While many experts agree that fleas are an uncommon parasite for horses, ticks can be prevalent and potentially present a danger to your horse’s health.

Ticks are becoming an increasingly significant problem for horse owners in many areas of the country. These parasites can invade your pasture, but they also hang out in places you might routinely ride, such as cool, shady areas near creek beds or among tall grass where they wait to hitch a ride.

Protect your equine by watching for signs of flea or tick problems and treating issues right away or preventing them altogether.

How Common Are Tick Infestations with Horses?

“Horses aren’t the preferred hosts for fleas like dogs, cats and foxes are,” says Laura Stern, DVM, DABVT, director of training and quality assurance for the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center. “The reason horses aren’t commonly affected by fleas, but do get ticks, is simple: They’re in places where they commonly encounter ticks, but not fleas. Fleas like dark areas, like dens. Those aren’t the places where horses like to be. However, ticks like long grass and wooded areas—places where horses are commonly found—making them a common target for ticks.”

“Fleas don’t like horses,” agrees Garrett Metcalf, DVM, DACVS-LA, an equine veterinarian at Pine Ridge Equine Hospital in Glenpool, Okla. “Fleas are species-specific, and horses aren’t a suitable host for fleas, so it’s rare to have fleas on horses. Ticks are a common problem and rather good at transmitting diseases to horses.”

Signs of a Tick Problem with Your Horse

Horse owners are very protective of their animals, and typically attuned to changes in their behavior. However, a tick’s small size makes it easier for them to hide, so it’s essential to be aware of signs you might blame on something else that could indicate a tick issue.

The first step is to stay alert and physically look for ticks on your horse’s body while being aware of any potentially serious side effects of a tick bite. Besides the actual tick body, Stern says to look for a raised, hard bump where a tick was feeding. She says you might see your horse rubbing a particular spot where a tick is or was, and experience hair loss due to excessive rubbing.

“If your horse has a severe tick infestation or if he seems weak, wobbly or has pale gums, contact your veterinarian immediately before trying to remove any ticks, as you may cause damage to the skin or stress the horse in his weakened condition,” she cautions.

Metcalf advises looking around the groin, head, and region under the tail where ticks often like to accumulate. He says that you might notice swelling in areas where ticks have bitten a horse and edema around the bite site.

“If a horse is head-shy while haltering, lethargic, or has a fever, and ticks are present on the horse, it would be best to have the horse examined by a veterinarian,” he says. “Ticks are a common [cause of] swelling and pain around the ears, and most tick-borne diseases will cause fever and lethargy as the main clinical signs.”

Health Hazards of Infestation

Ticks infected with serious diseases don’t usually transmit those pathogens immediately. Instead, they usually must feed on the host—namely your horse—for a while before disease transmission occurs. This delay in disease transition makes it extremely important to remove ticks as soon as possible.

While less critical issues such as itchiness, hair loss, poor hair coat and local irritation can occur, Stern stresses that more serious problems such as infection at the site of tick attachment, anemia from blood loss in severe cases, and tick-transmitted disease could occur.

“Ticks can transmit a number of diseases to horses, including Lyme disease, equine granulocytic anaplasmosis and equine piroplasmosis,” says Stern. “Rarely, we may also see tick paralysis. There’s typically a delay of 24 hours between when the ticks attach and when they can transmit diseases, which makes it very important to find them quickly and remove them before they have the chance to transmit any diseases.”

An Ounce of Prevention

Prevention is always preferable to treatment, which is true of fleas and ticks. If you can keep your stable and pasture free of these parasites, you avoid having to remove ticks from your horse and could prevent potentially serious problems.

Metcalf suggests using permethrin-based products, which he says are the best store-bought products to combat fleas or ticks on horses.

“It’s rather difficult to prevent ticks from getting onto horses,” he cautions. “Concentrated, topically applied permethrin products may be the best option at this time. Some of these products need to be applied every three weeks.

