Mud

[bill not in oh]

I've got about 150' of dirt 'road' between my house and barn. Over the last few months, it has become rutted and VERY muddy. My [4wd] truck gets through it OK, but in a couple of week I'm going to need to pull a trailer with 1200 lbs of pigs in it through this area. Not going to work as things are now. Maybe if we had a hard freeze, but the long-range forecast isn't encouraging.

I'm looking for ideas for making this area passable for this situation. Any excavation is pretty much out of the question - wrong time of the year both logistically and financially. My current thought is to apply a couple hundred or so bales of mulch hay/straw which would mix in with the mud and hopefully create a sort of adobe mix that would provide a more stable and smoother surface.

Anyone have any thoughts on this or any other solutions?

[DenverGirlie]

the Hay sounds good somewhat... what about laying down torn up carpeting on top of that hay/ dirt mixture? Contact the local carpet place, ask if you can have the stuff they are pulling out of homes and tossing?

I've also seend people re-grade their own roads/ driveways by puling a mattress box spring behind their truck.

[big rockpile]

All I can think is 2" rock.Got the same problem one streach of our road.

big rockpile

[Silvercreek Farmer]

Originally Posted by big rockpile

All I can think is 2" rock.Got the same problem one streach of our road.

big rockpile

I agree, when it comes down to it that is the only thing that going to work, maybe just get a small load and hit the worst spots, perhaps just 2 tracks for the tires instead of the eniire thing...

[uncle Will in In.]

Put woven wire down both sides of the lane and make the pigs walk out. Sell the pigs and buy a couple loads of stone for the driveway. Do you have any way to drive where you haven't got it cut up. Or load the pigs in the back of the truck.

[wilderness1989]

Originally Posted by big rockpile

All I can think is 2" rock.Got the same problem one streach of our road.

big rockpile

2" rock is what I used on my lane in MO and it worked fine. After you get it stabalized with the 2" follow up with 1" with fines. Will make a nice surface.

[bill not in oh]

Never considered carpet... That might help for a temp fix.

Rock was, of course, my first thought and certainly would be the ideal fix short of building a paved road. Problem there is that I've got about 10" of topsoil in that area before hitting the clay base. I'm thinking that topsoil should be removed (to one of my gardens) and replaced with some fill dirt/base course before the rock is put in place. If I add the rock now, I'm afraid it would just disappear into the mud. I can't imagine how much 2-3" rock it would take to displace that mud even for a couple of tracks, let alone 1800 sq.ft. And I don't have a Big Rockpile to get the rocks from....

Walking the porkers out probably isn't doable - it's about a quarter mile from where they are to the street which is where they get picked up by the counselor from Camp No-Return... In my truck bed? Might work, but getting back through that muck with an extra 1200#?

[Silvercreek Farmer]

Perhaps only 2 or 3 at a time in the truck, it would probably work and save you a bunch of effort. The carpet idea sounds terrible to me, first you would have to get it there, and that much carpet would weigh more than 1200 lbs, then you would have to lay it out, andeventually you would have to clean up and dispose of 150 ft of wet muddy carpet. Even if you covered it in gravel, I imagine that it would surface, tear up, and be strung out everywhere, did I mention it sounds like a terrible idea to me...

[Little Quacker in OR]

No clue about your drive way but I am wondering if letting the pigs walk themselves as suggested would be worth a second look? My neighbor moves his pigs and steers quite a distance using stock panels. He just sets up what he has on both sides...puts an "end" in on the distant end..walks the stock into the now really long "pen"...then just starts taking the sides away from the starting point and shrinking the pen...then extends it again.

Quite a few times us neighbors will help him by holding portable panels in place and moving right along with the stock.

I helped him put straw down in one place at the exit to his barn to help get the steers out of the muck...it was like putting that straw down a black hole and didn't help at all. Don't know if it would be the same situation for your drive way or not. Good luck, this is a sticky problem.

