Depending on whether you and your horses live in Maine, Kentucky, Montana, or California, winter in each area manifests itself differently. Each region has unique patterns; winter pastures in Montana look whiter than those in Northern California, which might be soggy and green. Experts tell us one principle is the same for winter horse pasture management no matter where you live: Overgrazing and allowing horses on soggy, wet soils are the bane of winter horse pasture management.

The Off Season

“There is always an ‘off season,’ no matter where you live,” says Jay Mirro, senior resource planner for the King Conservation District outside of Seattle, Wash. Mirro develops farm plans for horse and livestock owners; farm plans are basically a road map for managing land and animals.

His tenet for winter horse pasture management is to never graze on wet soils and never graze below 3 inches of forage stubble height—the height of a plant after grazing or mowing.

“The off season is when you don’t put horses on pastures out of concern of degrading the health and productivity of your pasture,” he explains.

Wet Soils + Grazing = Compaction

“Ideally, it’s best for the pasture if you don’t do anything to it in the winter when the ground is wet and not frozen,” says Mirro. “Grazing ground that is saturated and soggy creates compaction. Compacted soils don’t drain as well and have less oxygen for plant roots to respire, creating an environment that promotes weeds instead of grass.”

All this reduces soil health, microbial life, and nutrient cycling of manure and urine, explains Mirro, who is himself also the owner of a 34-acre farm with seven acres of pasture for his beef cows, sheep, and goats.

“Grazing when the soils are wet makes for a higher chance that horse hooves will physically damage sod, tearing the grass out of the ground,” creating depressions and uneven pock marks in the soil surface, he says. “Next summer when you mow the field, you will curse because the ground is so uneven.”

Compacted ground is a bad deal if your intention is to grow a productive pasture. Compacted soils are much less absorbent, which causes water to run off, carrying soil sediment along with nutrients and pathogens from manure and urine. All of this is labeled as non-point pollution, and it can potentially harm waterways and the animals that live there.

“If the ground is wet enough that you wouldn’t consider driving [equipment] on it, then it’s too wet for animals to use it,” explains Marty Chaney, an agronomist and pasture management specialist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in Olympia, Wash. She was named Pasture Conservationist of the Year in January 2023, and is fondly known as “The Grass Whisperer.”

The Cutoff Point

Northern climes that experience a white winter still need to be careful when grazing pastures.

“Snow insulates the soil,” says Chaney. “It’s possible that there is a layer of wet, unfrozen soil under the snow, which can be damaged. Even if there is no snow, frozen plant crowns can be subject to injury [from overgrazing].”

Pasture grasses do not grow during the winter months, so care must be taken to avoid animal consumption of available grass, as grass won’t grow back for months.

“By allowing horses to graze and harvest forage, you are reducing the insulation that grass provides, causing further chilling of the soil. Spring regrowth will be slower,” she explains, because of the required warming of the soil, which will be necessary after the lack of insulation during cold weather.

“If a pasture gets grazed down to the ground, it takes longer to regrow” once spring rolls around again, says Chaney. “Most grass species don’t like to be grazed below 3 inches.”

Confinement Areas

In the winter, you’re basically trying to protect the soil and plants. The two together will give you a healthier pasture throughout the year.

“Instead, create a good confinement area,” says Mirro. “This provides a great solution to horsekeeping in the winter.”

The confinement area becomes your horse’s outdoor living quarters, and it’s where you keep your horse when pasture growth has slowed, so your pastures don’t get grazed below 3 inches.

“A confinement area, roughly 1,000 square feet per horse with 6″ of a well-draining gravel product [for footing], will have stability,” he says.

Guidelines for Limited Grazing

This doesn’t mean no pasture in the winter.

“There are still opportunities when horses can graze in the winter,” says Mirro, as long as you are careful to keep horses off wet soils and keep turnout times short.

He offers a few guidelines for judicious winter grazing:

◆ Limit turnout time to 30-60 minutes max.

◆ Besides the concern for overgrazing or compacting wet soils, also be aware of significantly changing your horse’s diet, which can upset his gut biome, leading to metabolic disorders like colic.

◆ Choose your highest and driest fields.

◆ Be mindful of the weather; if it’s been dry for a few days, that’s the best time to do some limited turnout.

