There are over 100 million horses, donkeys and mules in the world today and owners of these animals can be found on almost every continent and in almost every society. The Horse Course will cover many unique aspects of equine ownership and touch upon the science behind many of today’s management practices.
Pasture Management
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The Horse Course: Introduction to Basic Care and Management
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Feeding Management
The topics this week will focus on equid nutrition. Understanding how and what to feed these animals is one of the most important aspects of basic care. We will start with digestive anatomy, how to evaluate your animal’s nutrient requirements, and then jump into feeding management. We will round out the week discussing colic and other nutritional disorders.
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Chris J. Mortensen, Ph.D.Professor
Animal Sciences
Alright, in this lecture we're going to jump into pasture management.
And you know, kind of talk about how to
preserve your pastures, or establish your pastures and.
Again I always like to start off with
a review, and you know, reviewing forage, again,
a well maintained pasture can help a horse
or donkey or mule meet its daily forage requirement.
So that's really the purpose of, of pastures.
Now some of the benefits of having a well
maintained pasture is, it's going to reduce your feed costs.
You're not going to go out and have to buy
lots and lots of hay all the time year round.
So, you know with, with, there are costs associated
with pastures, there are maintenance costs associated with pastures,
as far as the fencing and all you know,
fertilizing, things we don't have time to go in.
Go into in this lecture, but, you know, once you get through that you can
save yourself some money, you know, without
having to purchase hay once they get established.
Now, there's many benefits to the horse's health with pastures, you
know, they're, they're allowed to get outside and run and exercise.
Now, [COUGH] I found this picture after I did my body condition score lecture,
so I, I wish I had it but this is the, the perfect example of
an obese animal and our ponies and
sometimes our donkeys and other hybrids tend
to be a little bit fatter, because we don't, we, we tend to overfeed' em.
But this is a perfect, perfect example of a body condition score nine.
So if you want to look, you can see that really
cresty neck and then you can see the, the deep furough.
In that back like, like I called it during that one presentation fat fally.
I mean that is an obese horse.
But he's having fun, he's exercising, so that's good.
Hopefully we'll lose some of that weight.
But you know, it's very, very beneficial to them
to be on pasture, again Reduces stress and boredom.
Going back to those behavioral issues, you know with the Caribbean
Horse here, if they're outside, they tend to do this less.
And again, reducing cost you know, you're not having an animal
you know, if they're maintained on pasture, they're not in the stall.
You're not going to have to clean that stall every
day like you should, your reduced bedding costs reduced waste
of bedding stuff like that so, so again very, very
beneficial and again then also for the animal's well being.
Going back to that social interaction you know these two
animals all are grooming each other, nuzzling each other that social
interaction, you know these are social species so when you put
them together in pastures they are able to act like horses.
Now one of the big things with pastures though, is people tend
to overstock, they tend to put too many animals in a small area.
So you know, the question is how many animals can they fit in a pasture?
And you have to remember a pasture is purpose, Is to provide
enough forage for that animal, to, to meet their forage requirement daily.
So you have to ensure you have enough space.
So how much is that?
And again, going back into over, overstocking,
you know, typical problem in the horse industry,
is people putting, you know again, too many animals on, on such a small space.
So that's going to result in soil erosion,
compaction, over grazing, plants are going to get destroyed.
So you're going to end up with a dry lot, you know, in the end.
So this is why you always want to to maintain your pastures, and,
and, and main, and make sure you have enough pastures for your horses.
And that's why management so important.
So if we look at the, the, the rule of thumb guidelines, so this is
what we always you know teach our students and, and our horse owners, you know
so typically you should provide two acres per adult horse or one acre per yearling
pony or a donkey you know, a smaller equid, you would put' em on one acre.
So how big is that?
Well, for us in the United States, or in the America's, that's,
that one acre is equal to you know, an American football field.
Or for other folks in the world you know, the the 0.8 hectare is going to be
equal to about half the size of, of a soccer pitch, or what you call football.
So that's what you're looking at with an acre.
Now, this is obviously going to vary, and, you know, your environment, or your
region of the world, is going to be dependent on how much acreage you'll need.
So in drier Parts of the world, or in
deserts where plants are more sparse, more spread out.
You're going to need more acres, you can some
upwards of eight to ten acres per horse,
or if you're in a very hydrated part
of the world, where, where things grow plentiful.
I mean down here in Florida we get lots of
rain typically, our pastures are, are green most of the year.
You know, you, you, you, that you may need two acres, maybe not, a
little less, but you know, will maintain that two acre that two acre rule.