“Natural remedies aren’t very effective against reducing ticks on horses,” he continues. “Some essential oil recipes use geranium oil as a possible tick repellent. Physical barriers, such as fly boots, may help reduce ticks from getting onto the limbs of horses.”

Stern also touts various tick repellents and products that kill ticks. She says there are some sprays you can use before a ride and topical spot-on products that work longer for horses more consistently at risk of encountering ticks.

“You can use a repellent to help keep ticks off your horses,” says Stern. “Repellents often contain a pyrethroid insecticide, such as permethrin or cypermethrin. Repellents have the advantage of not requiring the ticks to bite and take a blood meal. Avermectins, such as moxidectin and ivermectin, can also kill ticks, but [the ticks] need to take a blood meal first.”

She cautions the importance of always reading the label of any flea and tick product you use to ensure it’s appropriate for use on horses.

“Some cattle products can cause significant toxicity in horses,” warns Stern. “[And] some products won’t be labeled for use on certain horses, especially foals under 3 months of age. Always apply per the labeled [instructions] to minimize the risk of side effects, as well. Your veterinarian can help you determine what product will be best, based on the risk of exposure to ticks, the risk of ticks carrying disease, and your horse’s lifestyle and health history.”

Other Remedies

Besides treating your horse, you should always pay attention to his surroundings. Stern says ticks are generally more of an issue outside of barns, so you don’t typically need tick control inside your barn.

“If fleas are present in the barn, it’s generally not an issue for horses,” she says. “But you can minimize risk by preventing wildlife from entering the barn and ensuring that cats and dogs who have access to the barn are treated with flea preventatives. Treating the environment may be needed for heavy flea infestations.”

One of the best all-natural ways of minimizing tick exposure is to keep horses out of areas that contain a lot of ticks. Of course, that isn’t always possible.

“Ticks are often found in tall grasses and wooded areas,” says Stern. “They dislike hot, sunny areas with no plant cover. An easy way to minimize the number of ticks your horses are exposed to is by mowing any tall grass, removing weeds, and preventing your horse from entering wooded areas or hanging around the boundaries between woods and pasture. Preventing wildlife, especially deer, from entering pastured areas is another important step you can take to decrease the number of ticks in your pasture.”

Metcalf also suggests using pasture insecticides to help reduce fleas or ticks in your pasture. He cautions that whenever a heavy amount of wildlife traffic is present, there’s more of a reservoir of future ticks or fleas to re-establish residency in the pasture.

Tick Removal Tips

Any time you’ve been out riding—or at least once a day if your horse is on pasture—you should check him for ticks. A visual inspection is an excellent first step, but using your fingers to feel around for small ticks that might not be easy to see is also important.

“Deer ticks that transmit Lyme disease only reach 3mm when fully grown and can be hard to see,” says Stern. “The most important areas to check your horse for ticks are the chest, belly, flanks, mane, tail and ears—places where the skin is thinner and ticks can more easily attach.”

Even if you take precautions such as using tick repellents and keeping your horse out of areas ticks might frequently hang out, your horse will inevitably pick up a tick or several during tick season. Stern cautions that there are a lot of myths about the best way to remove a tick from a horse.

“You don’t want to crush the tick, use a hot match, or apply something like baby oil to try to smother it,” she says. “Instead, put on a pair of gloves and take tweezers and grasp the head of the tick close to the site of attachment to the horse. Then, slowly pull the tick away at a 90-degree angle from the horse. This will allow you to remove the entire tick.

“After you remove the tick, wash the skin in the area where the tick was attached with a mild soap and then wash your hands,” Stern continues. “Ticks should be placed in a jar of isopropyl alcohol, which can be disposed of when full. If you notice that the head of the tick wasn’t removed from the horse, contact your veterinarian, as the site can become infected.”

Metcalf agrees that physically removing ticks from horses with your fingers or a hemostat-like instrument is a safe removal method. However, he says some owners might want to kill the ticks first with a permethrin spray, then use physical removal methods.