“If you absolutely have to use the pasture, it’s just 30 minutes twice a day,” Chaney agrees. “When you are starting to think about rototilling your garden” in the springtime when the ground is firmer, that is the time to slowly begin integrating pasture back into your horse’s diet.

Getting Help for Winter Horse Pasture Management

Both your NRCS office and your local conservation district can offer free, non-regulatory education and technical assistance (see “Know Your Resources” below).

Two other sources of information can also provide management guidance:

◆ Soil Type: The Web Soil Survey is an online database operated by the USDA that provides information about the unique properties of each landowner’s soil.

“The front page is self-explanatory, and they have links that explain characteristics of soils,” says Chaney. Some examples include texture, ability to drain, parent material, and distribution over a landscape.

◆ Soil Nutrient Testing: “It’s good to get one done every few years to see what’s going on,” says Chaney. “Most labs will provide advice, too, on how to manage your pasture based on your soil testing results.”

Contact your conservation district or NRCS office for more help.

“Take a walk regularly in your pastures to see what’s happening,” Chaney suggests.

She often tells landowners to photograph a section of their land and compare it over the years.

“You will more easily see the changes in types of plants and productivity, both positive and negative, this way. This will give you feedback on how your management is affecting the field.”

Winter Horse Pasture Management: Key Takeaways

“We need to balance the needs of the horse with the needs of the pasture,” says Mirro. “Many horse and livestock owners treat pastures as turnout exercise areas, and we don’t want to get to the point where we don’t have any grass in a pasture, because that’s not ecologically sustainable.

“We need to be thinking about pastures with their effect on soil health, runoff, and the local environment. There are ways we can graze in the winter, but you just want to be mindful that you aren’t doing damage or increasing potential problems,” he concludes.

“Pasture plants in more northern climates actually start their annual growth in the fall, so how you manage them in the winter will have a significant effect on how they perform the following spring and summer,” adds Chaney.

Winter horse pasture management is critical to maintaining both healthy horses and thriving pastures, no matter where you live. While it’s important to provide winter grazing opportunities when appropriate, careful attention must be paid to soil and forage conditions to prevent harm to both the pasture and the horse’s health.

This article about winter horse pasture management appeared in the November/December 2023 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

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What do you picture when you think of a horse pasture? Probably a beautiful, rolling carpet of even, green grass. In reality, they are too often a piece of hard, compacted ground laced with tall weeds going to seed, spreading more weeds. Little, if any, productive grasses exist between bare spots that become dust bowls in the summer and mud holes in the winter. That’s why proper horse pasture management is key.

A well-managed pasture can have huge payoffs in terms of horses enjoying a high-quality, nutritious diet that reduces the feed bill as well as providing an outlet for equine exercise and improved emotional health. Plus, a good stand of healthy grass will have strong roots to hold soil in place, preventing erosion from wind or rain.

Vigorous grasslands are also an important component of a healthy, dynamic ecosystem; pastures contribute to creating healthy soils, which in turn provide habitat for microorganisms, beetles and many other beneficial insects, and larger wildlife.

Plants also help mitigate the effect of climate change by taking in carbon from the atmosphere and locking it away. Plants absorb carbon dioxide during photosynthesis and store it in their leaves, shoots, and roots. Since carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of the main greenhouse gases that traps heat in the atmosphere, creating the “greenhouse” warming effect that the planet is currently experiencing, removing some of it benefits us all.

The Epidemic of Overgrazed Pastures

“Traditionally, people have taken a large tract of land [to graze their animals on],” explains Sandra Matheson, a beef producer and co-founder of Roots of Resilience, a collaboration of sustainability activists dedicated to the restoration of the world’s grasslands. (See more about Matheson below.) “People often just leave them out on the pasture until they run out of [grass]. Then they feed hay. They are left out there until the plants are gone, and it’s pretty much just dirt.”

Through her teachings, Matheson offers a paradigm shift to the pasture management approach, called holistic planned grazing. This begins with looking at the land from the grass plant’s perspective.

Grazing Recovery Time

“[Normally,] the grass is growing, the animal takes a bite,” says Matheson. “As time goes on, the animal goes back and bites the plant again and again because it’s sweet and tender.”

