Assessing Grazing Lands:
Assess Grazing Lands:
When assessing a pasture, you want mark 25ft sections and examine the type of land that is at the 25ft mark. Is there grass, a weed, or it is bare? When you come to a conclusion, record it. How many recording you do, depends on how big the field is.
To keep your fields healthy, I recommend that you rotate fields. If you have one big field, section it off into two pastures. This way the horses cannot take advantage of one big field to eat. By moving the horses between the two fields and supplementing hay as needed, this will give the grass in the resting field time to grow back. Also, test the soil to see what your pastures might be lacking. Keep in mind that during the spring when the grass is growing back there is a high risk of laminitis to occur. The new grass is high in sugary chloroplasts, with can cause the laminitis.
Cleaning the pastures regularly will reduce the amount of fecal matter and the chance of having parasites. Keeping the grass height around 3 or more inches ensures that the horse is getting the right nutrients because there isn’t much in the stem.
When assessing a pasture, you want mark 25ft sections and examine the type of land that is at the 25ft mark. Is there grass, a weed, or it is bare? When you come to a conclusion, record it. How many recording you do, depends on how big the field is.
To keep your fields healthy, I recommend that you rotate fields. If you have one big field, section it off into two pastures. This way the horses cannot take advantage of one big field to eat. By moving the horses between the two fields and supplementing hay as needed, this will give the grass in the resting field time to grow back. Also, test the soil to see what your pastures might be lacking. Keep in mind that during the spring when the grass is growing back there is a high risk of laminitis to occur. The new grass is high in sugary chloroplasts, with can cause the laminitis.
Cleaning the pastures regularly will reduce the amount of fecal matter and the chance of having parasites. Keeping the grass height around 3 or more inches ensures that the horse is getting the right nutrients because there isn’t much in the stem.