“Your veterinarian is your best source of information about preventing or controlling ticks,” adds Stern. “They have knowledge of which products work best in your area and the best control strategy, given your horses and your facility. Having preventative measures in place before you have an issue is best. Scheduling a visit with your vet in the late winter or spring is an ideal time to get a holistic tick-control program set up for your horses, but it’s never too late in the year to reach out and get an expert opinion from your vet.”

Ticks and Horses: Key Takeaway

Because ticks can transmit serious diseases, it’s crucial for horse owners to stay vigilant by regularly checking their horses for ticks and taking preventive measures to reduce exposure. By staying informed and taking action early, you can minimize the risk of tick infestations and ensure your horse remains healthy and comfortable.

This article about ticks with horses appeared in the September 2023 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

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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.

1. Oak

There are a lot of reasons to love oak trees: they’re tall, majestic, and they possess large leaves that offer perfect shade for any lawn or park. But one place you might not want oak trees is in or alongside your horse pastures. Oaks leaves contain tannic acid, which can cause colic and other digestive problems in horses. The buds and twigs of oak leaves also contain tannins, as do the acorns. The risk in the leaves probably decreases as the leaves decompose, so fresh spring leaves are likely more potent than old brown leaves on the ground from last year. Oak trees are common all over the U.S. and tend to leaf out a little later in the spring than some tree species.

2. Red Maple

Unlike oak leaves, in which the toxins decrease as the leaves wilt, the leaves of red maples are troublesome because they become highly toxic to horses after the leaves have separated from the tree. It’s not known what the toxin is exactly, but wilted red maple leaves can be fatal to horses who consume them. The unidentified toxin causes the destruction of red blood cells, leading to anemia. The bark of the tree is also problematic.

Other maple species may also be toxic, though not as severely as red maple. Maples in general are native to the eastern half of the U.S., but may be cultivated in other regions.

3. Walnut

Walnut trees are an oddity in that they affect horses in ways you wouldn’t suspect. There are various types of walnut trees around the U.S., but the most problematic is the black walnut. Always check with your shavings supplier to make sure that it doesn’t have black walnut in the product because horse bedding contaminated with it can cause laminitis. The branches, leaves, pollen, and nut hulls of the various walnut trees can also poisonous and can cause respiratory problems or even liver cancer in horses. The problem is thought to be a chemical produced by the walnut tree called juglone, which can also affect other plants growing in its vicinity.

4. Yew

It’s true that yew is an attractive evergreen shrub/tree, and for this reason, it’s planted for decorative purposes in landscapes around buildings. At the same time, it’s also true that yew is very poisonous and very dangerous to horses (as well as people and other types of livestock). If horses consume yew—perhaps by gaining access to clippings or a shrub near a building—the results are often quickly fatal, so it’s critical to ensure that your horses never have access to these toxic trees. Yews can grow for hundreds of years, and are poisonous all year long, but more toxic in the winter.

5, 6, 7, and 8. Cherry (and Chokecherry), Apricot, Peach, and Plum

You probably haven’t planted any orchards in your horse pastures, but there might be fruit trees incorporated into your farm’s landscaping, or orchards on other areas of the property. There are some fruit trees that are toxic to horses that you need to avoid—those of the prunus family. This group includes familiar fruit trees like cherries, apricots, peaches, plums, and others. They’re all poisonous to horses in basically the same way; leaves from prunus trees become more toxic after they’ve fallen from the tree and begun to wilt, because it’s at this stage that the leaves contain cyanide. The bark and young shoots are also poisonous, as well as the fruit pits. Horses that ingest these parts of the tree will no longer be able to extract oxygen from their blood, leading to increased respiration and bright mucus membranes. If caught quickly enough, a veterinarian can sometimes intervene successfully.

