If you are managing a string of horses and find yourself spending too much time cleaning stalls and spending all your money feeding your horses, check out this blog post and video. We challenge the status quo and invite you to think differently about managing your horses. Your pocketbook will thank you, and your horses and the land will thank you.
When I first started learning about sustainable farming and intensive grazing, I was in a state of confusion. Instead of discussing grass types, fertilizer, and irrigation, I knew instead about organic matter percentage in the soil, key lines, available daily forage calculation, soil fungi, cow days, and many other new terms which meant nothing to me.
There is an art and a science to managing pastures. As someone with over 30 years of riding and training horses, I had never heard anyone talk about correct pasture management, much less about soil management. What generally is discussed is the best permanent fencing type, where the barn needs to be, stall layout, shavings dealer, electrical outlet layout, etc., etc.
I realized I had a lot of barriers to overcome to understand how to manage pastures to feed horses optimally. The first barrier equestrians must overcome the idea of “portability.” So often, equestrian facilities are full of permanent 4-board fencing paddocks and large bank barns (I call them bank barns because the bank typically owns them).
Horses are turned out on the same paddocks day in and day out. The paddocks are never rested and generally turn into the bare ground with maybe 1-2 inches of green scattered randomly. Most horses are grouped with only 2-3 other horses. Some places require that every horse be turned out by itself. The barns are full of hay to supplement the paddocks because the grass cannot grow high enough to feed even a turtle.
The skyrocketing price of hay and the idea of building a $200,000 barn left me stuck. Is this the only way to own horses? I haven’t even made any money, and I’m already hundreds of thousands of dollars in cost down this road. Why does this not make any business sense?
Around this time as I was planning my equestrian facility layout, I was learning how to run a grass-fed beef operation. My friend Mark Vejnar gave me the book “Salad Bar Beef” in March of 202,1 and I was hooked. After getting Covid later that month, I read over 10 of Joel Salatin’s books on sustainable farming and permaculture. Joel Salatin helped me understand that herbivores need only a few things to be healthy and well-managed pastures, mineral, and water. It dawned on me that 1. a horse is a herbivore and 2. I have over 100 acres of grass. This is the answer!
Joel Salatin helps farmers understand that herbivores will do the mowing for you and your farm, but there is a specific way to approach rotational grazing with herbivores.
When I first started intensive grazing, the idea I had to accept was that you have to move animals daily to fresh grass. This is the basis for intensive grazing management and has many benefits to the horse (herbivore) and the grass. Many people push back and state, “but how can you keep a horse in?” Let’s be honest; they could if a horse wanted to get out of a four-board, six-string, or fence. They would jump, run into it, or shimmy their way through it. We use single-strand Polywire or Polytape because we are setting up a psychological fence. It is always electrified; it only takes once before the horse realizes they need to stay away. In our experience, herbivores, especially horses, don’t get out because they have enough to eat. Horses escape because they have either run out of food in their paddock and are frantic to get something to eat, or their buddies have been taken from them and panicked.
Another reason they don’t get out is that we keep our horses together. We practice keeping all horses together mainly for convenience, but if they have enough to eat per animal, they are too busy eating grass to nitpick at each other. The behavior issues that horses experience are because they must fight for the supplemented food thrown at them.
- “But they will founder on all that grass!” The art of rotational grazing applies to understanding how much available dry matter. If you only put horses on the amount of food they can eat in one day, they can’t overeat. That is a big hurdle you must overcome. You aren’t putting them on a 2-acre field full of clover. 2 horses and perfect grass may only require a 10x20 meter space for that day. That small space will take roughly 8 minutes to set up, and your horses will have enough food for the day.
Keeping the grazing paddock small reduces the amount of " dessert“ available to the horse. Most of the sugars are in new, short grass. We graze horses once grasses have reached full maturity and have the optimal balance of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. Our pastures have a polyculture of grasses and legumes, meaning that the horses will pick out what their bodies need. We find that our horses do not gorge themselves because they always have a fresh palate of attractive options to choose from.
Portability reduces the risks of gastric ulcers: Right now, Veterinary Medicine online states that between 91%-100% of racehorses experience gastric ulcer occurrences. Performance horses experience a 90% rate of gastric ulcers. Another article in Veterinary medicine states that 60% of performance horses share gastric ulcer issues. Horses need to be grazing for 17 hours a day. The basis of treating gastric ulcers needs to start with pasture management so the horse can have consistent forage when THEY need it. We spend so much time focusing on our barn layouts and fencing materials instead of focusing on helping the horse stay in their natural environment. We have crippled the digestive system of equines, and the gastric ulcer medical industry has skyrocketed into a multi-billion dollar industry.
Now, you may be thinking- How much time am I going to spend moving these horses each day? Probably between 20 minutes. Check out my video here on how I show you how to lay out a new pasture with Polywire and step-in posts. If you think that’s excessive, then think about how much time you spend cleaning stalls each day and how much money you spend on shavings, electricity, hay, and other artificial upkeep. Are you asking what’s best for the horse? You will find that what is best for the horse will not only save you money in the long run.
We are in the business of helping others manage their farms better so if you need more help with your farm/pastures, email us!
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Portable feeding trailer with high quality Nutrena and Purina feeds that can move wherever they are. It isn’t pretty but it is very effective and makes feed time a breeze.
