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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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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Tiny creatures certainly have the ability to make our lives, as well as the lives of our horses, miserable. While we can never completely eliminate pests such as flies and parasites, we can do a lot to keep them at bay—especially when the weather starts getting warmer in the spring and we plan our spring horse care strategies. Let’s look more in-depth into the pests that plague our horses and what we can do to manage or eliminate them.

Pesky Flies

The flies that most horse owners deal with are the big four: stable flies, face flies, bot flies and horse flies. The best way to reduce the number of flies that annoy your horse is to make it hard for them to reproduce. Implementing fly-control methods in the spring will pay off come summer when fly populations are at their highest.

Knowing where these flies start their lives will help you put a stop to their reproductive cycle.

STABLE FLIES: These nasty greyish-black flies have a painful bite that they inflict on horses, most often on the legs. They lay their eggs in rotting vegetation, dirty bedding, manure and areas of urine.

FACE FLIES: These small, dark flies don’t bite, but instead feed on the moisture in the corners of a horse’s eyes, on the moist part of the horse’s nose and on open wounds. They lay their eggs in manure.

BOT FLIES: Unlike most other flies, bot flies do not bite or feed on the outside of the horse. Instead, they lay their eggs on the horse’s legs, shoulders or mouth with the intention of the horse swallowing the eggs.

Once inside the horse, the eggs hatch and the larvae burrow into the horse’s stomach, where they do damage for several months before passing out through the manure and continuing their life cycle.

HORSE FLIES: You can’t miss one of these flies when it lands on your horse. Horse flies are large with a black body and a white head. They prefer to leave their painful bite on the withers or rump and will easily draw blood.

Their breeding place of choice is damp soil near irrigation ditches, lakes and rivers.

Getting Fly-Free

Given the reality of how these pests live their lives, what can you do to minimize the number of flies that harass your horse? Plenty!

Here’s how to reduce pests at the barn.

MANAGE MANURE: It’s obvious that with the exception of the horse fly, the most common flies to bother horses spend their entire lives in the stable environment. Stable flies, face flies and bot flies all need manure to reproduce, with the stable fly also branching out into dirty bedding.

This is why frequent stall cleaning and manure removal is key when it comes to keeping flies to a minimum. Picking up and disposing of manure and soiled bedding every day is a must if you want to make your barn inhospitable to flies.

PHYSICAL PROTECTION: You can keep your property clean, but you don’t have much control over how your neighbors manage their manure. If you’re boarding your horse, you’ll discover that large numbers of horses make it a lot harder to control fly populations.

In both of these situations, you’ll need to provide your horse with physical protection from flies. Start by using a fly mask to keep face flies out of your horse’s eyes. A fly sheet for your horse’s body and fly wraps for his legs will keep insects from being able to reach his skin.

SPRAYS AND TRAPS: Repellent in the form of fly sprays, wipes and mists can also help keep flies off your horse. You can apply fly repellents topically to your horse daily or install an automatic misting system in your barn that will provide a dose of repellent at regular intervals.

Fly traps can also be helpful because they capture flies that are buzzing around, stopping them from annoying your horse and reproducing in your horse’s manure and bedding.

BIOLOGICAL CONTROLS: A natural way to help control fly populations is with beneficial insects that feed on fly larvae, killing the maggots before they turn into flies. These tiny wasps don’t bother horses, but they will dine on developing flies.

You can buy these fly parasites through mail-order services, placing them outside in your stabling area when they arrive each month. You’ll need to start adding fly parasites to your stable soon in order to head off the fly explosion that starts in the spring.

FEED-THROUGH FLY CONTROL: Equine feed supplements designed to keep fly eggs from hatching in manure can be helpful in keeping fly populations under control. These products work by disrupting the fly’s development cycle in the manure with the use of an insect growth regulator (IGR). The IGR passes through the horse’s system into the manure, where it prevents the fly from developing. Feed-through fly control works best if all horses on the property are given the product on a daily basis.

Spring Horse Care Against Internal Parasites

The other common creepy crawlies that can make life difficult for horses and their owners are worms. A handful of these internal parasites are a real nuisance and are prevalent among domestic equines. These pests enter the horse’s body through the mouth and complete their life cycle in manure. Infected horses can become very sick if worms are allowed to go unchecked.

The most common worms to affect horses are strongyles (large and small), roundworms, pinworms and tapeworms.

LARGE STRONGYLES: Large strongyles are only a half-inch long, but they can wreak havoc on a horse’s intestines. They can cause colic, as well as blood vessel and organ damage.

SMALL STRONGYLES: Small strongyles burrow into the intestines of the horse and cause damage to delicate tissues. They are very common in horses and can result in colic, diarrhea and weight loss.

ROUNDWORMS: These nasty worms can grow up to a foot in length. They live in the horse’s digestive tract and cause colic and poor condition. They are most common in young horses less than a year old. Older horses usually develop an immunity to roundworms.

PINWORMS: Pinworms are about 2 inches long and live in the horse’s rectum, where they may cause irritation and discharge. Horses infected with pinworms often rub their tails against fences and trees.

TAPEWORMS: You can help get rid of the worms in your horse’s body by using a dewormer every few months. These products are available in tack and feed stores, but should be given under the guidance of your veterinarian, because some worms are developing resistance to the most common dewormers. Your vet can help you rotate the different types of wormers to help prevent this.

Fecal egg testing involves having your horse’s manure tested every few months for parasite eggs. This technique is becoming the preferred method by many veterinarians for parasite control.

Because the weather is getting warm, spring is a great time to start your spring horse care strategies against parasites, as well as flies. A number of mail-order laboratories provide this service, which requires you to send a small manure sample for testing. The resulting fecal egg count helps determine if your horse has worms, and which species, so you can effectively treat the infection with an over-the-counter dewormer.

You can do a lot to help prevent worms from taking hold of your horse by maintaining good manure control at your stable. Pick up manure and soiled bedding frequently, and keep water troughs and feeders clean.

Starting good stable hygiene in your spring horse care plan is the best way to keep both flies and parasites under control throughout the year. Your horse will thank you for it.

This article on spring horse care on preventing parasites and flies appeared in the March 2020 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

Further Reading on Spring Horse Care

• New Fly Products for Your Horse
• Understanding Fly Control Labels
• 7 Fly Control Myths
• April 2020 SmartPak SmartTip of the Month: Controlling Flies from all Angles
• Regional Parasite Control for Horses
• Why Dewormer Rotation is Over
• Spring Horse Care Checklist

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