What do you guys do to manage your pastures and take care of your manure? I am attempting to do research and help the owner of our farm come up with a better pasture management plan. There are a lot of great resources online, but ancidotal evidence is great too.
Re: Manure management. How big is the pasture? How many horses are on it and for how many hours a day? If it is a large pasture, one option is to drag some chain link fence or something similar behind a tractor to break up the manure piles and distribute the manure. Another option is to pick the manure with a fork. This option is very labor intensive and could warrant an increase in the boarding fees.
If you are looking for advice regarding fertilizers, liming, weed control, etc. your local cooperative extension is a great resource.
If you are looking for advice on managing the amount of time the pastures are grazed. That is a different question.
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Until this year, I spread it on my pastures. We use wood fiber bedding, it looks like mulch in bags. Very absorbent. Being a rather small acreage, with heavy clay soil, the bedding is very helpful in keeping this type dirt from being just clayish, slippery. The organic matter holds the tiny clay particles apart, to create a more soil-like dirt that will absorb water instead of letting water sheet off during rain. Also helps plants grow deeper roots to reach that deeper water in dry times.
I just spread a thin layer across the grass, overlapping spread edges for better coverage. I try to spread on all the fields over the course of the year. I also lightly disc the fields for aereation, just making stripes in the turf, noy cutting thinge into mud. Disc lines.open hoof packed soil to better absorb rain, let plants grow better in spreading out. I soil test and fertilize using those results, for a better crop of grass. You need the minerals put back for grazing to help build strong animals. Just liming soil doesnât do that. Do NOT use Urea in your fertilizer. Ammonium Sulphate is safer for hooves animals but you NEED to ask for it!
Then I mow the pastures as grass gets between 8-10 inches tall. In spring that might be weekly, less often as summer gets along. Letting grass go to seed shuts the plant down for the season. His job is done by procreating, goes dormant. Cut grass is always trying to set seed, keeps growing. I do not mow if there is drought, stresses the plant. I NEVER mow shorter than 5 inches. This height promotes root growth for stronger plants with long roots. Cutting too short stresses the plants, which takes away growing time. Longer leaves shade the dirt to prevent sunburning the roots, protect the soil in rain from erosion, get growth going again faster.
Horses get rotated on and off our fields, usually pretty quickly to prevent overgrazing. I never let them graze it down to a couple inches tall. I mow right after removing them from that field. If it is drought, horses might get rotated every day, giving field a short rest, before they go back on.
Planting a mix of seed, cold and warm season grasses, birdsfoot trefoil, keeps grazing productive all season long. I do not plant clovers, tough some will appear. Not the best for horses. The trefoil does well in my clay soil, provides nitrogen to the soil and horses like it. Relative of alfalfa, so I do not want a lot of it, pretty rich for my horses, but a little is nice in the fields.
I spread bedding on pastures year around, it was the only place we had to dispose of it. It has really improved the soil, we have very good pastures most of the time. Horses usually get no hay during summer. None show worms with fecal testing, though we do worm regularly. My type soil NEEDS that volume of organic matter to stay being good soil, because the organic matter continually breaks down with the aid of microscopic animals in the healthy soil. Sandy soils are also big users of organic applications of manure. It helps sand hold their water better, acts mulch-like to the plants in protecting soil.
ââčââčââčââčI am alternating this year with spreading manure on my pastures and new hayfield we purchased. Hayfield has been very neglected the last 40 years, needs the organic matter to improve grass growth for future hay crops. We fertilized too, so hoping for a nice crop this summer if the weather cooperates.
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I am on very small acreage, so my pastures are less than an acre each, for two horses turned out together. I will pick poop off the back, smaller turnout as they are there more often than the bigger front field. I drag the pastures with an arena drag each spring to mulch and spread any winter/early spring poop. We lime or fertilize as well as spray for general weeds, and spot spray blackberries. Then I mow to 6" as needed, with the occasional dragging to break up the poo piles that arenât in the horse-chosen âbathroomâ spots.
Picking poop is indeed labor intensive, especially if the grass is long. I do not spread my composted manureâno spreader and small acreage. One horse will be in a grazing muzzle or small "dry lotâ arrangement this year so I am trying to sort out how to manage that.
As mentioned above - t depends on everything. # of acres, # of horses, whether grass is meant for forage or turnout is meant for turnout only (and supplemented by hay, for example)âŠ.where you can put manure (if anywhere), etc.
Easy answer - pick up what you can, drag the rest. What is picked up can be piled and compostedâŠwhether or not you use it for anything is up to you. Compost gets smaller over time so the piles can be managed. But how you do this will vary hugely if you have 2 acres compared to 20 acres. Or 200 acres.
As for piles and compost - it also depends on the type of bedding. I definitely would not combine wood shavings and pasture picked manure if the intent is to use for garden compost.
If $ is no object, they have those sweet pasture vacuums. Also, you never realize how much horses poop until you have to pick it up- even a small paddock.
