Pasture management

I have noticed that anywhere horses spend much time on grass, as the years go by, there is less and less grass and the weeds seem to take over. Where we live any grazing is in seriously short supply and losing any of it to encroaching weeds is a tragedy.

There is a local movement afoot to ban all chemical herbicides, which frankly I think will be a catastrophe. There are times when a bag of Weed and Feed is your friend. The nicest pieces of ground for horses around here are managed. THey are not left to the whims and wills of the local weed population. Nice horse ground does NOT happen by accident.

If you have HUGE acreage, this might not be a problem. BUt many of us keep horses in teeny,tiny areas and that postage stamp patch of grass is all the grass they'll get in a year. I would be interested to know what approach some of the members take to keep weeds to a minimum and grass at a maximum.

I don't know if this answers your question, but we rotated pastures for my horse. I never had much of a problem with weeds, the pasture wasn't strictly grass, but it was (apparently) very palateable for the horse! We switched her ever 4-6 months, between a 2 acre pasture and a 5 acre pasture. The grass always grew back very well after she moved.

Long live weed and feed and spray weed killers.

My husband is in charge of pasture management and most of the time it looks like a freaken golf green! We rotate between three areas only because we are on a small acreage. We have the ban here but thankfully the local ag supply still carries it for the large operations. My husband usually dumps a bag once or twice a year. Our problem is the clover that wants to take over and that the horses dont eat. When we 1st moved here there were some large quantities of weeds that were every where. A few years of weed and feed, lots of regular mowing and annual dumping of fresh seed seems to have let the grass take over and the weeds down to a mimium.

Now if only the neghbours would do the same to prevent the seeds from spreading! Their giant thistle bush that boarders my pasture got a few squirts of renagade in the spring. Still did not touch it. They dont maintain their fence line and its my horses that end up with forlocks full of burrs!!

INteresting you should mention clover, Fuzzy. This year seems we had an explosion of that short, tight to the ground, yellow flowered clover. I was surprised too that the horses don't eat it. Thought they loved clover.

We do not have the luxury of grazeable acreage. My grazing area can be measured in square feet, it's that small. We feed hasy 365 days a year. Pricey hobby! Hope the horsey teen daughter finds a rich farmer/cowboy and moves to a large acreage in Utah. The horses can send me postcards.

Seems my efforts to spread grass seed has mostly fed the local bird and mouse population. What I need to spread is the local wild grasses that seem happy on this marginal soil. Unfortunatley they don't sell that in 50 pound bags.