When this happens, the plant is using up its supply of energy in its roots. The grass needs leaves so the plant can photosynthesize and put energy back into the roots.

“If the animal keeps eating the leaves, then the plant loses roots and gets smaller, eventually dying,” she continues. “The plant’s recovery has been ignored. Planned grazing means having adequate recovery time after [the grazing animals] have bitten the grass.”

The rest period allows grass leaves to grow back so the plant will be able to photosynthesize and produce food for itself.

When overgrazing occurs, Matheson suggests it’s a function of time.

“It’s no longer a matter of animals per acre, it becomes a matter of timing,” she says. “In one month, they might have eaten all the good stuff, and all that’s left will be weeds going to seed.”

Matheson explains that plants need time to grow back leaves and replenish roots, adding that recovery time can vary with the season, climate, and soil type.

“It might be 30 days or maybe up to 90 days, or it might be a whole year,” she says. Recovery just needs to be enough time so that the plants grow back.

Matheson suggests allowing horses to graze an area until it is grazed down to about 3 inches, with the goal of not leaving animals out so long that the plants are bitten again after they try to regrow. Then remove the animals and allow the grass plants to recover and grow back to 6 or 12 inches.

“Plan grazing time so you have adequate recovery of the plants,” emphasizes Matheson. “That’s really the key here.”

Climate Resiliency

Climate change, or the ongoing increase in global average temperatures, is primarily attributed to an increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. How do productive horse pastures help make for a more resilient climate?

“In the pasture we have soils and plants, and both are living entities,” says Sonia Hall, Ph.D., a research associate at Washington State University’s Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources in Wenatchee, Wash. “One of the big things that moves through those living beings is carbon. Plants are able to move carbon through their biomass and transfer that to the soils, [which becomes] food for organisms in the soil.”

How much carbon pastures absorb “is very hard to accurately quantify,” says Hall, because the situation is so variable and depends on so many things. “But we do have some idea of how to move it in the right direction.”

Going back to the comparison of good pasture management versus poorly managed pastures, Hall says good pasture management allows plants to grow and add organic material to the soil.

“Don’t have your horses graze everything off,” she says. Echoing Matheson’s advice, Hall emphasizes proper recovery time for the plants.

“Graze, then give the plants a chance to recover and accumulate some reserves again, before you graze them again,” she says. Rotating grazing areas helps avoid overgrazing and moves horses to fresh pasture in response to how the plants are doing.

“Adding organic matter to the soil will help your soil become healthy,” adds Hall. On a horse pasture, this could be dead plant material (such as after mowing), straight manure, or compost.

In poor pasture management situations, according to Hall, the pasture is likely releasing more carbon into the atmosphere than the plants are absorbing, becoming a carbon source instead of a sink.

Sink vs. Source

“Your pasture is constantly taking up carbon dioxide from the air through plant photosynthesis and growth, and simultaneously releasing it through what the horses eat, digest, and breathe out, as well as through what the plants breathe out—yes, plants do that too!” says Hall.

Soil microbes and insects decompose and breathe out as well.

“If the carbon intakes through plant photosynthesis are more than what the horse, plants, and the soil breathe out, the pasture is accumulating carbon and is called a carbon sink,” says Hall, who refers to this as being “climate-friendly.”

When a horse overgrazes a pasture by taking grass plants down to the soil, then the plant can no longer photosynthesize as much and take in carbon from the atmosphere. If the amount of carbon that the horse, plants, and soil breathe out is larger than what the plants can capture through photosynthesis, then your pasture system is losing carbon to the air, and this is called a carbon source.

“If you have properly managed livestock on pasture, you are going to have healthier animals, more organic material in the soil, nutrients cycling through it, and increased biodiversity of plants there,” says Matheson.

Top 7 Tips for Horse Pasture Management

Healthy horse pastures don’t just happen; they are actively maintained with proper management practices. A well-managed grass pasture is one of the most cost-effective and nutritious feeds, and can be produced and fed by a horse owner.

Healthy pastures also support the goal of cleaner water by avoiding soil erosion and runoff of nutrients from manure and urine. Healthy pasture plants also reduce greenhouse gases by sequestering carbon. As a successful pasture manager, you are helping combat climate change.

