Rotational Grazing for Horses

 

Many horse pastures suffer from overgrazing. You can tell if your pasture is overgrazed as it will show areas of bare earth or very short grass which looks like lawn , often coupled with longer grass which horses seem to avoid eating. Weeds will also be apparent and horses will sometimes even start digging the ground up trying to get to tasty roots beneath the soil.

There are several options for managing the grazing of horse properties and you need to work out which one is right for you. There is no black and white answer as all properties are different and what may suit one will not necessarily suit another.

The options are:

1. Continuous grazing – Grazing throughout the year. This is most suited to people with large areas of land where they can limit their stocking rates to approximately 1 horse per 1.2 hectares (3 acres). In this way the pasture is unlikely to be eaten out quicker than it can regenerate.

2. Seasonal grazing – This is where the paddock may be given rest periods throughout the year, particularly in winter when grass growth slows or becomes dormant or in periods of sustained wet weather when paddocks can become inundated.

3. Limited grazing time – This is when horses may be locked up for some period of the day. For example, only allowed out to graze in the mornings, but kept in a stable or holding yard for the rest of the time (with adequate feed and water)

4. Rotational grazing – This is when pastures are divided up into smaller paddocks and horses are confined to one paddock at a time. Once that pasture has been eaten down to a length of about 5cm the horses are then moved on to the next pasture, while the first one is resting and recovering. Again, when the second pasture is eaten to around 5cm the horses are moved on to another pasture and so on.

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The size and number of individual paddocks will vary according to your particular circumstances. You can set up your internal fencing using electric tape. This will give you the flexibility to move it around to get the best result. Start by giving pasture a minimum of four weeks to recover between grazing bouts and see how it works out.

Work your way consecutively through the paddocks until you get back to the initial paddock. If it is not ready to be grazed ( not 15 – 20 cm), keep horses in the sacrifice area/holding yard and hand feed until the pasture has reached the desired length. You can use the sacrifice area/holding yard to give you a buffer while sorting out the best time period to graze each paddock. It can also be used in wet weather to help protect the pasture from hoof damage when soils are soft.

 

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A New Way of Looking at Horse Keeping - Paddock Paradise

 

I’ve been doing quite a lot of research lately into varying theories on horse keeping from the Paddock Paradise Track System  to general rotational and strip grazing and Jane Myers Equicentral System. I’ve been pondering over what is the best system, what works and what doesn’t and most importantly what is best for the environment of the horse and human.

This is the first installment in a report of my findings:

Paddock Paradise is the brainchild of Jaime Jackson a veteran hoof care professional who

spent from 1982-1986 travelling among wild horse populations studying the nature of how they live and of their environment. From this study and further research he discovered three main points :

1. horses need freedom of movement and engagement within their environment ( in a natural life, although they like familiar surroundings and keep to a ‘home range’ horses are constantly on the move between feed areas, resting spots, watering spots, rolling spots etc ).

2. horses need variety in their food ( given free choice, horses eat a wide variety of grass species as well as legumes and other broad leaved plants, bark, trees  and leaves)

3. horses need to behave like real horses in a herd situation (horses living a natural life live in herds).

As Jaime points out these three criteria are very often not met within our current horse keeping systems. We tend to keep horses in confined spaces be it paddock or stable/yard,  we tend not to feed them a vast variety of food types and quite often we keep horses in the abovementioned places alone, removed from the herd environment which comes naturally to them.

Jaime postulates that when these three criteria are not met horses have the propensity to develop ailments from poor hoof quality, to laminitis, to emotional disturbance and general ill health.

To remedy this Jaime has come up with a unique horse keeping system which uses a track design to encourage movement. The general gist of it is that the horses live in a herd  on a track shaped paddock being very long and narrow. The horses are encouraged to move along the track by providing ‘desire lines’ different experiences for them in different areas along the track. Experiences include being fed with variety all along the track, providing a spot for mineral blocks, rolling, resting, salt licks, watering holes, mud baths, walking on rough ground etc. The movement is intended to improve hoof condition to the point that the horses can be barefoot and also general health and well being.

The plan below will help explain it further.

Generally, I really like this concept. It makes total sense to me to keep horses moving as I believe that having them move very little is bad for their health in all the ways Jamiee points out. Horses move very little in paddocks, especially small ones. 

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From a Landscape Architects point of view, I also really like it as it provides tremendous opportunity to improve the visual amenity of a horse farm by making much more land available for landscaping as you won’t have horses walking over your entire property. So screening of unattractive areas, growing trees, growing shrubs, growing crops,  can be done outside the track protected  from horses. 

Inspecting a Track System in Europe. Note the track cannot be seen.

From an environmental point of view I can’t see a lot of problems with it either, unless you live in an extremely wet area where the track would constantly be muddy (there are, however, ways you could prevent this from happening and the actual construction of the track needs to be thought out better than just removing the existing vegetation in order for it to be maintained in a good state). Your land use possibilities could be greatly improved by keeping a large part of your land available for  occasional grazing, cropping, arenas, jumps, general riding etc. I see the track as not any more invasive on the land as a dirt road and I like the flexibility of the inner electric fencing.

On the downside I think the amount of time spent removing manure and feeding along the track would make it impossible for some people, both financially and time wise. Also I'm not all together comfortable with the idea of horses having no access to grass as it would not take long for the track to become pretty denuded of vegetation. But most importantly, from a designers point of view, there is not enough information on the requirements. Just simple things like what is the minimum amount of land needed to do this? How wide should the track be? What is a safe size for a camping area? How much feed will you need for your horse?  I would hope that some time in the future Jamie could team up with a Landscape Architect (there are so many accomplished ones in the USA)  and formalize some of his theories as more detailed information is needed.

Having said that I still believe Paddock Paradise is a great idea that would work for some farms.  It is definitely worth exploring to see if it suits you and your circumstances and environment. Jaimes' book, Paddock Paradise, A Guide To Natural Horse Boarding is extremely informative and his research into wild horse populations is interesting.  The book is well worth getting if you would like more information.

Jamies books can be purchased here:http://www.paddockparadise.com/ Tweet