Hello all my horse farm peeps. I searched for this topic but didn’t find anything useful. I live in South Eastern Virginia, I have a small acreage and try to seed, and lime every fall to help maintain it. I want to fertilize this year. What recommendations do you guys have for what to use?
Get a soil test first. Take several dirt samples from the depth of a spade shovel, at various locations on the pastures. Syou want dirt from down in the soil because that is where your plant roots will go to get nutrients. Spread the dirt out on a feed sack to dry out. Mix the dry dirt together, collect up about 2 measure cups worth in a plastic bag to send in for sampling. Your County Extension Service should be able to send it in for you. My State still has the Extension closed, so I took my dirt to the localfertilizer company to send in. A test rinse $18 to 20 here. The fertilizer folks should be able to tell you what is needed for growing “your crop”, pasture. Here, I can rent a spreader wagon, PTO powered with spinning plates and a walking floor (ground driven) that puts the granular fertilizer on the plates. I use a LOT of fertilizer, so they mix what i need by the soil test. With tons of "my recipe fertilizer "a wagon is much easier than buying bags and handling them.
As a “sort of new” person to fertilizer, I strongly recommend NOT buying Urea for the Nitrogen source in you m8x. First because urea is not good for ANY hooves animals, it can cause laminitus, even when rained in well. Second because urea will evaporate into the air if not rained into the soil pretty quick after spreading. So it is lost value in helping the soil. I use Ammonium Sulphate for my nitrogen source. It does not evaporate, is safe for grazing on after being rained in. Price is about the same as the urea, not an extra expense.
As the horse owner, you MUST speak up, keep reminding them at each step of ordering, mixing, that this is for HORSES, so NO UREA in the mix. They tend to default to urea automatically, so gentle reminders keep your mix urea free.
Ask for help on setting the wagon to spread at home. Write it down! Double check everything before spreading. Have someone else watch if possible, to see the spinners spinning, walking floor is delivering fertilizer to the spinners. I have gone to setting my spreading rate under what they advise so I get the entire field covered. If I have leftover fertilizer, I can continue spreading until empty. I seem to run out early using their recommended spreading rate per acre.
The advantage of the soil test is to provide your land just what it needs in nutrients. You don’t have too much or not enough of this or that, which is actually wasted fertilizer that gets washed away. The land and watershed do NOT need the excess fertilizer! Wasted money for you. Without testing, you do not know if your land actually needs lime! It may have plenty of lime, but almost nothing in phosphorus or other ninerals. So if you continue to spread only lime, the grass or hay grown will lack essential minerals for the animals.
Our newly purchased fields tested with almost NO nutrients except nitrogen. The fertilizer guy said it was the worst test he ever saw! We applied a LOT of fertilizer in two applications the first year after planting grasses. The land was more able to absorb the smaller fertilizer applications, put them to use, so fertilizer was absorbed, not getting washed away by being overloaded on the soil. Put the second application on 3 months later. The next spring soil test showed a huge nutrient improvement. But because we hay the ground, we applied more fertilizer after first cutting.
I would get my fertilizer test done soon and apply fertilizer in the spring if possible. Going into winter, the nitrogen is not as useful to the plants as a spring application seems to be. You do great green color, but if you get cold for winter the grasses quit growing soon. So not as much help as grass can use in warmer weather. I have heavy, clay ground, so I get fertilizer on the hay field after first cutting when I won’t mire down with the heavy spreader wagon. My pastures have great turf, not so sticky early in spring. So I lightly disc them to open the soil, cut the grass plants for better growth. This is a great time to spread your grass seed! Then I spread fertilizer as early as possible before horses are on full time pastures. After spreading I drag pastures with a chain harrow to smooth the dirt and grass plants. Looks kind of rough when done but fills in with grass pretty fast. Then the mowing starts! Ha ha
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I have a question. Why not liquid fertilizer? My concern with granular is is needs to be timed before a rain but liquid is effective immediately.
For me, it is about getting the correct amounts of what mineral additives i need, applied. They can do a better job with the granular stuff on my fields. Second is granular is easier to handle and apply, doing it by myself. Pastures and paddocks are small to get the big sprayers in and out of, without damaging fences or tearing up my wet ground. I could probably use a big sprayer on the hayfields, but they are small, pretty narrow too. Probably only need 2 passes to cover all the vegetation! Ha ha Not sure what they charge, but it would be a 20 mile drive, here and back, can’t be cheap running that big machine! Having to pay for spraying adds to cost of fertilizing.
The fertilizer spreader wagon throws a 40ft wide spread, so I can get everything spread in a very short time, get the rented spreader wagon returned. Wagon rental is minimal, $25. They will come right away to fix the wagon if I have any problems. It takes longer to put up my field markers to ensure I am driving straight from one end to the other on the field, than actually just spreading. Ha ha Some folks can spread without markers. But trying to keep my spreading even, it just works better for me with “target markers” to aim for as I dip out of sight on the hills. Traffic cones holding 6ft orange snow sticks with fluttering piece of marking tape are great markers
I do spray herbicide on the hayfields myself. However my small sprayer is only 60 gallons, 8ft spread, takes a couple refills and some hours to do the entire hayfield.
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@goodhors where did you get the information on using Urea?? I just spread about 100lb per acre on my back fields so now I’m worried. This article in The Horse mentions using urea but doesn’t mention it being unsafe.
https://thehorse.com/177816/fall-nitrogen-benefits-horse-pastures-year-round/#:~:text=Apply%2040%20to%2050%20pounds,at%20least%20six%20weeks%20apart.
Look up urea poisoning on Google for studies and specifics. Otherwise our knowledge is from dealing with sick horses that went into lamanitis in husband’s Farrier practice. He asks “what changed?” Recent fertilizing or even fertilizing a “while ago” of the pastures is the answer he usually gets. Those pastures did look nice! These were not fat or obese horses, never foundered before. Some did not make it, others recovered but were never as good again.
When I first went in to talk to “my” fertilizer guy about my pastures, I said we wanted no Urea. Husband had seen bad effects using it on pastured horses, refused to have Urea used on our place. My guy immediately agreed, said using Urea was a poor nitrogen choice for any grazing animals. He cited that this information was common knowledge for many years, called it Urea Poisoning. Then he suggested the Ammonium Sulphate as a nitrogen source, said it actually was better because it would not turn back into ammonia and evaporate before being useful, as Urea can do. Cost for either was very close, not an added expense in fertilizing.
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Thank you 
Here is a good place to start with how & where to source soil testing in VA. https://www.soiltest.vt.edu/sampling-insttructions.html
