yes …having someone take away the hay depletes your soil and adds nothing back. When we moved in here we started attending dept of conservation classes. We got our ‘masters’ in “Dirt Farming” LOL. If we were to ever allow someone to feed our hay crop to their cattle, they’d need to move their cattle here to eat it. Then we’d get something back to our soil.
Absolutely true.
But in the Great Scheme of Things hay is sold all the time and such sales are an essential part of 21st Century agriculture. That means that for the vast majority of hay producers they will have to come up with some system to replenish the minerals that are being removed from the soil by haying. And, is in your case, there must be some addition minerals to return a “poor” soil to a higher level of quality so that the forage produced is a higher level of quality.
G.
Anyone raising grass for hay or pasture, will need to add amendments for best production from the field. Animal manure from cattle, sheep, can be great stuff to improve pasture lands. But grazing animals all will use up some of the minerals they eat in staying healthy. Their manure does not return 100% of everything they eat. Horse manure is not a great fertilizer, again only returns part of the minerals they graze off in a field.
This is where a soil test, plus further testing of the hay/pasture produced, is needed to see what you actually are feeding. Are the plants using the minerals? Some minerals in the soil need trace minerals to allow plants to use them. Lime is a great help in many cases, but not a cure-all to provide those needed elements to the grazing animals. Too much lime changes the soil, perhaps making it more suitable for weeds instead of grasses. You may want to do a yearly soil test, to track if soil is improving as a good growing base for your “crop” of grazing plants.
Not sure of eightponds location or weather. Geographical location can make shared advice helpful or useless to the other person. Just reading the advice on planting legumes, in what sounds like a bigger ratio, has me asking how good is this for horse pasture? More common legumes of the clover and alfalfa variety, are not recommended as a big part of plantings for horse pastures. Neither are high ratios for the birds-foot trefoil or festolliums recommended. They are also legumes, good for clay and poor soils. Sheep and cattle can handle grazing on legumes much better than equines because they have more efficient dIgestive systems. That also makes their manure more useful as fertilizer.
Some kinds of grasses won’t do well in the northern areas or heat of the southern states. One plant does not do well everyplace. Mixed plantings are good so you have things to graze in all seasons.
I will agree that you can greatly improve pasture with just regular mowing, but not mowing shorter than 5 inches. Discing, just cutting into the soil to open your turf, scoring packed ground will help. But you don’t need to disc until there are no plants left! I disc only one pass in leaving open lines on the field, then use my chain drag to smooth everything out. Grass comes back well, soil absorbs water better, grass roots can expand better. You could overseed before dragging if you wanted to. I do this in early spring as ground firms up.
