Improving your horse pasture

Now granted, the latest hot trend is the track system in which horses are fenced into a smaller paths to encourage the a more natural habitat of moving to eat. Track systems typically has hay, rest areas, and obstacles built into it. I actually love this idea for the metabolic horse or horses on small pastures.

Currently this is not it for me because I just don’t have the time to intensively manage putting hay on a million miles of paths for the horses.

 I also love the view of horses grazing on beautiful, lush fields. We are the bluegrass state for a reason.

I love the natural vitamin e they get from the green grass, the lower feeding bills because they are getting so many nutrients naturally and how much easier it is in this season of my life.

So if you’re like me and want beautiful green fields with horses munching on, look at the steps we are following on our farm.

1.      Soil test with your local extension office – Free

a.      I had my local agent actually stop by my farm and walk the pastures with me before I did the soil test just to see if he saw any poisonous plants or what he thought of the layout for fencing I had.

b.      You should separate the soil samples for each field to get individual recommendations based on area if you have larger pastures.

c.      Once the results are back in, the agent marked up the results with what mix of fertilizer I should order

snippet of my actual soil test result for a portion of my pasture. you can see how helpful this information is!

2.      Buy the fertilizer & rent the spreader typically from the same place. I think the rental was really cheap I can’t remember the exact number. I went all out on the fertilizer and got the exact mix my soil needed. (You can get by cheaper by getting a more general fertilizer). This was about $4,500

3.      Lime. This was included in the recommendation by my extension agent. (In this area of the country most people just lime without even soil testing as it’s typically needed). Liming was pretty cheap, we have a couple of contractors in the area who do this. I called the guy, he came and drove the fields! This was around $500.

4.      Mow, mow, mow. Regular bushhogging of the pastures help the good grasses get established and not crowded out by the cheap o weeds that survive off of anything. We’ve seen significant improvements in our pastures by maintaining the mowing for 2 seasons.

september 2022 when farm was first purchased

same pasture september 2023 (last year).

It's even better this year but I wanted to put equivalent months in here. This is with fertilizer, lime and mowing. After we overseed I think this pasture will truly be my favorite one.

5.      Overseed your pastures.

*Also important to note to not seed too early if your soil isn’t ready for it. My soil tests showed it was quite poorly and it takes a while (like 6 months-year) for the soil to change conditions after fertilizer/lime.

I’m honestly quite surprised at how many farm owners/horse boarding stables that DON’T do this. It’s really quite inexpensive in the horse world and it will reduce feeding costs!

My soil conservation department in my county has overseeders for rent for $10/acre. A 50 lb bag of seed costs $80/bag. Overseeding rates are 2 - 5 pounds per acre. (you’d seed 8 pounds per acre if you were planting a completely new pasture)

The only downside to overseeding is afterwards the pastures need to rest. Which means the horses have to be confined off of the pastures. We are fortunate in this as we planned to improve pastures and did not fill up the pastures with horses.

6.      Rotational grazing. This past season the SO did lots of reading on pasture management and that is when we separated the pastures. The horses definitely have their favorite grazing spots in each field in which they just absolutely destroy the grass. By confining their grazing areas it gives each area more time to recuperate. I can absolutely tell a difference in the pastures just from 1 season of this.

The end.

Thanks for reading,

-A