Horse Arena Drags & Groomers: How to Choose the Right Equipment for Your Riding Surface

Time to Take Action: Give Your Horse Arena Some Love with the Correct Maintenance

We all know what happens if we don’t water our plants and lawn, right? But do you know that the same thing goes
for your horse arena footing? You need to give your arena surface the attention it deserves, to help it perform better! This is what we like to call arena maintenance. Watering and daily grooming of  your arena are essential to keep a consistent riding surface for your horse.

A technical arena drag or groomer pulled behind your tractor or ATV  is the most important part of keeping your arena footing level and at it’s Best. But not all arena drags are suited for all surface types.

Let’s explore the options:

How to Choose the Right Arena Drag for Any Type of Equestrian Surface

1. Sand arenas with clean washed sand, no additives

Sand horse arenas need a good arena groomer with regular straight tines and a good working leveling blade. The leveling blade should be on a swing, so it catches and releases high spots and eliminates any unevenness in the arena footing.

2. Sand arenas with clay/silt content, no sand additives

A common arena drag with S tines and a functioning level blade should be used on sandy loams and sand/clay blends as these type of arena footings can compact too much and make the riding surface overly hard. They need to be loosened up with ripper tines more often.

3. Sand with Geotextile/fiber additives

Sand arenas mixed with geotextile footing are the new standard for jumping and dressage disciplines. All arenas with geotextile sand additives require a special arena drag with coil tines – no S tines or straight tines should be on these surfaces as they disturb and rip up the root system that you are trying to achieve with the addition of geotextile and synthetic sand additives.

Over time, even the geotextile surfaces tend to become too compacted depending on the type of sand used. Then you should use the ripper tines or a rotary tiller to loosen up the surface and remix the geotextiles.

4. Efficient Watering and grooming in one simple step

Footing Solutions USA offers variety of arena drag models to keep any horse arena footing perfect. From the smaller harrows for ATVs,  gators, electric gators, quads to tractor models with a lot of features, like the addition of a water tank, we have an arena groomer to suit your needs.