You may also find undomesticated cherry and plum trees growing wild along the edges of your pastures, particularly in the eastern half of the U.S. The problem here is that the leaves may blow into the pastures and into the reach of your horses, or summer storms might break branches off, and they land inside the fence. Periodic culling of small trees may be necessary to keep your horses safe. Also, watch out for the similar chokecherry, common throughout the northern half of the U.S. The berries have been used for hundreds of years by various Native American tribes, but the seeds and leaves are poisonous to horses.

9. Oleander

Oleander is a small evergreen tree (or it may be shaped into a shrub) that is planted for decorative purposes and found in the southern U.S. It’s an attractive tree with beautiful flowers, but it’s quite toxic to horses — the tree’s sap is even utilized in rodent poisons! Horses that consume oleander — and it only takes a handful of leaves — may show colic-like signs within a few hours, and the poison may be fatal fairly quickly after that. Summer and fall are times of greatest concern.

10. Horse Chestnut

Also known regionally as “buckeyes,” the leaves, seeds, and sprouts of horse chestnut trees are poisonous to horses and can cause multiple digestive ailments, and, if severe enough, some nervous system issues. Though horses may be able to recover with veterinarian aid, horse chestnut trees are nevertheless quite toxic; even the nectar can be poisonous to bees. You’ll find horse chestnuts growing throughout most of the U.S., except for the far southern and far northern regions.

Have you have any problematic or toxic trees that you’ve had to remove from your horse property? Let us know in the comments.

Further Reading

◆ Ten Plants Toxic to Horses
◆ Managing Buttercups in Horse Pastures
◆ Poisonous Plants to Horses from the University of Tennessee

The post Ten Trees Toxic to Horses appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.

Buttercups are toxic to horses and other livestock species. Fortunately, horses generally have no interest in grazing on them when other food is available, and they are adept at eating around them. But because they survive your horse’s teeth when everything else around gets grazed down, they can thrive and spread and before you know it, they seem to be the only vegetation left in the field.

Buttercup Management Practices for Horse Pastures

The best way to control buttercups is to think ahead and start managing your horse pastures months before buttercups appear and bloom in the spring season. Buttercups can take hold in bare spots in the field. Seeding your pastures, particularly those bare spots, with a variety of grass that thrives in your area, is the best ways to keep buttercups and other undesirable weeds at bay.

Also Read: Leading the Way to Greener Pastures

Overgrazing is the root cause of the buttercup problem for many horse farms. Before the grass gets grazed down to the ground, move your horses to a different field or use temporary fencing such as electric tape to section off rotating parts of the pasture to let the grass recover.

According to University of Maryland Extension, buttercup seeds germinate in late fall, so by keeping the grass in your pastures healthy throughout the summer, you’ll likely have less of a buttercup problem next year.

Keeping fields mowed won’t eliminate buttercups. However, mowing your pasture early in the buttercup bloom can help prevent them from spreading by reducing the amount of new seed produced.

Chemical Control

There are herbicides that can be used to get rid of buttercups in horse pastures. The ideal time to spray them is in early spring, before the buttercup bloom but after the average daytime temperature has reached 60 degrees. University of Maryland Extension offers some examples of commercial herbicides that are effective against buttercups: Banvel, Clarity, Crossbow, Forefront, Milestone, and Surmount. However, many of these products will kill legumes, such as clover, which means you may be sacrificing some of the good grazing along with the bad.

Also Read: How to Revitalize Drought-Stricken Pastures

Always check labeling to make sure you understand how the herbicide you’re using will affect grazing or haying. Consult your local extension office for additional guidance on what the best management practices are for your geographic area.

Key Takeaways

From this article, you should now understand how to get rid of and manage yellow buttercups in horse pastures.

This article about management of buttercups in horse pastures originally appeared in Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

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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!

The post Tips for Spring Pasture Maintenance appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.

Just about any region in the U.S. can experience a hot summer day, and some areas struggle with heat for much of the year. In light of that, why not consider planting your property with some trees to provide shade around the pastures, particularly positioned to provide afternoon shade for the horses? It might be just what you need.