Time of year's going to dictate, and we're going to get
a little bit more into this here in a minute.
You know, but here you can see your, your warm
and cool season grasses, so you have some, some peaks here.
And then you have some valleys here.
So you know, during those valleys you may need a little bit more acreage.
If you're maintaining them on pasture and not providing any hay.
So that's going to have an effect, and then weather patterns.
Drought is something that we all face
throughout the world especially with the, the, the
climate being kind of crazy as it has been lately and here in the United Sates.
So your pastures are, are not going to grow as well.
Your plants aren't going to grow as well during times of drought.
Unless you can irrigate, which does become a problem during drought.
You know, you're going to have to increase that acreage and, and,
You know, I've dealt with some severe drought here in the south,
southeastern United States, and it was very, very difficult for horse
owners to, to maintain and save their pastures, and also find hay.
Because everybody else was, was looking for hay to supplement and it
was really kind of a critical period a few years ago, with that.
So that always be prepared for those for really dry times.
Now we'll talk about different forages in a pasture you may have.
You know, it's always recommended that you have a mixture of
grass and legume plants which we will talk about in different ones.
And then you want a combination of warm and cool season plants.
And we'll kind of talk about what that means.
So, this is going to be based kind of of on, on here in Florida.
And, you know,, the first part we're going to
look at is grass and our warm season grasses.
So, two typical grasses that we have here in Florida
is Bermuda grass and then you may see some Bahia grass.
So, you can see in this image the growth curves, you know, for The
Bahia Grass starts in April, Bermuda Grass
in May and kind of carries through October.
So we have good coverage during the summer
months, or the warm season of these grasses growing.
Now when we mix in our legume plants.
So in this example I used Red Clover, and Bush Clover is not as, not as more
common in Florida, but it's common around the world, so I kind of put it in here.
You can see this bush, this Red Clover, starts growing
in, in, in March and then kind of tails out in July.
But overall if you look at this pasture, we have
good coverage from really mid march to, to mid late September.
So, we have enough mixture of plants, that
it should provide enough forge for our animals.
And typically you know you have one grass and one
legume, or you can mix and match a few of them.
Now we have to start looking at our cool season plants.
So we'll start with our cool season grasses
and rye grass is pretty common here in Florida.
So you can see rye grass doesn't really get going until mid October and
then around May, end of spring it starts to peter out a little bit.
So again we have good coverage during the winter months.
Now if we add in our legume plants or
cool season legume, So in this example is white clover.
You can see white clover starts beginning in September, and
then kind of grows through, similar to rye grass, into May.
Now in this example, we have pretty good
coverage throughout the year, but you will notice,
really, the months of September, you know, late
August through September, we don't have really good coverage.
And this is where you would, you would
most likely want to take your animals off pasture.
Allow those pastures to recover.
Stick your animals in, in kind of a dry lot area, or a sacrificial
area, and we, we'll talk about this more in a second, and feed em hay.
You know, that, that's always a good
management practice to save and maintain your pasture.
So the different types of grazing systems, and one is continuous grazing, and
this is where the animal has access to the, the pasture year around.
So they're out there all the time.
And you have enough, hopefully to take care
of 'em, but this is generally not recommended
because this is the number one system that
results in, in overgrazing, especially with smaller acreages.
And especially when you don't have a lot of wiggle room, you don't
have a lot of acreage, and all the sudden, you know, your pasture
gets kind of wiped out in a season, there was drought They got overgrazed
and you are spending a lot of money of trying to reestablish that pasture.
So, so typically we don't recommend this system with horse owners.
Now, another system that that kind of helps alleviates some of
those concerns is, is partial grazing Or partial-season grazing management system.
So this is where you put the, the animals on the pastures when during
the growth season so depending on where you are in the world and what
type of forage you have we will dictate when you would release those animals
out on to your pastures to allow them to get their forage from those plants.
Now again, this is a good management tool, is when you're not during the growth
season, you, they're off pasture in, like, a
dry lot area, where you provide them hay.
So they're still getting daily forage, just
in a different form than their pasture.
And then this kind of rolls into ano, another
different type, a partial season or limited turnout time.
And you know since the behavior we, we talked about.
Horses need to be turned out daily.
You know this is a one management system as you turn em
out to the pastures, for a limited amount of time per day.
So some people, you know they'll release them in the morning when
they get home, in the evening they'll, they'll bring their animals in.
Some people only put them out for a couple of hours.
And you can see from this example here,
these horses are limited turnout, because they're fenced in.
