Could you find an area to section off another small grass paddock? Rotating pastures helps a lot. I have three small grass paddocks and two horses, so two of them are almost always in use (I only turn my horses out together over the winter when they aren’t wearing shoes). I rotate every 3 weeks or so. I’ve had lovely grazing all year long. When it’s wet out, I use one of them as a sacrifice area, but even that one has grazeable grass.
That makes sense with your herd. Mine are a pretty chilled group of 3 at turnout time.
You guys have been immensely helpful and have helped me decide to divide my pasture so I can rotate next spring.
Tiffany - yes I can section off another area the same size as their current winter pasture and rotate back and forth over the winter if the COTH consensus is that rotating all winter will also help preserve the land? But without the grass growing, is there a point to doing this in the winter or is it better to have a small area that you know they’ll eat down and destroy?
Otherwise, I’ll let them eat down the current winter paddock while the big pasture has all winter and early spring to recover. They are content with the current setup, but they also know the routine and as soon as they’ve finished their breakfast they are both standing at the pasture gate waiting to go out - and then it’s a celebration of bucking and rolling for about 30 seconds before burying their faces in the grass :lol:
I don’t know that rotating over the winter is ideal. I was thinking this was your ONLY grazing land for all year - I missed the part where you said you had a bigger pasture LOL. I keep mine in one of the paddocks all winter and let them destroy that one. The only time I put them in a different one is if it becomes too rutted and then ices over - I don’t want them to get hurt. If it’s iced over, the ground is frozen solid and they aren’t going to do any damage to the other pasture anyways LOL.
I think it depends a lot on your soil and how easily the grass can recover.
I have 3 pasture (used to be 2). I consider then winter sacrifice and summer sacrifice, plus the good pasture which I try to not let get overgrazed. In the summer, they rotate amoungst the 3 pastures, but if it gets dry and grass is short, they will stay in the summer sacrifice pasture, which is too low and muddy for winter use. One late fall/winter once grass growth has come to a crawl, they stay in the winter sacrifice until grass is looking nice in one of the other fields. And over the winter and early spring the summer sacrifice pasture recovers. The harder the drought, the longer it needs in the spring before its ready for grazing (an extra week or two). The winter pasture is then rested for 6-8 weeks and with this KY clay the grass comes back amazingly well.
In some other soils this technique would never work
