The articles started popping up last week. The "proper way" to introduce your horse to spring pasture. "How to" make pasture safe for your horse. It seems that in all walks of life, we've forgotten the basics.
Horses have lived for centuries on "pasture". "Pasture" is not the problem or the enemy. Humans making "pasture" an option ... or those who feel that "pasture" means perfectly mantiured grass ... are the problem. (See previous blog on overly fat horses).
My horses - and many I know - live outdoors on pasture 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. None - not one - of these horses has had a hoof problem or digestive issue from spring grass. Not one, in over 70 horses I can count by name.
So, what's the difference?
Number one: Humans feel the need to make their pastures "pretty". Fertilizing twice per year, getting rid of every "weed" in sight, and overseeding with grasses that were probably never designed for grazing but meant for one's personal, home lawn. If you've ever watched a horse graze, you've noticed they will eat a great many plants in addition to grass.
I've got a little less than 100 acres of what I refer to as "unimproved" pasture. In other words, everything grows on it - grass, clover, weeds, trees. This winter, I put out a white salt lick, a red salt lick, and one of those 30-something-dollar horse mineral blocks. Guess which one I had to replace first? The white block. The other two have still barely been touched. That tells me that my horses are able to get all the nutrients they need through grazing alone. They aren't interested in the fancy trace minerals because they don't need them.
Now, if you only have 5 acres to work with, I understand where you might not have the variety and might want to control weeds versus grass a little bit more. But I still think there is a happy medium to allow your horse a safer and more natural existence.
Number Two: People, for their own convenience, tend to stall their horses in the wintertime. Keep the poor horsie in from the cold, keep a blanket on him, don't let him out to pick what grass their may be along with his hay (and grain) at his leisure. So when springtime comes along, and the nice longer days begin, and Horsie has been off grass for the past 4 months, we suddenly have to be super careful about how much he eats, because he hasn't seen a blade of grass since October.
Number Three: The constant cycle of human interference. Overseeding or reseeding pastures with grasses not designed for grazing - or those designed for cattle - increase the protein and sugar content of what your horse receives. Think about it - grasses designed for beef cattle are designed to quickly bulk up steers so that the farmer can make a greater profit more quickly. Fertilizing grazing areas with chemical fertilizers - your horses produce a natural fertilizer that serves the same purpose.
So, what's the right answer?
Less micro-management and better overall management. Reseeding or overseeding with a horse-friendly grass mix; rotating small pasture areas properly (including allowing the grass to fully recover in one area before re-introducing animals to it); good manure removal and re-use; and letting your horse be a horse.
One final common sense nugget: If your horse has adequate pasture and you only ride a couple of days a week, he probably doesn't need ten pounds of sweet feed a day. Most "pleasure use" horses maintain a good healthy weight (5 on the body condition scorecard), on good pasture alone. There are always exceptions; but as we tend to overfeed ourselves on fast food, so do we tend to overfeed our horses on commercial grain mixes.
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