Setting Up A Good Pasture For Your Horse :Part-II

There are three elements that go into setting up a good pasture for a horse: food, fencing and water. In Part-I, we talked about preparing pasture to provide good nutrious food.

Let’s continue with food.

Good pasture management is not only good for your horse; it is also good for your pocketbook. If your pasture is healthy and nutritious, you can cut back, or eliminate the addition of hay to the diet, saving you money, time at each feeding and the clean up that always comes after feeding hay to a barn full of horses!

For anyone who owns a horse that spends more than a few minutes a day in a green field, I recommend that you should know exactly what is in that field. The plants, and the nutritional value of those plants. Otherwise, it is tricky at best, or impossible in the worst-case scenario to know how much nutrition your horse is, or isn’t getting on any given day. This lack of knowledge can cost you in feed bills, worming bills and in the health of your horse.

I recommend that each year you fertilize your pasture and do a general clean up that includes looking for debris and checking fence. Depending on what part of the country you live in, the fertilization time will change, but your local Ag office can help you with the scheduling. I am not suggesting that you purchase an expensive, synthetic fertilizer. What I am suggesting is that you check with your Ag office and vet to get their list of recommendations for local, organic fertilizers. This may include cow manure, horse manure, etc.

It is important that you check with your local professionals to ensure that you fertilize at the right time of the year. For example, if you are in a hot, high humidity climate, you don’t want to spread animal manure on your pasture in July because the neighbors are going to shoot you. Not only will manure give off a strong odor, it will also attract bugs, which can lead to worm infestations and result in your horse being exposed to parasites in your own field. The last thing you want to do is “fix one problem and cause three new ones.” Also, be sure to check about whether or not you should allow your horses back into the field after fertilizing and if not, how long should you wait? Again, if your horse is going to be eating the grass in that field and you coat it with fertilizer, you will need to check out the health risks beforehand and plan ahead.
If you are not going to have a horse in your field for another year, this is the perfect time to check out the nutritional value of the field and prepare it for your expected friend. If I fertilize a field in the fall, I can expect to see results the following summer, so planning well ahead is essential and now is the time to begin.

Maintaining a healthy, productive pasture is a year round job for every horseman who wants to get the most out of their pasture. By starting now, you should have a wonderful pasture by the time your horse arrives.