the moisture content changes in different arena footing allows for better management of the arena surfaces at equine facilities as well as providing information on how resources, particularly water, can be best applied for maximum benefit.