I read once they poop about 50#s a day for smaller horses. And them pooping all over a paddock, makes cleanup a JOB! Good thing horse poop breaks down easily if it can dry out, reduces the volume. My friend has a leaf vacuum arrangement on her riding mower. She uses it to get rid of winter poop after things thaw out in spring. Her girls are quite neat, pooping in the same spots every time, so cleanup goes fast. Just have to keep emptying the collector box.
As others have said, depends on # of horses and # of acres.
We have 16 acres on our little farm and 2 horses. I drag my pasture with chain harrows about once a week. I rotate horses between pastures also. Picking would be impossible for my pasture size. Dragging breaks up the piles really well and after pasture has been dragged and horses are off it for a few days, I am amazed at how quickly the little chunks of poop break down. Our soil is very sandy so adding organic material is helpful. We have a gravel winter/sacrifice paddock that I do pick and add to manure pile. I donât have stalls and my shelters have sand in them so no shavings.
We are in the process of FINALLY getting a tractor which means our manure pile will be getting managed better and turned more regularly. The people before us had horses too so some of the pile is well composted. Iâm hoping some local gardeners will take some off our hands this spring as we will finally have machinery to reach the âgood stuffâ.
I agree with the others that it will depend on how many horses and how many acres, but Iâll also add local climate to that. What I do here in the rainy and temperate part of the PNW wonât necessarily apply if you are somewhere dry or where extremes in temperature are more common.
Since I have small acreage and my horses spend a lot of time in dry lots, I clean up everything and compost it. Stalls and dry paddocks get cleaned every day, and the pastures (when being used) are more like once a week or so. That isnât necessarily practical or necessary for a larger facility. I donât drag as we donât get the temps to kill parasites and Iâd rather get it out and composting, and I do find that removing the manure has a big impact on fly activity here in the warmer months. But it isnât a one size fits all kind of thing - no way will a large boarding barn do what I do!
I pay a kid to pick the paddocks; the small one off the barn is 1/3 acre that has the donkeys (and now pony) on it all year and in the winter, the retired horse as well, so it gets picked weekly. The big paddocks (~1 acre) get one horse each for half a day late spring/summer through fall and I get the kid to pick that a couple times a year. I should probably drag a couple times a year now that theyâve been on it for a couple years, and will soil test and fertilize this year.
Our dry lot gets picked 1-2x /week. The ~9 horses rotate between 3 pastures, each 2+ acres each. We alternate between picking and dragging each pasture when the horses come off it, and then it rests for a couple of weeks. 6 horses are stalled overnight, the others live out. We have decent grass most of the year, plant winter rye, and supplement with large square bales of grass hay available 24/7.
itâs a constant chore to stay on top of pasture management, whether thatâs dragging, picking, mowing, fertilizing, or seeding. Each region and soil type will vary your management requirements. I second other posters who recommend your local extension office as a great resource to help figure out what will work best for your setup.
Itâs also great when the tines of the fork get caught in the grass and you catapult poop onto yourself Ă°ĆžËâ .
That riding horse poop vacuum is my micromanagement dream!
I keep two or three on about 5 acres of total pasture space. Pastures are divided into three sections of roughly equal size. Our process is:
-graze Pasture One for 20-30 days (time depends on weather conditions, grass growth)
-move horses to Pasture Two
-spread composted manure and bedding from barn on pasture one
-drag Pasture One with chain harrow
-when Pasture Two has been grazed for 20-30 days, horses move to Pasture Three
-Pasture Two is spread with composed manure and dragged
-when Pasture Three has been grazed for 20-30 days, horses move back to Pasture One
-Pasture One has now had 40-60 days of rest and usually been mowed at least once
Rinse. Repeat.
NB - we have ânutrient management restrictionsâ in place in Maryland from Nov-Mar to protect the rivers and the Bay. So any composted manure gets hauled off site during the winter. But we maintain the pasture rotation schedule to keep any one pasture from being too dug up.
This routine has worked well for us for 30 years â I have an excellent stand of grass and fat, shiny mares.
stars
^ Iâm also in MD and I do pretty much what @ShotenStar does, except for winter when my horses only have access to the highest and driest acre (no rotation then). I also have a stonedust dry lot that I pick daily. I keep 3-4 equines and have 3 acres of turnout with good, healthy grass.
On the other end of the spectrum, thereâs a large boarding facility near me with 60+ horses on individual or pair turnout whose land management plan has been formulated in consultation with Soil Conservation and the Ag Extension. They do something very similar on a larger scale: rotate pastures to rest them, harrow the rested pastures to break up manure, spread composted stall pickings on the rested pastures, and of course mow as needed.
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Two horses, small pastures. My horses do lawns, where they eat and roughs, where they poop. I go out occasionally and whack the piles apart to spread them. Good exercise, sometimes. They are in a mud lot for the winter, so zero maintenance there. As I get older, i would like a drag behind the tractor or ATV.