The tricky part may be choosing the right trees for the job. Not all trees are equal for providing shade, and not all trees are healthy for horses to be around. There is also the matter of growth speed—if you’re starting absolutely from scratch, you might want to select trees that grow quickly.

There is also the possibility that you’ll need to remove trees from your horse property if they are potentially poisonous to horses. It’s definitely a regional issue, so a local extension office is an ideal place to get some advice on horse- and livestock-safe trees for your area.

To help you get started, here are a few ideas for trees that grow well across most regions of the U.S.

Trees for Excellent Shade

Hackberry/sugarberry trees: These trees grow to about 50-70 feet, so they fit well with the pastures and buildings of your property, but they have a nice, leafy crown that provides plenty of helpful shade—and they’re safe for horses to be around.

Magnolia trees: Magnolias, along with the related tulip poplars, are popular in southern regions and also don’t grow terribly tall.

Willow trees: While short, willow trees have a nice look and provide good shade while being safe for horses.

Eastern cottonwoods: These are impressive specimen trees, grow quite tall, and they’re also equine-safe.

Quick-Growing Trees

If you’d like to create a shady spot quickly, you’ll probably want to look at some sort of softwood tree. These trees tend to grow faster because they put less density into their wood (hence the name “softwood”) and this allow them to reach for the heights quickly.

These include conifers—like spruces or pines—that are native to your region. Conifers provide a nice rural evergreen appearance and can make significant height in just a decade or less. You should be able to find a pine variety that will fit just about any U.S. climate (but check their specific toxicity), though spruce trees may not thrive too far south.

It should be noted that consuming conifer needles in any great amount would not be healthy for horses, so that’s something to consider in some situations. Another downside to these trees is that their branches can be more breakable in wind.

There are some quick-growing hardwoods, too—green ash is an excellent option. It’s an attractive tree with unique compound leaves and a classically shaped crown. While prone to insect attack from the emerald ash borer, regions that don’t have this insect can grow impressive ash trees that offer great pasture shade.

Trees to Avoid Near Horses

Red maples: There are quite a few different species of maple trees, but red maples in particular are well known for the extra toxicity of their leaves, particularly when they are wilted, like from a freshly broken branch. You want to avoid red maples for shade in your pastures, and might consider removing the trees from around your pastures and horse property in general. In the early fall, red maple leaves turn a very bright hue of pure red, and the leaves are more “spiky” looking than other maples.

Walnut: Walnut trees, along with related species in the Juglandaceae family, produce juglone, which is a toxic substance that the tree uses to discourage plant growth around it. The radius of juglone is as much as 80 feet from the tree. Juglone is also harmful to horses—there are even examples of it causing laminitis—so these are definitely trees to avoid planting intentionally. Walnuts can sometimes be found on old farmsteads, so if your current horse property sits on an old farm, scout for walnut trees and consider removing them.

Oak: Sadly, as beautiful and shade-providing as a grand oak tree is, the leaves and acorns contain tannic acid, which isn’t safe for horses. Its fresher leaves are more problematic than dried ones.

Keeping Trees Safe Around Horses

It’s important to note that if you have trees directly in your pastures, you may need to fence them off with a small buffer to keep horses from chewing the bark (which, if done excessively, can kill the tree).

Horses with plenty of pasture grass typically don’t waste time with novelties like bark chewing, but a bored horse can become pretty destructive. Fencing the tree off individually is usually a better idea than trying to cover the bark.

Trees and horses can work well together; trees provide shade and erosion control. Plus, they add visual value to your land. Start planting now for beautiful shade in just a few short years!

This article about shade trees for horses is a web exclusive for Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

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We all love to see our horse enjoying a graze on delicious spring grass. But that pasture your horse eats with such gusto is not as benign as you might think—particularly for horses with metabolic disorders or genetic predispositions, although any horse of any breed can develop grass-related hoof issues at any time. In fact, some horses are better off avoiding the green stuff altogether. Learn how to manage your pasture and feed program to prevent founder or laminitis in your horse.