Hi there!
You are now committed to looking into what you will need for portable pastures. Pat yourself on the back! You are on your way to implementing your adaptive grazing plan.
You can purchase the equipment needed for adaptive grazing for less than $500. You can have adaptive grazing spaces around your farm and get your horses out on a paddock within a week.
Here is the list:
Polywire/Poly Tape - $50-$100
Step in posts ($152/50 posts)
Energizer (solar or Energizer+battery) ($250)
Shade (optional)- FREE (TREES)!
1. Poly Wire/Poly Tape: You first need to decide if you want to use, Polytape or Polywire. These products are equally effective, but the polytape will take up more room on your reel than polywire. Some horse owners feel their horses can see the polytape better than polywire, so they naturally want to use something more visible. In our experience, if you move the horses during the day when they can see the new space, it doesn’t matter either way. We feel the poly wire is easier to roll up and put into the stakes than poly tape. It also doesn’t sag much since it isn’t as heavy as the tape strands.
2. Step-in posts are essential to your adaptive grazing plan. We are currently using plastic step in posts. The downside to these posts is that they break with excessive force during significantly colder weather. We now use a rubber mallet to pound them in because it has become very dry in our region over the summer. The “step in” option wasn’t effective, and the mallet has been a game changer. When you are pulling them out, they may feel stuck. If you gently kick the bottom of the post to loosen the stake, it will pull up easily. If you carefully put them in and pull them up, they will last many seasons.
3. Fence Chargers: Thank goodness for technology and the many options on the market for electrifying portable fencing. We have used many options, and they all tend to work well. We may prefer one option over the other depending on equipment cost to animal ratio or portability of equipment.
Solar Chargers: Solar chargers work great when you are moving animals daily. This solar charger will work great for you if you have a lot of sunshine, as we do here in South Carolina. They are light, durable, and generally dependable throughout the year. Our favorite solar charger is the Gallagher series solar charger. It has withstood many moves, and the parts have not broken on the device. It offers a consistent charge and continues to work after over two years of constant use. Another option is to use an energizer plus a marine deep-cycle battery. You will need two batteries so that one can be charged and ready at all times. We like the Speedright 1000 plus a 12 V battery for our horse paddocks. This way, the weather will rarely be an issue affecting fence performance.
4. Shade- Depending on where you are and your land, you may or may not have available shade. We are in South Carolina, where it gets sweltering during the summer months. Horses can and do often go without shade, but we know that given a preference, they would always prefer to have shade available. We have constructed a shade mobile out of an old hay wagon. It now has adjustable “wings” that expand during implementation and fold up during moves. A great option with adaptive grazing is that you can easily incorporate shade into your daily pasture plan if you have trees near your grazing areas. A couple of ideas include:
Make a set of trees or barn your central point to your pasture rotation. You can rotate circularly if a bunch of trees is in the middle, or you can make a path back to the shade, as I did here in this video.
Use a mobile shade device- If you are handy and willing to test out your engineering skills, building a shade mobile will unleash all sorts of possibilities on your farm. With shade options, your animals will be more comfortable and peaceful, grazing on your pastures. A shade device can be as simple as a big frame with a tarp covering. Be creative, and it will blow you may blow yourself away!
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Hi there!
So you are considering taking the following steps with adaptive grazing. Please note that I will discuss techniques for the southeast, which is considered a nonbrittle environment per Allan Savory’s Holistic Management. Brittle and nonbrittle environments refer to how much rainfall occurs in a region and the humidity levels. Where we are, we have significant rainfall and constant humidity throughout the growing seasons. I thought Allan summed it up perfectly when he stated a nonbrittle environment is like a “huge coiled spring.” This refers to areas that have been overgrazed. The first step in bringing vegetation back to these areas is to take the pressure off. The vegetation will come back every time, just like a spring. Once that occurs, you use herbivores for grazing areas on a rotational basis. They will prune the desirable vegetation, stomp out the unwanted weeds, and then fertilize the ground with their manure.
So that’s the overview in a nutshell. But how do you make it work on your farm? First off, you will need to assess areas on your land where you have grass or that you can graze. Many horse owners worry when they don’t have a pretty field ready to put horses on. I tell them all the time not to worry and to just start grazing those areas, and slowly but surely, the grass will get better and better with each rotation.
You can ask yourself the following questions to help determine which areas you will use:
Do you have areas you constantly have to mow?
Do you have areas that are overrun with weeds?
Do you have forests with thick vegetation?
Supplies: The main supplies you will need to be successful will be addressed in the following article. The list is very short and straightforward. You may have to train your horses to Polywire, and this can be done quickly by just putting up a simple one-line fence in their current paddock. To ensure horses respect the poly wire from here on out, you must ensure the wire is hot AT.ALL. TIMES. Polywire will be a psychological fence. For horses to respect it, they will most likely touch it when they see it first, and it will need to shock them. It does not hurt them, but it will ensure that they stay away from it from here on out.
So to sum it up, the second step to adaptive grazing is to pick out areas that need to be mowed, are thick with weedy vegetation, or are neglected areas of your farm. If you do not have a bunch of trees throughout your property, in the beginning (especially during the hotter months), you can use a shaded area as the base point of your rotation.
If you are ready to learn how to set up paddocks, read the next article on the Portable Pasture Equipment