You can see that fence all the way around them and that's just, they're turned
out to that portion of the pasture, allowed
to graze and either shifted or brought in.
Now this is actually a very, very good
management system for especially the lush times of year.
So let's say for example you've had an animal
who has been eating dry hay throughout the winter months.
And then bam, it's spring, everything's greening up.
Lots of moisture in, in those plants, a lot of
energy they're very energy dense, you turn your animals out.
And if you don't bring them in, they can get too many nutrients and overwhelm
that digestive tract, which can lead to laminitis
and colic and some, you know, other disorders.
So, this is an ideal system, especially early in the spring, where
you turn' em out for a limited amount of time, bring' em in.
And then adjust them, which we'll talk about you
know, especially with the colicluture on their new diet.
Now rotational grazing is the number one recommended system,
or the most recommended system to manage your pastures.
And this is where you take your acreage and you divide it up into small pastures.
Okay?
And then, you're going to turn the animals out,
when the forge reaches about six to eight inches.
So here, you would turn them out, allow them to graze until most of the forage
is down to that three to four inches, or you can see they are in centimeters.
So it's always good to have a ruler that
you can go and, and measure your forage or your,
your grasses and plants to get an idea of
how high that is and then you take' em off.
So you let' em out, let' em graze, take
them off and rotate them to the next small pasture.
Now, some things to take in into consideration is, you know, it could
take 30 to 60 days for each of the small pastures to grow back.
So once you take them off that pasture, you
know, should take that long for them to grow back.
And each pasture should last roughly a week.
So you put them out there, you know, that acreage should
last that animal about a week and then you can rotate them
to the next one, and then hopefully by the end, you're able
to rotate them back to the first pasture that they started on.
Now, if the plants haven't grown back tall enough
yet, don't stick them back out on the pasture.
Stick them in that sacrificial area that you have and
give them some hay and allow those pastures to rest.
So in this example you can see you know on this picture on the left
you have one, two, three, four pastures and then you have this kind of coral area.
So you would rotate your animals you know through that system and then if
the pastures weren't recovered sufficiently, you stink
em in that coral system until they have.
Then you can release em again, and start, you know going through that rotation.
So that is, that's the ideal system, and really it takes a
lot of playing with you know, your own part of the world.
Or your own acreage to, to get an idea what's appropriate.
Now just some final tips on, on pasture management.
You want to, clip or mow your pasture so there's even growth.
Horses will typically go and eat the more, the more succulent
plants, the better tasting plants which is generally the younger plants.
So if everything is kind of, at the even height they can't really
selectively graze You do want to, what we call harrowing or dragging your pastures.
So you want to go out and you know, with the
manure build up, when you do this, it helps break
up the manure balls and you know, exposes those parasites
that are in there to the environment, so they die off.
So that's always a good management tip.
You want to identify and, and remove any poisonous
plants to, to your particular part of the world,
so you know, this list may not be
representative of, of where you are in the world.
So you want to make sure that, that there are not those poisonous plants in there.
Now, I will say, You know, the equids typically don't go out
and, and eat poisonous plants or look for poisonous plants to eat.
You always get that crazy animal that doesn't want to live anymore
and they will, you know, find that poisonous plant, but generally they won't.
Where this becomes a big problem is.
Is either with overgrazing, or during times of droughts when they
have nothing else to eat, and it's either, I starve or I
eat this horrible-tasting plant here, so they tend to, to eat the
horrible-tasting plant and then they get sick and then we have problems.
So if they don't have that option, that, that's always good.
Now things like, you know, spreading manure.
I know that doesn't sound fun but it's a typical practice in the equine world.
You can see a manure spreader there.
You know when you spread manure you don't want animals currently
on that pasture, so, because there's a parasite load, there are parasites
in that manure, when you spread it You want to let the environment
get at it for, for a few days or a few weeks.
Let them kill off the parasites.
And then you can put the animals on that pasture.
And we'll cover the parasite control more in
detail during the week we talk about health.
And, you know, it's you know, important to always
deworm your animals so you don't have that problem.
And then, you know the, the.
The final thing is you have to experiment with what's best for you and your system.
You know, I, I can't sit here in Florida and say, you know, for those folks
over in England, this is how you should
manage your pastures, or those folks down in
Australia, or in Asia, you know, you're going to
have to play with, with what works in
your area, talk to your other horse, horse,
excuse me, horse owners or, you know, donkey owners.
And find out what's working best for them
and then try to implement that in your system.
So, in the next lecture, we're going to kind of talk about what's colic and, you
know, how to do, how to try to prevent colic from happening in your horses.
So I'll see you then.
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