Mineral Balance

While grass contains most of the nutrients your horse needs for strong, healthy hooves, it doesn’t provide all those nutrients in the right balance or quantities. Calcium, magnesium, and sodium chloride are commonly deficient; selenium and iodine are frequently low as well.

Other vital minerals like zinc, copper, and manganese may also be present, but their levels in relationship to one another will affect how available they are to your horse. Minerals compete for absorption sites along your horse’s intestinal walls.

For example, if zinc levels are too high, they can block copper, a mineral that’s essential for maintaining the robust lamellar tissue your horse needs for his coffin bone to be properly supported within the hoof capsule. Iron is another competitive mineral that inhibits uptake of other minerals that are prevalent in grass.

Starch and Sugar Levels

Sugars and starches can be present in pasture grasses in levels that trigger a laminitic event. These nutrients are meant to be digested in the small intestine, but if your horse ingests these simple carbs in quantities greater than the small intestine can handle, the excess will continue along the digestive tract into the large intestine.

The large intestine is populated with microbes that process digestible fiber. These beneficial microbes thrive in an environment with a relatively neutral pH. If they are overrun with

sugar and starch, their home becomes so acidic they can’t survive. When they die, they release substances that are toxic to your horse.

At the same time, acid-loving microbes take over and compromise the integrity of the intestinal wall, allowing those toxins to penetrate and enter your horse’s bloodstream. When they reach the hooves, they cause the blood vessels to constrict, starving your horse’s hooves of nutrients and setting off a laminitic event.

Forage with a simple sugar (technically known as ethanol-soluble carbohydrates, or ESC) plus starch level of 10 percent or less should be low enough to keep your horse’s microbial population happy. If the levels in the grass are higher and your horse shows signs of inflammation, you will need to limit or restrict your horse’s access to pasture (find grazing muzzle options here).

Some signs that your horse may be getting too much starch and sugar from pasture include a thick, cresty neck; tender feet; a distended or more intense digital artery pulse (on your horse’s ankle); flared or ridged hoof walls; and unusual weight gain or loss.

Instead of grazing, provide low sugar/starch hay 24/7 in a slow feeder, such as a hay net with small holes or another device. To learn what the sugar and starch levels in your pasture are, have it analyzed by an agricultural lab. The report will give you the information you need to determine if your pasture is safe. If you aren’t sure how to interpret the results, an equine nutritionist can decipher the data and help you balance your horse’s diet accordingly.

Mycotoxins

If your hay’s starch and sugar levels are low and your horse’s diet is balanced, but the grass is still triggering laminitis, mycotoxins could be to blame. Mycotoxins are naturally occurring toxic compounds released by fungi that live in grass. Mycotoxins are vasoconstrictors that are absorbed quickly through the small intestine and trigger a systemic inflammatory response, which can then cause laminitis.

According to Jennifer Duringer, Ph.D., director of Oregon State University’s Endophyte Lab, there are more than 500 known mycotoxins.

“Mycotoxin levels rise and fall seasonally and are present in more grass species than was once believed,” she says. “We are currently conducting a study to identify which species are infected.”

You can combat mycotoxins by turning your horse out on a dry lot instead of a pasture, although mycotoxins can be and often are present in cured hay. If you suspect your horse is suffering from mycotoxin-induced laminitis, try removing the offending toxins with a mycotoxin binder to reduce inflammation. These can be found in certain equine feed supplements that generally contain yeast derivatives.

Keeping a laminitis or founder-prone horse on pasture can be challenging, if not impossible. Keep up the good fight against pain and discomfort by reducing grazing as needed, testing hay, and being aware of potential mycotoxins.

This article about how to feed to prevent founder appeared in the March 2022 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

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