Here are seven tips for keeping both grass plants and horses healthy with proper horse pasture management:

1. Establish a Confinement Area

Improve the health and productivity of your pastures by creating and using a paddock area where you confine your horses when they are not grazing pasture. You will be giving up the use of this land in grass production to benefit the rest of your pastures.

Confine your horses to this area during the winter and early spring when grass plants are dormant and soils are wet to help prevent soil compaction. In the summer, use the confinement area to keep pasture from being grazed below 3 or 4 inches, or any time when soils are saturated, such as during irrigation or storm events.

2. Keep Horses Off Soggy Soils

One of the most important aspects of horse pasture management is the time you keep your horses off pastures. Saturated soils are easily compacted, suffocating the roots of grass plants. A simple test is to walk out in your fields and see if you leave a footprint. If you do, it’s too wet for your horses.

3. Evaluate Current Soil Status with a Soil Test

How much compost or fertilizer you apply and the time of year you apply it should be based on the results of a soil test. Soil tests also determine if your soil’s pH will allow for plants to uptake nutrients, as well as if you need to fertilize, and the right mix of nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium.

Talk with your local conservation district or extension office for help on how to take a soil test, where to have it analyzed, and how to interpret the results.

4. Spread Compost

The best time to spread compost is in late spring or early fall—but anytime during the growing season is good. The nutrients, organic material, beneficial bacteria, and fungi in the compost will help your grass plants to become more productive and help your soils retain moisture.

Depending on the size of your pastures, compost can be spread by hand with a wheelbarrow and pitchfork or with a tractor and manure spreader. Go back through with a garden rake or harrow to spread compost into a thin layer so grass plants aren’t smothered.

5. Rotate Grazing Areas

By dividing a pasture area into smaller fields and rotating horses through them, you can encourage horses to graze more evenly, keep pasture grasses from becoming overgrazed, and provide fresh grass for a longer period during the growing season.

6. The Golden Rule of Grazing

Remember the golden rule of grazing: Never allow grass to be grazed shorter than 3 to 4 inches. This ensures that the grass plants will have enough reserves left after grazing to permit rapid regrowth. Consider the bottom 3 inches of grass an energy collector that needs to be left for the plant. Once horses have grazed most of the grass in a pasture area down to 3 or 4 inches, rotate them on to the next grazing area. You can put horses back on the first area when the grass has recovered and regrown to 6 to 8 inches.

7. Try Fencing Pastures According to Wetness

By fencing pastures according to how wet they are, in the spring you can let horses onto the higher, dry areas first and save the wet areas until later in the summer when they dry out.

Final Details for Horse Pasture Management

Make sure that pasture areas are large enough for horses to run and that gates are placed so that horses can easily be led from the confinement area to the pasture and back.

Remember to have a source of water for each grazing area. You can have separate water sources for each pasture or have a single water source that is accessible from more than one grazing area.

Also consider dividing the pasture in such a way that horses can have access to shade or shelter, especially if they will be in these areas for more than a few hours on hot summer days.

This article about horse pasture management appeared in the September 2023 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

The post An Overview of Horse Pasture Management appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.

It’s that time of year when the grass gets greener and starts growing fast. But is it time to open the gates and let your horses graze the pastures you’ve carefully fenced off all winter? Putting horses out too soon in the spring can reduce the productivity of your pastures this coming summer, plus letting horses graze too much too quickly can be dangerous for horse health.

Here is some guidance for horse pasture maintenance to keep in mind at the start of grazing this spring.

1. Use a Confinement Area

You can greatly improve the health and productivity of your pastures by creating and using a paddock or heavy-use area for confining your horses. An enclosure, such as a corral, run, or pen becomes your horse’s outdoor living quarters.

Your horses should be confined here during the winter months when pasture grasses are dormant and not growing. In springtime, confine horses here when soils are still wet (more on this in a moment).

In the summer, use the confinement area to keep pastures from becoming overgrazed—never below 3 or 4 inches—and to keep your horses from becoming overweight.

A good location for a confinement area is in a high, well-drained area that has chore-efficient access so it’s easy to feed horses and clean paddocks. Make sure that paddocks slope gently away from the stall or shelter for good drainage, and consider putting down some type of footing, such as crushed rock or coarse sand to help prevent erosion and mud.

