Native Warm-Season Grasses for Horse Pasture in VA and TN

[subk]

Horse are significantly harder on pasture than cows. Bigger feet, more movement, they run around and play and do sliding stops and spins tearing up the ground. I have both and know that which I speak!

I also know UT Extension and they really don’t give two squats about equine management–in my experience they are all about cattle all the time. So I would be terribly cautious making any major (expensive) decisions for an equine operation based on what I strongly suspect is their cow-centric research and approach. Just like you think that “horses on fescue” was an after thought I assure you the current “horses on NWSG” is just a similar convenient add-on for them.

Small hay production (one cutting a year) does not make up for the expense of either having it cut, the machinery and labor to do it yourself or the risk you get something you can use. Cutting hay for horses has a significantly smaller margin of error than for cattle. I’ve actually dealt with a local hay guy who thought he could get into a niche market with warm season hay. After a few years he abandoned it because what was produced was not very appealing to horses. He found short of starvation many horses simply wouldn’t eat the hay, including mine. My IR horse was a taste tester horse for him and wouldn’t touch it and he wasn’t a particularly picky eater. I don’t see ANY model for NWSG that does not include the cost of hay for 4-5 months a year either the DIY cost of production or the purchase from a supplier.

I don’t mean to be a debbie downer, but I have done a little research on the possibility of doing this here. I have enough acreage, cross fencing, excellent acre/horse ratio, appropriate maintenance equipment (although no haying equipment) and am happy to use chemicals for better pasture maintenance. There was no long term financial effectiveness I could find. My husband–who would have loved to make the transition on our farm for the added benefit of creating habitat for upland birds–was even willing to lose money on it but we STILL could make financial sense of it.

[Katy_Watts]

[QUOTE=QacarXan;7687838]

What’s your involvement with the grasses, btw? It’s refreshing to find a horse owner so familiar with them.[/QUOTE]

check out website in my signature line. Some of the articles might be of interest to you. I have a BS in Crop/Soil from Mich State. Career as crop consultant/pesticide researcher under GLP.

[Guilherme]

[QUOTE=subk;7687878]
Horse are significantly harder on pasture than cows. Bigger feet, more movement, they run around and play and do sliding stops and spins tearing up the ground. I have both and know that which I speak!

I also know UT Extension and they really don’t give two squats about equine management–in my experience they are all about cattle all the time. So I would be terribly cautious making any major (expensive) decisions for an equine operation based on what I strongly suspect is their cow-centric research and approach. Just like you think that “horses on fescue” was an after thought I assure you the current “horses on NWSG” is just a similar convenient add-on for them.

Small hay production (one cutting a year) does not make up for the expense of either having it cut, the machinery and labor to do it yourself or the risk you get something you can use. Cutting hay for horses has a significantly smaller margin of error than for cattle. I’ve actually dealt with a local hay guy who thought he could get into a niche market with warm season hay. After a few years he abandoned it because what was produced was not very appealing to horses. He found short of starvation many horses simply wouldn’t eat the hay, including mine. My IR horse was a taste tester horse for him and wouldn’t touch it and he wasn’t a particularly picky eater. I don’t see ANY model for NWSG that does not include the cost of hay for 4-5 months a year either the DIY cost of production or the purchase from a supplier.

I don’t mean to be a debbie downer, but I have done a little research on the possibility of doing this here. I have enough acreage, cross fencing, excellent acre/horse ratio, appropriate maintenance equipment (although no haying equipment) and am happy to use chemicals for better pasture maintenance. There was no long term financial effectiveness I could find. My husband–who would have loved to make the transition on our farm for the added benefit of creating habitat for upland birds–was even willing to lose money on it but we STILL could make financial sense of it.[/QUOTE]

Very well written and said.

G.