LQ

[IDgoats]

When i was a teenager the neighbor from kansas used to have me and my brother walk his sows home from his other place to his house by putting a bale string on there leg above the hock in a slip knot then we could control them by getting behind them and driveing them, if they strted to go to fast our wrong way just pull them off to one side worked for us for yrs. Also we had same problem when i was kid with our drive way and big milk trucks came to pick up milk so we went to crk, bottom and hauled nic sized rocks to fill in ruts every weekend, then would store couple loads her and there along drive way when new rutts formed fill them in after couple yrs. put road mix on top to make smooth road. that roads forty yrs old still in nice shape.

[thedonkeyman]

This little Piggy went to market, this little Piggy stayed home.
Put a holding PEN at the end of the drive and MUD, to load out of. RUN two HOT ! electric wires from the HOG PEN to the holding pen, then put some feed in the holding Pen and call Sooooooooooooeeeeeeeeee! follow them up, then when their in the loading pen and the gate is shut, say...
"That Ill do Pig".
Just that simple. HOG fence, ha! is cheaper than Rock, for now.
thedonkeyman from Oregon. never owned one, but saw the movie.

[BackwoodsIdaho]

TYPAR and 4" of 2" minus rock or CAP rock. I have built a lot of roads on my property and in my job as a construction manager in North Idaho so I know the challenges or mud, water, snow etc. This works.

[fishhead]

Straw will attract and hold water and prolong the soft condition.

If you can get it 3/4" minus crushed rock will work wonders for firming it up and it only takes a couple of inches. If you can raise the height of the driveway with sand first it will dry faster. You might also consider creating ditches to help dry the driveway.

The driveway into my farm gets really soft in the spring so I put down some crushed rock in the worst spots and it firmed it right up. I was surprised at how little it took.

[rambler]

You're getting good advise on how to build the road - once it dries up. Sounds like you knew that & how to. Bet you won't delay for next year....

Stop driving on that area for now. Let it firm up. If you get a good freezig period, then put the old straw/hay down. It will insulate the cold in, & keep it frozen.

Rock added now, any size, is just wasted. Don't do that.

If it stays like it is, good luck. The straw mixed in with the mud will help a little, but it's a lot of work and the results won't be all that great. You would need a lot of straw to make it worthewhile, and then that much isn't worth while for just one trip.....

--->Paul

[agmantoo]

1200 lbs of pigs really is not all that much weight. I assume these pigs are riding in a trailer? If so, just get a local person with a big farm tractor to pull the load to where you want it. I have to come up a small hill with a load of feeder calves weighing around 14000 lbs. and I have a homemade hitch that connects the gooseneck to the tractor. Seldom will the tractor even attempt to spin and if it did I would just lock the differential.

[Farmer Willy]

Sounds like the issue is not having the money to fix the road proper. I'd second having someone pull the trailer out with a tractor, kick them a few bucks for the effort. Next best option is to run two strands of hot barbed wire to make a chute and drive them down to where the ground is more solid. This assumes you use a hot wire to keep your hogs corraled now and thus have a charger on the place.

[Cabin Fever]

You could always corduroy the driveway. Cedar or tamarack would work the best, but if all you need is to improve it for this one load, any variety would work and you could probably get by with a small diameter, too. I've been on some corduroy roads thru bogs that are 100 years old and still holding up.

[js2743]

if your pick up truck will go through there now then it would go even better with 1200 extra pounds in the back i think it would give ya extra traction so just load them up and take off to the highway.

[Jolly]

Originally Posted by Cabin Fever

You could always corduroy the driveway. Cedar or tamarack would work the best, but if all you need is to improve it for this one load, any variety would work and you could probably get by with a small diameter, too. I've been on some corduroy roads thru bogs that are 100 years old and still holding up.

Kind of what I thought, but if he's got a sawmill near, lots of times they'll give you the slabs....

[ginny63]

We live in SE Kansas, What is Mud? We haven't had rain in so long, we don't remember what mud is.