Arena?

Does sawdust make a good arena footing? And if not what are some good indoor and outdoor arena footings?

I've never heard of sawdust to cover an entire arena. Do you plan on using it to cover your entire arena?

Well I have an outdoor arena and the grass turned to mud which turned to dried hard impossible to work on footing so I was looking into something I could do for a suitable footing that won't hurt my horses feet. I thought of sand but it's quite expensive.

I've only seen saw dust for bedding for the pony rides at fairs and stuff because it's easy to just scoop the poop up w/ it and throw it all away.... I just think that for out door saw dust would cause a lot of problems... and when it gets wet it smells...

I think sawdust is too light. It would get sloppy and dusty.
Check out this article for some pros and cons of different footing:
http://pubs.cas.psu.edu/freepubs/pdfs/ub038.pdf

Yeah never heard of using sawdust for arena footing most places around here just us sand it stays around. Don't think sawdust would stick around with a good windstorm. We have alot of those around here

Sawdust is pretty dusty, I wouldn't recommend it for an arena flooring. :)

I've ridden in a saw dust arena.. it will become quite dusty as it breaks down even more. Unless you have a major hook up in saw dust, it really isn't cheaper because you have to keep adding to it.

I have seen is used once but it was mixed with something else but the smell was horrandous. Whenever you got in that arena, the strength of the smell of shavings was horrible and I don't mean that litghtly. I would never go there for showing again.

We use sand and water it with water mixed with calseum so it dosen`t need to get watered for long pirods of time.