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Goodhors You mentioned spreading manure on your pastures daily…do you allow it to compost first or are you picking stalls then spreading immediately? Do you keep your horses off the pastures you’re spreading manure on for a while?
I was under the impression you need to allow your manure pile to compost before spreading it on your fields…?[/QUOTE]
I do not compost because the clay soil NEEDS all that bulk of organic matter to work down into the clay for aereation. The sawdust, hay chaff, straw, helps to hold the clay particles apart, ‘loosening’ the soil with work of micro organisms, worms, pulling it down into the dirt. Anything you can get to keep the clay particles apart, will improve drainage, prevent the slippery effect of water on clay. Plant roots will more easily grow down and spread out, helping further break apart the soil particles.
The other thing is all this great organic matter you spread or get from mowing fields, is always breaking down, needs constant replacing to continue the good effects in and on the clay soil. Composting greatly reduces your volume of organic matter, so you have BETTER stuff to spread, but it doesn’t go very far, breaks down quickly. Spreading just as bedding from cleaned stalls, not composting, makes the organic matter go further, last longer with slower break down, to hold the clay particles apart longer and better over time.
As Guilherme explained, the bedding is spread widely, thin layer with the manure spreader. Not a thick heavy layer on the pastures. Particles are quite exposed to sunshine, heat or cold, to aid in reducing of parasites in that manure. I spread daily, don’t want a manure pile to attract flies, have to be handled again for spreading at a later time. We try to do ‘one and done’ with jobs here, so I put bedding in the spreader while cleaning stalls, spread the bedding on the fields, never handle it again. A second benefit also means daily spreading keeps spreader floor and chains dry, not rusting and rotting with urine sitting on them until spreader is filled, nothing to draw flies.
Not sure how much acreage you have, but I don’t have much. I plan to feed our horses on pasture during the warm months, not buying hay. So our horses get rotated among the fields often, really not able to ‘give pasture time off’ as the manure ages on the field. I try to spread on a field right after horses come off and it has been mowed. I am not going to cover the whole field before I rotate horses again, spread and mow the field they just came off. This lets field sit for a bit between visits for grazing by the horses. Usually about a week to 10 days now that we have more animals, I rotate them often to prevent over grazing.
I mow often most years, to keep growth even, not let leaves get long and lose nutrition. I never mow shorter than 5 inches, which keeps the plant healthier, productive. Shorter leaf plants develop better roots, which grow deeper, spread wider to feed the plant well, keep it growing in dry times. So yes, the horses may be grazing in fields that have ‘new’ manure on parts of them. That manure is good for covering exposed dirt, acting as mulch to the forage plants to prevent sun burning them. Microbial life increases incredibly, like having little workers that never take a day off while improving your dirt! Bedding spread out thinly also is preventing dirt from drying out faster, cracking in the heat of sunshine, helps prevent heavy rain just sluicing across a field without soaking in, causing erosion. My mulched fields cover improved clay soil that keeps my plant roots damp in drought times, so my grazing is still good for a long time after other folks grazing has disappeared with the dryness they have.
So far all the FEC testing has come up negative on our horses, even with them grazing fields recently spread with bedding materials. It would be nice to have more acreage, commit to not using a field we spread on for a year. But we don’t have that much so I work with what we have. Grazing is vastly improved with manure spreading, yearly fertilizing, regular mowing of the fields all season until Labor Day. I let the grass grow long then, covers and protects the dirt from sharp hooves tearing it up into muck. My soil now LOOKS like regular dirt, but I have the clay down under working for me. I think clay is a benefit to my pastures now, they always have plenty of water for the plants, which grow very well here. Living on sand pastures would be a challenge to me!
Yes, good points about the soil…we’d actually discussed bringing in truckloads of good topsoil for the 2 acre pasture before seeding in the spring, but sounds like I have several options to improve it.