Grazing Schedule for Veggie Horses

We don’t have great pastures because the dairy and beef take priority with this family, but we are trying to improve what we have. We graze at night, the sun is gone, the flies are not bad and that lets us use the horses in the morning and evening. We mostly us the horses in the evening because a lot of other chores like unloading hay and such happen in the morning. I would prefer to graze in the morning when sugars are lowest, but this doesn’t always happen. Also sometimes when the weeds are large I will cultivate during the heat of the day and give the horses lots of rest in the shade. I am not sure this helps, but it is what we do.

Erika

Jesse-
I am primarily logging with my horses, and we always night graze, with fewer bugs and cooler temps. This limits the amount of forage they can consume, keeping them in good working shape. In my experience most folks allow too much access to grass for the horses, and as a result the have fat horses. When we did grow veggies, we used the same schedule, except the horse was in a tie stall during the day and harnessed for garden work from there. What part of the routine chews up that much time?
-Brad

I will not offer much over what anyone else has said already, just to say that these are some of the most important questions that distinguish the work we are trying to do. I believe that in all mamnagement systems we run into bottlenecks and road blocks. The challenge is how to determine where the changes need to occur. IF animal power is as important as it I think it is, then I generally look to the system that is creating the challenge, rather than the power source…… Meaning, where are my expectations creating barriers that limit my choices.

For example, and this is just my two cents, if you have established a system that is based on using mechanical devices that can be employed at anytime, and with little prep time, then bringing animals into that system is going to present challenges. This does not give you an answer to the best grazing system choices, but perhaps there are changes in the way you use the power that could accommodate the animals and their needs better.

I often dream of having the time in my schedule to bring in the horses at 3am, to be harnessed and in the woods by 5am…… But it just is not going to happen in this iteration of my life.

More of the same… I have a team on a 4 plus acre veggie operation and the horses tie in their stalls in the morning and stand until I’m ready to use them or go out around lunch. We rotate grazing with dairy cows(who they share with – they’re not fat, yet…) and sheep(who get everything first). Usually we don’t have to fuss with fencing except every 3 days or fewer for the sheep. Mostly the horses only graze at night, it’s hot and buggy enough they choose to stand in the shed. They are also mostly trained to come up every morning for their stalls. Since I am the only one who deals with the horses, other members of the crew are doing veggie things – we don’t use the horses for transplanting. Cultivation and hay work.

Additionally I worked on a farm in Oregon where they was no grazing for the horses and we fed hay all year round in a dry pen. This was a nice system.

Hi Jesse:

My wife and run a goat dairy and manage 4 horses on pasture. Our goats get a fresh paddock of grass every 12 hours, set up with mainly net fence but also a combination of net and 6 strand high tensile. Horses follow the goats and “clean up” so to speak. They are on pasture only at night. If you have other grazing animals, I highly recommend this system. Aside from the labor efficiency (i.e. one paddock for two groups of animals), I have found better pasture utilization and improved parasite control as well. I am a strong believer in high density, short duration grazing with adequate rest periods.