[Katy_Watts]

[QUOTE=subk;7687878]

There was no long term financial effectiveness I could find. [/QUOTE]

I totally concur. It is more cost effective to manage one IR horse doing other things. But when people have foundered half the horses on the farm, planting ‘safer’ grass approaches cost effectiveness. And guilt weighs heavily in the balance. To some horse owners, cost effectiveness is less important than allowing horses some opportunity for a more normal life style than dry lot and hay. There are some horse owners whose objective is to create a pastoral scene outside their windows. When they choose ponies or horses prone to obesity or IR and don’t ride, they are tempted to spend a lot of money to rectify their situation.

[QacarXan]

subk, was that financial analysis based on making hay, or on the pasture itself?

With regards to standing up to trampling and grazing, I’ll link to a photo I took of a pasture with 29 cattle on 23 acres for 3 months. Grazing pressure was evenly distributed despite the lack of rotation or cross-fencing, and the grasses had enough residual left to be more than on the safe side for enduring without stand losses. The thatch on the ground also reduced mud and increased water infiltration, a major plus for a potential horse pasture.

NWSG (Indiangrass and big bluestem) under constant grazing pressure

The cattlemen (here’s one) and shepherds I met who planted stands of these grasses certainly didn’t do it to lose money, but they needed summer gains whereas a horse owner’s financial incentives would lie elsewhere. Mr. Drumheller, going back to the question of “if it works, why isn’t anyone doing it?” custom-grazes cattle on it, meaning he is contractually obligated to meet weight gain requirements or he loses money and business. Other livestock producers take their cattle to him, set a number of pounds the cattle need to gain by a certain date, and trust him with their investments. He also does meat inspections and quality assurances for Kroger. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone more agriculturally qualified.

For equestrian properties, as opposed to the gain benefits for cattle, I think the value would be in meeting summer forage requirements without needing pricey summer hay. For example, one farm I’m thinking of has 14 horses on 40 acres most of the year, but in summer, many of the horses come up from Florida and they have around 22 to 25 on the property, so a warm-season pasture that can churn out 8000 lbs of forage in 4 months would be a godsend.

Was the warm-season hay you tried a native grass, or something like teff?

Katy, that sounds like a fun career! I’m in pasture management and consulting (no NWSG involvement in that arena) and going to start on a research project soon involving sheep on NWSG on a farm in central VA. The owner just planted more of his acreage and had a few dozen acres in NWSG already, I believe. Hopefully soon I’ll have more to report in that arena while watching the grasses grow and be grazed on a regular basis rather than on a tour of multiple farms in a few days.

Regarding horse owners and money, when I think of how much people spend on aesthetics (e.g. pricey fence paints, deluxe double wood fences, hand-made fieldstone fences, etc) and mowing to get that golf course look, it makes me wonder why planting a grass that requires no fertilizer and can reduce hay costs would be financially unwise. 95% of other property management costs people seem to go for on barns are a financial loss, but in just a few years these grasses would pay for themselves (given enough horses and acres on the property) in terms of forage produced, fertilizer saved, and the fact that there isn’t a drought in the region bad enough to wilt them, whereas fescue is just an ergovaline-laden straw wasteland in drought. I think people just need to stop viewing pastures as lawns, and start viewing them as what they are–forage that can either contribute to the farm, or bleed money through improper management, frequent mowing, fertilizer applications, and regular herbicide applications.

[subk]

[QUOTE=QacarXan;7691022]
subk, was that financial analysis based on making hay, or on the pasture itself?

With regards to standing up to trampling and grazing, I’ll link to a photo I took of a pasture with 29 cattle on 23 acres for 3 months. Grazing pressure was evenly distributed despite the lack of rotation or cross-fencing, and the grasses had enough residual left to be more than on the safe side for enduring without stand losses. The thatch on the ground also reduced mud and increased water infiltration, a major plus for a potential horse pasture. [/QUOTE]

Cattle graze by using their tonge and tearing out grass. Horses graze by biting the grass off at the base with their teeth. Then horses who like the tender young sprouts will go back over and over spot grazing the same areas down to the dirt and it can destroy stands of grass in those areas. Cows can’t get the short sprouts with their tonge so they graze a field more evenly, leaving a longer blade of grass that allows for better recovery from being grazed.

