Grass Management

When we moved here to the farm, we had only two horses and one goat, and what seemed to be a huge pasture. When we lost Sailor, our first pony gelding, we bought two Belgian mares, Bella & Blondie, to keep Tori company. We still seemed to have tons of pasture. We even considered cutting & bailing it for winter.

Over the next year we added Goliath, a Belgian gelding, Rita, a saddlebred mare, Trigger, a pony gelding, and Money, a Canadian mare to our herd. Last summer we had some grass issues. Our poor babies didn't seem to be getting enough to eat. The grass wasn't growing fast enough, and they had it cropped off right at the ground. In spots.

In other spots- hmmm. The grass seemed to be quite long. Except that they weren't touching it. There were a lot of buttercups growing on one side of the pasture, and I allowed myself to think that they were the cause of this phenomenon. That buttercups must be bitter tasting plants to horses.

Last year we strung electric fence up around the yard- why cut the grass when I had hungry horses eager to mow it for me? Then more electric fence around the far side of the house to the woods, and around the garden. When they ate all of that up eagerly, and the pasture grass still seemed so short, more electric fence was strung out back in the first clearing. Despite all of this, those spots remained that they would not eat, and they continued to look at me with pleading eyes, saying that they were oh so hungry. We allowed them to talk us into feeding them baled hay long before winter.

This year our herd consists of Tori, Bella, Blondie, Goliath, Rita, and two new arrivals, Sugar, another thoroughbred cross mare, and Thunder, a pony stallion. We lost Trigger last winter, and sold Money this spring, so our numbers remain the same.

The area where we stored hay last winter had bad fencing, and our horses pretty much helped themselves all winter. Our cow Dori also wandered off early in the spring, so we knew we had fence repairs to do. My dad used to be a cowboy- he worked on a cattle ranch in BC many years ago, and we were lucky to have him here to teach us how to repair the fences. We started with the damaged main fence where the cow got loose. Then we fenced in the hay storage area.

After a couple of weeks the grass in the hay storage area was up to nearly a foot high. Wow. We put fence posts in around the yard and strung barbed wire, replacing last year's electric fence. The horses are still mowing the lawn twice a week. But we're still having the same issues as last year with the buttercups versus the cropped off right at the ground sections. Except it's worse. The cropped off sections have bare patches of dirt throughout them. I talked to my dad about it, and he said, of course, they like it that way. Did you know that horses and cattle prefer the sweet grass- the short, new, fresh grass? Did you know that they will keep munching on that grass, not letting it grow back, until they kill it? There's really nothing wrong with the buttercup section- it's just not as sweet as the cropped off section. And as long as they can reach the cropped off section, they won't eat the buttercup section.

The main pasture area had two lines of old fence posts, but no fencing. Some of the posts were broken off, and others need to be replaced. We've managed to fence off the majority of the cropped off section now. Replaced most of the old posts, and strung two strands of barbed wire across. It still needs a third, but that's where I ran out of barbed wire. Now waiting for TSC to get more barbed wire back in stock.

We're also planning to add another fence line across the front of the buttercup section. That will give us three main pasture areas, plus the hay storage area. Now we have to keep track of how long it takes each section to recuperate, and add additional pasture areas as needed. My plan is to eventually fence off the pasture side of the trail through our property. That will give them an additional 20 acres or so, although a lot of that area is wooded. We also have two large clearings on the other side of the trail, that might become pasture as well. And I want to replace the electric fence around the garden with barbed wire as well.

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