Bahia or Bermuda for horses in south LA

TedW – posted 07 October 2003 12:11

We recently bought a 40 acre horse farm just north of New Orleans, LA (rolling hills – good drainage). Some pastures are bahia,one large one is bermuda and several others are a mixture of both. We’ve done a fair amount of stripping the existing bahia topsoil (we had to build a 1500 ft. road) and re-distributing it around the place (particularly along both sides of the road bed). We also cut a new swale for drainage thus creating a 100′ by 600′ long area of dirt – all the top soil was removed. That pasture is mostly bahia. Lastly, we cleaned the edge of the pond back to dirt. It is now the beginning of October and we need to plant something in the swale and along the edge of the pond to prevent erosion. I assume the relocated topsoil will simply be new bahia after a few rains. The questions then are what to plant in the swale and along the pond (both are in a predominatley bahia pasture) at this time of year. And, will one type of grass be better for horses to graze and/or ride on? How about maintenance? We will want to use some of the pastures for hay – any thought on that. All responses will be appreciated.

Dchall_San_Antonio – posted 09 October 2003 21:29

I hope you know more about crops for horses than I do. Here’s what I would do. This is more for cattle, but…if fescue will work for horses and will grow in your neighborhood, I would use that around the pond and elsewhere. It forms a dense mat that is hard for even horses to penetrate (except in the rain). And I would add legumes like clovers or even alfalfa if those are possible for you. Alfalfa might not do well with the hoof action, but red clover is well respected – at least for cattle.

I would fence off the pond with electric and use it as a gravity fed (or pumped) water source. But don’t let the animals into it or it gets murky and muddy. Stock it with grass carp to keep the weeds down. Grass carp take a couple years to adapt to a pond but they really work – eventually. And throw in an old wooden pallet weighted down so it will stay on the pond bottom. This will serve as hatchling protection so the baby fish can get big enough without being bothered by the big fish.

I would not use any pastures for hay. Fence them off for the horses and grow grass. With all the rain y’all get I would think you ought to be able to run 40 horses on 40 acres. But to do that you have to have between 15 and 30 pastures to rotate through. My first thought would be 20 pastures with each one about 2 acres. 40 horses is a lot of horses for 2 acres, but if you rotate them every couple of days, they will completely destroy each pasture and leave it covered in manure to regrow for 2 months while you’re rotating through the other 19 pastures.

You probably don’t have 40 horses, so you could leave the horses on each field a little longer before rotating. But if they can eat both fescue and clover, you’ll have some very well fed horses.

Horses love bermuda but if it ever goes dormant it has no protein left in it for the animals, so all that coastal bermuda you see growing is just wasted IMO.

Also I would use no insecticides at all on the horses or in the fields. With all that rotating, the horses rarely get flies. And no herbicide either. You’ll get a lot of native grasses growing in. Those are not weeds necessarily. Unless they are poisonous, leave them. Horses also love Johnson grass, but if it gets too long, it is like a rope in their intestines. So if you’re rotating them on it while it’s always short, you can get away with it.

If you move into growing hay, pretty soon you’ll have a tractor, mower, plow, roller, and about $100,000 worth of tools. Not only that but you’ll need a $20,000 barn for protection and to do maintenance and stuff. You’re in bad enough position owning both the land and the horses. Why make it worse with a lot of equipment?

Let Nature grow grass for you, you make the horses harvest it directly, and then they poop out your fertilizer. If you stick to growing grass behind electric fences, you don’t need anything but a small pick up truck to carry your fiberglass fence poles around.

How many horses do you want to keep? I don’t care about the answer but you do. If you can carry 1 horse per acre and want 5 horses, you could fence off the 5 or so acres into 20 pastures and use the rest for trail riding or for when it rains and makes the real pastures soggy. Horses get to be more difficult than cattle because most horse owners want to ride and riding inside a 2 acre (or smaller) pasture can get old fast. A cattle grazier would fence the whole 40 in to 20 pastures not worry about riding them cows!