The bottom line is that managing horses responsibly on pasture takes time. If you are just grazing horses, here are some suggestions to improve labor efficiency:
1. Consider high tensile perimeter fencing. One strand of high tensile wire that utilizes trees for corner posts (with J hooks and bullnose insulators) is a very good investment. This makes subdividing a pasture – with polywire and step-in posts – very efficient. High tensile is not generally recommended for horses, but as long as you stick with one strand and the horses know where it is (flag it with ribbons initially and walk the perimeter with your animals), you should be fine. I have never had a problem with horses inclosed in 6 strands of high tensile.
2. Fence the perimeter of your pasture (if you do not have high-tensile) with polywire and subdivide within it making sure you back-fence to prevent over grazing. Imagine a grid-type system.
3. Set-up an effective system of transmitting power from you fencer to your paddocks (that is if you are not using a solar fencer). Again, high tensile is the way to go. Think of it as a power transmission line. You can then tap into that line to power your paddocks. I do this via 500′ rolls of 18 gauge, single conductor, insulated, stranded copper wire on an extension cord reel and heavy-duty alligator clips (see link: https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-nf32JF8v5_o/U6tJyZ3FA4I/AAAAAAAABxc/UHIIlUvqLh4/w989-h742-no/IMG_0964.JPG ). I clip the wire at the end of the reel to the high tensile, spool the wire out on the ground (beats polywire and posts!), and clip to my fence with the double clips (the other end of the wire is bare – poking out of the extension cord reel).
4. If you don’t have them already, invest in some pigtail posts (see link: https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-aI5T7Q-pVj4/U6tJ0fADTuI/AAAAAAAABxk/OL-mPgKlPKI/w557-h742-no/IMG_0965.JPG). The biggest advantage of these posts is that you can hold 25 in one hand and your polywire in the other. The are also double pronged for easy installation.
5. Three quarter inch black plastic pipe is a cheap, efficient way to get water to horses on pasture. I get 55 gallon teat dip barrels, cut them in half, and use them as waterers with a float valve (see Gallagher fence supplies). My four horses will often drink 40 gallons of water at night, sometimes more if it is hot and have been working.

Good luck.

George

Jesse, our horse grazing management for our market garden is focused on simplicity, rotations to keep the pastures producing, but most of all, time saving in as many ways as possible. We have done this by building a permanent woven wire paddock on a hillside about 1/8th of an acre in size that is fairly central to our gardens and pastures. This paddock is semi sacrificial. It has shade, and a frost free hydrant nearest to the barn. There are gates on all sides of the paddock, some times more than one. They all correspond to headlands and lane ways of the adjacent gardens. A single strand of aluminum wire runs the top of the woven wire fence to carry a charge. We use alligator clips to pull off of this wire for a charge and set up our fences (single strand electric tape with step in posts) to tie into the gates of this pasture. These fences go down and up pretty quickly and when one is set up and the gate opened, the horses have access to the fresh pasture but can also walk back to the shade and water whenever they want. At a whistle, they come from any pasture they are in back to the water trough to be let in to the stable for working at a moments notice. These fences get moved once or twice a week, and we just make sure to set them up on headlands that we know won’t be cultivated or plowed during that grazing period.

We do use electric tape to section out the central paddock into smaller sections to let parts of it rest and re-grow. When we have to go away for a day (or two) it is awful nice to have that solid fenced paddock with a little reserved grazing in it to keep the horses in while we are not at the farm.

One unfortunate detail to this system is when plowing with the walking plow, it is only a matter of time before the plow handles find a pile of manure in the headlands.

Good luck, happy grazing!

I do not know much about the grazing needs of horses but I can share what we do with our oxen. Right now they are a secondary power source for our vegetable operation as I am slowly but surely transitioning to draft. But I still put a tremendous amount of time into my boys. We use net fencing almost exclusively on the farm but we have used more permanent paddocks of varying size with t posts and polywire as well. Our current grazing schedule is evening grazing following the milk cow. She gets a fresh 50 by 50 during the day then the oxen come in as clean up crew. The team will be 4 this next April so they are not yet into the weight gaining time of their lives so this might have to change. In the morning they are tied in the barn and fed hay and minerals. The dairy cow is in the barn at night for milking. This way the boys are right there if I need to yoke them and they give me their daily deposit. I have had to switch the way I think about the chores as part of the work side of working animals. One of the biggest benefits that they give us is the manure. So part of their job is concentrating nutrients in the barn so I can compost it. And when I can’t yoke on a certain day I at least have the walk to and from the pasture to work on our training out of the yoke. So it too is not a chore but part of the work. When I switched my frame of mind to make the chore part of the animals into the work side of animals it has helped me get out a little earlier, sometime still in my pajamas to work my animals.