This assumption that your research makes that horses and cows are interchangable in grazing habit is EXACTLY why I don’t trust much of what UT Extension has out there for horse management.

[QacarXan]

I didn’t make that assumption at all, actually, and I’m not researching horses and NWSG, so I didn’t incorporate any such notions into my research. I’d love the chance to research horses on these grasses, though.

Horses nuke a pasture like no other animal. I’m still confident these grasses would be OK unless the stocking rate was far too high. Why? Because the stems of these grasses have no palatability, while the foliage has high palatability, and because they produce absurd amounts of forage in a brief time. Animals graze the leaves while leaving the apical meristems intact, so the grass has the structure and reserves to regrow. Consequently, even with horses, I’m confident these pastures could handle at the very least a horse per acre without problems, and very possibly two. Two per three acres would be a safe number. There aren’t many horses that can eat down 6000-8000 lbs of dry matter in one summer, especially if they have any grain in their diet. Maybe if you have a working Belgian or something.

My assumption, based on my experiences as a pasture consultant and my 21 years of dealing with horses (not as long as many on this forum, but I’m hardly a cattleman-turned-horse-hobbyist), is that the biggest vulnerability from horses in Southeastern pastures is due to shredding the turf on days with high soil moisture. I’ve seen far more long-term damage done in a short time that way than from overgrazing, though goodness knows many if not most horse people don’t even know what the terms “stocking rate” or “carrying capacity” mean, or how much dry matter per acre their property produces. When it comes to trampling, gamagrass spreads rhizomatously, like a turf, but has roots 15 feet deep and can bounce back from some pretty atrocious churning of the soil. And it’s easier for a horse to step around it than to shred it. Finally, it also produces a thatch that acts like a mulch and increases infiltration while reducing mud. Basically it shields the ground and its own roots, all while making a soft but resilient surface for hooves.

That’s what I’m basing it on–not an Extension publication, or the absurd assumption that cattle = horses. I’m not an Extension agent, and I’ve made most of the money in my life in equine-specific jobs. Never worked as a cattleman, though I dabble and appreciate the lifestyle.

[subk]

[QUOTE=QacarXan;7703187]
I didn’t make that assumption at all, actually, and I’m not researching horses and NWSG, so I didn’t incorporate any such notions into my research.[/QUOTE]

Except this is what you said:

@QacarXan;7691022

With regards to standing up to trampling and grazing, I’ll link to a photo I took of a pasture with 29 cattle on 23 acres for 3 months. Grazing pressure was evenly distributed despite the lack of rotation or cross-fencing, and the grasses had enough residual left to be more than on the safe side for enduring without stand losses.

How a pasture holds up to cattle is meaningless to me when trying to make choices for horses. Especially since I raise both cattle and horses and can see how different the effects each have on pasture on a daily basis.

[QacarXan]

Nowhere in there did I say cattle = horses. I said it stood up well to a boatload of cattle, and it did, and I think it would stand up robustly to horses as well. Feel free not to plant the grasses, but I am quite confident that these would work for many properties as a summer grazing pasture. They already do for horses in places with far less productivity that have the same species, like in eastern Kansas and Oklahoma. Picture linked below.

So frankly I don’t understand why you’d think these grasses, already having historically withstood everything from bison to mustangs to ranch horses, can’t handle summer grazing on a horse farm. They already do that in other regions. Why not Virginia and Tennessee, where the productivity is far higher than places where NWSG already work?

Horses in bluestem-dominated NWSG prairie in Kansas:

http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/ca/images/2012/535.Par.85630.Image.850.409.1.gif

[clanter]

Since OP keeps mention Virginia… have they considered Orchard Grass?