A good location for a confinement area is in a high, well-drained area that has chore-efficient access so it’s easy to feed horses and clean paddocks. Make sure that paddocks slope gently away from the stall or shelter for good drainage, and consider putting down some type of footing, such as crushed rock or coarse sand to help prevent erosion and mud.

Implementing a regular manure management program will help prevent a buildup of muck as well as getting a source of compost lined up for your pastures.

2. Give Pastures Time Off

One of the key tenants of pasture management is the time you keep horses off the pasture. Saturated soils and dormant pasture plants simply cannot survive continuous grazing and trampling.

When soils are wet, they are easily compacted, suffocating the roots of grass plants. Over time, these plants die out and weeds and mud will take their place. A simple test for sogginess is to walk out by yourself onto your fields to see if you are creating a footprint as you go along. If so, you know it’s too wet and the weight of a horse will surely compact the soil.

Instead, wait until your pastures dry out more and try the foot-printing test again.

3. Separate the Wettest Areas

In the spring, you can let horses onto the higher dry areas first and save the wet areas until later in the summer when they dry out.

Temporary fencing using self-insulating step-in plastic posts and electric tape is best for something like this, as you can simply adjust the shape of your grazing areas as you need it.

4. Apply a Green Band-Aid

Encourage a thick, healthy stand of grass by hand-spreading grass seed in areas that are bare or where grass isn’t growing as thick as you’d like. Otherwise, those same bare spots provide a growing site for summer weeds and can mean more mud next winter.

For most parts of North America, a mix of horse pasture seeds containing orchard grass, endophyte-free tall fescue, perennial rye grass and/or timothy work best. Warmer parts of the country should mix in warm-season species like brome.

For help selecting grasses specific to your region, consult your local conservation district, extension office, or the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

5. Test the Soil

Fertilizer is almost always overused—and may not be needed at all. Just because it’s spring doesn’t mean it’s time to fertilize. Applying fertilizer when your pasture grass doesn’t need it means wasted time and money, plus excess fertilizer will most likely be washed into nearby streams or lakes, or it can seep into ground water.

The best way to find out if your pastures need to be fertilized is to do a soil test. By finding out what your soil needs, you will be able choose a fertilizer with the right amount of nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium. Fertilizers high in nitrogen may not be what your grass plants need in the spring. Nitrogen promotes plant top growth, which grass plants are already doing vigorously on their own.

Do an Internet search to find soil testing labs or reach out to your local conservation district, Natural Resources Conservation Service office, or extension office for advice on the best way to take a soil sample. If you find that you need to fertilize, fertilizing in mid-spring and/or late fall is usually sufficient.

6. Spread Compost

Once soils are no longer saturated and you are able to drive equipment out on your pastures without risk of compaction, do your horses and pasture a favor by spreading compost. The many micro and macro nutrients, organic material, beneficial bacteria, and fungi in the compost will help your grass plants become more productive.

Spread a thin layer, approximately ¼ to ½ inch thick, and no more than about 3 to 4 inches total in the same area per season. Compost can be spread by hand or with a manure spreader. Go back through with a harrow (a drag) to break up clumps and spread compost thinly. If you don’t own a harrow and tractor, use a garden rake and go through by hand, raking thicker areas so plants aren’t smothered with compost.

7. Introduce Grazing Gradually

Once horses begin grazing pastures again, limit turnout time. Too much spring grass can cause very serious digestive issues when the microbes in a horse’s gut are not yet adapted to the diet change. Start with about an hour at a time and work up to several hours over a period of weeks. For additional questions on how much grazing time is safe for your horse, consult your veterinarian.

Also be careful not to allow your grass to be grazed below about 3 to 4 inches in height. The most concentrated sugar (the plant’s food source) is in the bottom few inches of grass plant. Above that is the more fibrous portion of the plant, which is healthier for a horse to consume. It’s also detrimental to the grass plant to remove its food source.

Let grass plants grow to 6 to 9 inches in height before turning horses out on them, and remove horses from any area once it is grazed down to 4 inches.

We are all excited to see green pastures in the spring. Prioritizing good maintenance of them will help ensure their health this coming summer, which makes for happy horses.

This article about spring horse pasture maintenance appeared in the March 2023 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

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