HELP, need pasture

lotzopets – posted 20 June 2003 20:05

Could you please help me, I have spent over $2000.00 to have a horse pasture and all I have is brown stubble, iron weed, LOTS of lupine, yarrow and buckwheat, but, no grass. I was sold seed that was guaranteed to be good pasture seed. It comes up the sun hits it and it’s brown the rest of the summer. We live in the high desert,central Washington, so, we do not have water to irrigate and we only get 14″ of moisture a year. I have 35 acres, I only seeded 5 acres(thank God) I would hate to have the brown stubble everywhere. The rest of the property has, LOTS of lupine, yarrow,buckwheat and sagebrush. I have 4 horses and we do rotate them into 4 different sections. I need help, they need grass. Is there anything out there that will work. Thank you, Barbara

Dchall_San_Antonio – posted 26 June 2003 07:46

I’m new to the Turfgrass site, but not new to the subject. I should also say that I don’t have horses and don’t have any land, but I have friends and acquaintences doing what I’m going to suggest and they’re actually making money in livestock simply due to these techniques.

If you have 35 acres, 4 horses, and 14 inches of rain, you’re really pushing the limit of what you can do without supplemental feeding. Too bad you didn’t spend your $2,000 on electric fencing instead of seeds. The seeds you need are already in the soil. They just need to be awakened.

Can you envision building 30 separate rotation paddocks in your 35 acres? The problem with four paddocks is that the horses will graze on the best grass and work their way to the leftovers. But as soon as that good grass returns, they’ll be back regrazing on it. When that happens week after week, before the grass is allowed to completely restore itself, it will die leaving a bare spot. That is the definition of overgrazing.

However if you have one-acre paddocks with all four horses on one at a time, the horses will be forced to eat everything they can get before the next horse gets it. The rotation on that acre should be on the order of a week at most depending on grass height and rainfall. During that time the horses will stomp the soil crust and break it up over the entire acre. They will drop manure over the acre without missing any part of it (it gets crowded on one acre with four animals). And they will pound native grass seeds into the soil for germination. When they leave for the next pasture, that last one should be pretty well grazed. For the last few days of the early year’s rotations, you might be feeding supplemental, but it is most important to resist the urge to move them before the grass in the next field is ready. When the horses leave, the grass seeds already in the field will start to sprout. I suppose if you wanted to buy more seed, you could encourage the grasses you wanted by scattering them before you turn the horses loose.

Once you’re going with this short duration rotation, it will be 29 weeks before the animals return to that particular pasture. That’s plenty of time for most native grasses to recover. When the horses return, the grass could be 30 inches high. Each time you return the horses to the pasture, they will improve the soil and grass coverage. If you stick with this, you can get 100% grass coverage. With that you might be able to stop feeding supplemental feed to the horses.

Rain will be your irrigation, but you will have to provide water to the horses. These techniques are working in dry Central Texas with people I’ve talked to. From what I’m reading on the Internet, they’re also working in Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, Africa, and Australia. They seem to work best in arid conditions.

Something else you might consider is eliminating your worming medicine. Dung beetles can do a lot to replenish soil fertility, but they are killed by Ivermec and other wormers. If you switch to diatomaceous earth in the feed or mineral you give the horses, the dung beetles can handle that and will return to your pastures, plus you get some worming benefit from the DE. Once you get the dung beetles working for you, they should totally eliminate all the manure piles within 24 hours of the horses leaving the paddock.

There is a lot more planning that goes into this than the simple design I have outlined. But you should have the gist of it. The purpose of all the paddocks is to slow the animals down until the grass is restored and ready for them.

lotzopets – posted 26 June 2003 13:13

WOW! Thank you for such an intensive answer. I am showing it to my husband now, I am going to go see how we can put this plan into action, Thank you, Sincerely, Barbara

Dchall_San_Antonio – posted 27 June 2003 10:54

There are no real tricks to the program, but plenty of planning work. The only costs are for fencing and water troughs (the animals have to have trough water on each pasture).

When the dung beetles return, your incidence of disease should go to zero or thereabouts. When the beetles and the horses are right there in the field together, the manure goes away before any parasites or flies get a chance to procreate. And once you get 100% grass coverage, you will be the only ones in the neighborhood absorbing all 14 inches of your rain every year. There is no erosion where you have 100% grass.

You’ll also get birds, lizards, insects, and other wildlife returning to your fields. If you have any populations of birds you want to protect, you must keep in mind the rotations and not put the horses in the nesting pastures while the eggs are there. You might need to designate certain fields for nesting and X them out of your rotation in the spring.

You might also have certain plants you don’t want the horses eating during certain months or weeks. X those pastures out for those months, too.

You might also have a riparian area on the property that you don’t want the horses wading in all the time. Let them in during the driest part of the year, but get them out on the normal weekly schedule. X those areas out for the rest of the year and you’ll soon have a great watershed.

Now you see how it starts to get more complicated. If you’re interested in planning information that really simplifies your life, write back and I’ll give you the name of a book and workbook. They’re like a condensed master’s degree in livestock management. The work book is very heavy on planning and walks you through it slowly with lots of charts and planning aids.

lotzopets – posted 30 June 2003 18:00

Thank you, once again! I am pretty sure I understand the concept, and, my husband even likes the idea. We have already started designing walk areas to and from each acre. Thank you so very sincerely.

Dchall_San_Antonio – posted 01 July 2003 12:49

Great! Check out the book called [u]Holistic Resource Management Workbook[/u] by Sam Bingham with Allan Savory. Read a little about it at

http://www.forages.css.orst.edu/Resources/Media/Publications/Jenny/books270.html

I found a copy via interlibrary loan from a local university. The book is incredibly intense on this topic. There’s more to read at

http://www.harborside.com/~dfgibbs/fa.html

Best wishes to you.

Lee Nottle – posted 22 January 2004 18:39

Hi,I’m in Australia, and we are STILL in a drought. I live in NW Victoria which usually has around 28 inches a year. The previous year we might have had 15, and so far it’s shaping up the same or worse. We have 40 acres, have 4 cattle and 7 horses.We have a Seed company here which has a fantastic reputation, all the farmers in the area buy from them. They have a mix called Haymaker. They have 2 blends which cater for different levels of rainfall 400mm or 700mm(about 15″ or 28″) While it isn’t possible for you to order from them, you could check their website to see what’s in it that might suit your land better and ask your supplier for a similar blend. http://www.stephenpastureseeds.com.au/varieties.asp?c1_ID=3&c2_ID=11Also, there is a mineral called Zeolite that you might like to check out. It’s a natural volcanic substance that holds moisture in the soil. It only needs to be applied once and it’s there forever more. You can read articles on this(fantastic site) at www.nutri-tech.com.auWe live on gravel roads (lots OF DUST) a neighbhor laid some of this on his section of road, and at night it gets wet (collects moisture from the night air) and dries during the dayAlso, there is an e-book I came across on feeding horses in a drought written for Aussie conditions, but this information is universal. Available http://www.rirdc.gov.au/pub/media_releases/6mar00a.htmlHope this helps also !Lee Nottle (bj***@op******.au)