Orchard Grass was first grown in this country in Virginia but was first commercially produced from where I grew up in Oldham County, Kentucky… just across US 42 from Hermitage Farms in Goshen which was for years one of the leading TB production farms in the country

[subk]

[QUOTE=QacarXan;7704900]
So frankly I don’t understand why you’d think these grasses, already having historically withstood everything from bison to mustangs to ranch horses, can’t handle summer grazing on a horse farm. [/QUOTE]
As stated before the main problem isn’t how it holds up to summer grazing, but how I’m going to affodably supply forage for livestock the other 6 months of the years. The second problem is that most of the research I’ve seen for this is bovine-centric and I don’t make equine management decisions based on what works for cattle.

[QacarXan]

[QUOTE=subk;7708423]
As stated before the main problem isn’t how it holds up to summer grazing, but how I’m going to affodably supply forage for livestock the other 6 months of the years. The second problem is that most of the research I’ve seen for this is bovine-centric and I don’t make equine management decisions based on what works for cattle.[/QUOTE]

Regarding horse vs bovine research, I’m totally with you. I’ve been wondering if it’s worth applying for grants and finding a willing landowner to do this research with. I’ll ask the guy who just hired me to do research on these grasses for other species (namely sheep) for advice on grants for this–I know he’s interested in its potential for horses, so I’ll see what he says.

I’ll let one of the guys I met on the tour speak to the point about grazing the rest of the year:

“I’m not telling people to get rid of all of their fescue, it has its place in a year long rotation. However, putting 15-20 percent of your ground into natives for summer forage can make a big difference. It all comes down to utilization, and when you can pull your animals off of cool season pastures for the summer it can make a big difference in your length of Fall grazing.”

When the Fall grazing is more robust, then you also have a chance to stockpile fescue for winter with minimal effort on other pastures freed up by the summer rest. Stockpiled fescue has 12-18% crude protein, better than most orchardgrass hay. So for larger farms, converting 15-20% of the acreage to NWSG would open up extra grazing as well on the rest of the acreage thanks to the rest afforded pastures otherwise used and stressed in summer. If that extra cool-season productivity frees up another pasture, it can be easily mowed in late August for stockpiling, then grazed in winter with better nutrition than most hay, and reduced hay costs. So I could easily see this extending the grazing of a horse farm with no more effort than it takes to eyeball the pastures and mow a paddock in August (or even just skipping the stockpiling and enjoying the extra Fall grass).

[QacarXan]

[QUOTE=subk;7708423]
As stated before the main problem isn’t how it holds up to summer grazing, but how I’m going to affodably supply forage for livestock the other 6 months of the years. The second problem is that most of the research I’ve seen for this is bovine-centric and I don’t make equine management decisions based on what works for cattle.[/QUOTE]

Regarding horse vs bovine research, I’m totally with you. I’ve been wondering if it’s worth applying for grants and finding a willing landowner to do this research with. I’ll ask the guy who just hired me to do research on these grasses for other species (namely sheep) for advice on grants for this–I know he’s interested in its potential for horses, so I’ll see what he says.

I’ll let one of the guys I met on the tour speak to the point about grazing the rest of the year:

“I’m not telling people to get rid of all of their fescue, it has its place in a year long rotation. However, putting 15-20 percent of your ground into natives for summer forage can make a big difference. It all comes down to utilization, and when you can pull your animals off of cool season pastures for the summer it can make a big difference in your length of Fall grazing.”

When the Fall grazing is more robust, then you also have a chance to stockpile fescue for winter with minimal effort on other pastures freed up by the summer rest. Stockpiled fescue has 12-18% crude protein, better than most orchardgrass hay. So for larger farms, converting 15-20% of the acreage to NWSG would open up extra grazing as well on the rest of the acreage thanks to the rest afforded pastures otherwise used and stressed in summer. If that extra cool-season productivity frees up another pasture, it can be easily mowed in late August for stockpiling, then grazed in winter with better nutrition than most hay, and reduced hay costs. So I could easily see this extending the grazing of a horse farm with no more effort than it takes to eyeball the pastures and mow a paddock in August (or even just skipping the stockpiling and enjoying the extra Fall grass).