Prioritizing Best Management Practices for Horse Farms
/By Michael Hipp
Whether you board horses, run a training facility, or just have one horse at home, using best management practices can make your operation run smoother and protect your horses. But which ones do you do first? Is there a sequence that’s best? How do you prioritize?
When I managed a horse ranch back in the Texas panhandle, the bottom line was always first and foremost in my thoughts. If I was going to have a profitable operation, I had to have healthy, happy horses and protect the scarce natural resources I had. And while we had a small hardware store in town, the nearest large retail store was 90 miles away. When I planned a project, I had to make a list of materials, check it twice, calculate the cost, including the fuel and time it would take to make the 180-mile trip. I was very careful when I chose materials such as lumber, because if I got it home and found a flaw then it might be another week before I could get a replacement.
Along the way I learned that there are two main purposes for prioritizing best management practices – cost and effectiveness. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but they can be. A good example is a manure bin. Is a manure bin with a concrete floor and a roof more effective at composting and preventing nutrients from leaching out of the pile than a tarp? Yes, but it costs a lot more. If you have unlimited money, then your choice is easy, and you can prioritize based on effectiveness. If money is fairly limited, then you may be tempted to make your decision based on the cost alone. But it really isn’t that simple. Balancing cost and effectiveness is the challenge.
No matter how effective a best management practice is, if you can’t afford it, it won’t get done. A practice is never so ineffective as when it’s not done. If money is limited the first thing to do is to make a budget. Create a list of the best management practices your farm needs. Your friendly Conservation District can help with that! Then get some estimates on the price of each. Once you have those, then it comes down to effectiveness.
There are a few things that make up an effective best management practice. In my order of importance, which may surprise some, the first priority is ease of use. It has to be chore efficient. Why do I rank that first? Because a practice is never effective if it’s too hard or too inefficient to actually use. The second priority is how well it protects the soil, water, air, and other natural resources on your farm.
Here are the top three best management practices I recommend prioritizing and budgeting for on your farm:
1. Heavy Use Area
Heavy use areas are a place where you can keep your horses off pastures to prevent compaction of the soil in winter and overgrazing in summer. This practice is first on my list because I have seen it make the biggest impact on soil, hooves and the overall health of horses. When you consider the amount of money and labor required to build a heavy use area, it’s well worth the investment. Not only do they protect the wet winter soil from the horse’s hooves, they also protect the horse’s hooves from the wet soil. The native horse to North America (Mesohippus) died off 12,000 years ago and the horses we have today came from Europe in the 1500s. These horses have not had thousands of years to evolve with the soils here like they had in Europe, and neither has the soil. That’s why we have such a clash between the two with erosion and hoof diseases.
2. Roof Water Management
The primary thing we are battling with best management practices is water—water that falls constantly during the wet season as rain. Once you have a good heavy use area in place, you need to protect it from excess water collected and shed by your barn, shelters, and all the other structures on your farm. This involves collecting the water with gutters and using downspouts and underground outlets to route it to a place on your property where it can disperse without hurting the heavy use area or pastures. The cost and labor involved is rather economical, especially if you can do it yourself. If you install an underground outlet, be careful where the water exits to the surface, ideally outside your pasture where the horses can’t get to it. Consider installing a rain garden at the outlet to filter the roof water, or using rain barrels or cisterns as part of the overall system.
3. Manure/Compost Bins
Covering manure involves one of the cheapest best management practice tools there is– a tarp. A simple tarp, costing around $20, keeps rain from falling on a manure pile which prevents the runoff of nutrients into soil and waterways. It also keeps the pile dry enough so it can actually compost. Of course, building a manure/compost bin is even better for containing manure and composting efficiently, but starting with a tarp is a great first step. With this best management practice you can start small and let it evolve into what you want as money becomes available.
Prioritizing best management practices on your farm involves many factors, the two major ones being cost and effectiveness. Balancing these, along with other factors such as availability of materials, is not easy at first, but with practice you can do it well. Make your list, let it sit, look at it, and revise if needed. Let your list develop organically and adjust it as the factors change. And if you need help planning or prioritizing, call your Conservation District. We’ve been helping people reach their goals for a long time and would love the opportunity to help you.
This project has been funded wholly or in part by the United States Environmental Protection Agency under assistance agreements PC-01J18101 to the WA State Dept. of Ecology and PC-01J18001 to the WA State Dept. of Health. The contents of this document do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Environmental Protection Agency, nor does mention of trade names or commercial products constitute endorsement or recommendation for use.
