We’re 16" above in rainfall this year and our ground is feeling it. I don’t want the horses tearing up the ground and existing grass, yet I feel bad that they’re in a dry lot with nothing but hay. Do you typically leave horses in a dry lot all day(s) to protect your grass? Is there anything you put in there that makes it nicer for them (other than hay). Rubbing posts?
I used to live in Arizona. Many horses live in dry lots all the time. They’re fine.
Even here in Georgia my place is mostly wooded and at best I have ‘summer pasture’ when it’s dry enough. The rest of the time, he’s in a dry lot with hay. We’ve been here since 2010, the pony is 27 now, and every year the vet says “whatever you’re doing, keep doing it!”
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Mine have been in since Oct and will remain until probably April…
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Oct/Nov - April/May…We also received an over abundance of rain this year and I’m not ruining my pastures. I have a fairly large dry lot area though.
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Depends on the weather and the age of the horse! I have a young one that I let go up on my scrubby pasture if she’s been on the “dry” lot for more than a couple days. It’s safer for both of us if she gets a chance to run a bit every few days. (She gets bouncy).
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I never keep mine off the grass due to wet conditions. What little damage they may do seems to be unnoticeable ( at least to my eye) once warm weather comes and the grass really starts growing.
I used to leave them in for 6 weeks once the grass really started growing so it could get a good stand before grazing, but I stopped that so they could acclimate to the new growth gradually as it came in. I have enough pasture that they can’t keep up with it and I dry lot them 12 hours during the grazing season because they are easy keepers.
They are out 24/7 during the dormant months.
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Here in the PNW (wet side), I keep mine off when it’s wet-- which can be months at a time. If the ground dries out enough to so hooves will not mark the ground/dig in, I turn them out in one or the other field. Otherwise, it’s dry lot and hay. And since there’s no real grass from November to March, they eat hay in the fields too!
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I do exactly this. As torn up as the pasture seems to be during the “off season,” two weeks into grass growing on it and it looks just fine. I have fewer than the max number of horses per acre and I don’t see any ill effects from letting them be out there in the mud as long as they get around safely.
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It also eliminated the need to transition them back onto the grass. I may take them off midday and let them back on for a few hours in late afternoon as it all depends on how fast they blimp out:mad:
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Mine are off the field as long as it’s wet. The soil is just too fragile here and the grass too precious.
In MN, I was AMAZED at the beating the pastures could take and just bounce back in the spring. Even my sacrifice area regrassed–real grass that the horses were happy to eat, not weeds!–without any effort on my part at all. It was crazy. Location does matter a lot for this question, along with pasture size :yes:
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@Simkie I found that in MN as well. It is one of the things I miss most about not being there anymore :yes:
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Me too! Coming here to CT is like the total other end of that spectrum :sigh: :no: Baby the snot out of the field and it’s still just “meh” grass. I miss the pastures in MN a lot! (But not the winters :lol:)
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I hear that!!
I meant to switch turnout from all night to all day from Nov to Mar in some misguided attempt to protect the pastures, I really did. But I greatly overestimated how much poop those two can generate when they are in all night (So many muck buckets. So. Many) and I only want to dump manure on weekends because I would rather ride/drive in my precious daylight than dump manure. I had to draw the line at 3 muck buckets a day. And seriously, over the years I have found pastures all look like shit in this weather (and far worse when we have a dry year!) and they all look fine come spring because nothing is overgrazed going into fall… unless we had a drought. Drought requires serious management.
So I gave in and put out a roundbale and went back to giving them a lot more access to the pastures. I do have one pasture that I always seed with rye so it Very Popular, it is also the lowest pasture, along a creek AND the one I like to practice marathon hazard work, so I want to limit it being too torn up. What I’ve done since the roundbale was put out is restrict access to rye pasture except for every other day. So about 4xweek they are locked in the dry lot during the day, 3x week access to all 3 pastures and every night they have access to the stalls/drylot+top 2 pastures+roundbale. If it is absolutely pouring, I lock them in the stalls/drylots since once of them is a rain weenie regardless of whether or not he has on a blanket (TB) and the other (fjord) loves to hang out in the rain no matter what. This way one hangs in the stall or run in and the other hangs out in the rain with his head under the overhang and I curse because the stall is trashed and one of the rain sheets is soaked and that much closer to losing waterproofing.
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OP I don’t think anyone can answer this for you. You will need to figure it out by careful observation of your own pasture. A lot depends on the size of the pasture, the number of horses, the fertility of the soil, and the health and strength of your grass species. I’ve certainly seen pastures destroyed to the point they won’t grow anything next summer, and I have seen pastures that can support horses year round with no sign of stress.
I’m the the PNW and pasture management varies from farm to farm as there is a great variety of soils from below sea level flood plain to gravelly hills here.
The point of dry lots is to keep the pasture safe for another year, and many horses live on drylots year round, so you are doing no real harm to your horses keeping them in a paddock for a month or so until your unusual weather situation resolves.
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@Scribbler I’m trying to get over my guilt - LOL. I’m from the Midwest, so “in like a lion and out like a lamb” has real meaning to me. Last year, we had that freaky 10" (estimated) of snow and after that everything turned to mud. I’m trying to keep some grass in the pens this year even though I overseeded last year and it came in quite nice. We have 5 1/2 acres, including house, etc. and 3 horses. After 6-7 hours, they stop eating from the Hay Hut and start hanging at the gate. Then I start feeling sad. Guess I’ll just need to develop some more emotional strength!
Dry lot here 24/7 365. No grass to be had here.
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I compromise. Over the winter my horses stay in the stonedust dry lot overnight (with a run-in shed and roundbale). During the day I open a gate to the highest and driest section of my pasture. The other two sections are closed all winter. That way only 1/3rd of my pasture gets torn up over the winter, and I can rest it in the spring to let it recover. That has worked well for the past couple years.
If we get a lot of rain (like this past weekend) or snowmelt, I might keep them in the dry lot for a day or two but they do get angry! The donkey brays every time he hears the house door open and the old horse chases the little ones around and tears up the footing. :rolleyes: They like their outside time even when the grass is basically nonexistent, and I want them happy more than I want pristine fields. Plus it makes me happy to see them out in the field napping in the sun or nibbling at the grass together.
Everything depends so much on the individual situation. At my boarding barn the horses are normally kept in what are effectively large dry lots 24/7/365. Some of them can keep a bit of grass growing here and there, but not near enough to actually feed the horses. The large grassy areas are used for riding. Brutal fall rains turned the “dry” lots into swamps and they actually put the horses out in the grassy areas (and some in the sand arenas and round-pens) to let the dry lots recover, since people weren’t riding anyway—the ground around here is largely clay that is visciously slick when soaked.
As others have said, there are many parts of the country and the world where dry lots are the norm of horse keeping, at least for horses that are used regularly for riding, either because acreage is at such a premium, or the climate and ground is such that you need an impractically huge lot of land to truly pasture horses and still expect to be able to lay hands on them in a timely fashion when you want to go out and ride.
Oh, but I think NOTHING is worse than snow for turning everything into a giant mud pit (at least down here). Rain, especially a hard rain, does a mixture of run off and soak in. Snow just slowly melts and soaks in and takes it sweet time leaving.
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