Spring Pastures: What to Consider Before First Turnout

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Spring is rapidly approaching and now is the time to begin considering how and when to turn out your horses from their long winter confinement. As you make your plan, here are some important things to consider:

Soil Health

The most important thing to consider when practicing good pasture management is the health of your soil. Healthy soils mean healthy grass and forage, which directly contributes to the health of your horse. April is a great time to get your soil tested and will show you any deficiencies you may have.

Horses on a spring pasture

Turning Out for the First Time

Before turning your horses out in the spring, walk through your pastures. If your feet leave a trace (sink down more than 1/8 of an inch) then that portion of your pasture is too wet for turnout. If only a portion of your pasture is too wet then you can fence off that portion until it’s ready and use the remaining pasture. You also want to make sure that your grass is at least six inches high. Optimal height to begin grazing is eight inches. It’s best to mow your pasture to assure even height of all grasses before turning horses out.

Spring pastures are a common source of colic and laminitis in horses. Annual cases of laminitis in horses in the U.S. is around 2 percent, but that rises to 5 percent in the spring, with nearly half of those coming from horses on pasture. Why? Because of the presence of fructan, a simple sugar that is prevalent in cool season pasture grasses (timothy, orchardgrass, bromegrass) in the spring.

How can you prevent colic and laminitis when you turn your horses out on fresh spring pasture? Introduce your horses to the pasture slowly. Turn them out the first day for only 15 minutes, and then add 15 minutes a day until you reach four to five hours of consecutive grazing. You can also consider using a grazing muzzle.

Keep It Healthy – Practice Good Grazing

Once your horses have acclimated to your spring pasture, it’s vital to the health of your pasture and the health of your horse to follow good grazing practices.

Use a pasture stick to measure the height of the grass.

Never let horses graze the grass below three inches. Doing so robs the plant of its ability to photosynthesize enough to support its root system and the plant will eventually die back. Also, most parasites can only survive below the three inch level of a grass blade, so grazing below that height is discouraged in order to avoid parasite load.

Divide your pasture into sections so that you can rotate the horses through each as they graze one down to three inches. Rotating them onto another pasture will allow the previous pasture grasses to recover to a level that can be safely grazed again. This may take some time to figure out how many divisions you need and how long to keep the horses on each pasture. Keeping good notes of how each pasture performs will help. Pasture grasses grow at varying rates depending on many factors–rain, type of soil, ambient temperature, and soil temperature. Growth rates also change with the seasons, with most grasses in Western Washington becoming dormant in summer. While making a plan for rotational grazing is good, observation and adaptability are the keys to the success of any plan.

Here to Help

If you’d like help in creating healthy soil for your pasture, protecting your pasture from weeds, creating a rotational grazing plan for successful pasture management, or other best management practices for horses, please contact us so we can help provide you with some solutions.

References

Krishona Martinson, PhD, “Transitioning horses to Spring Pasture”, University of Minnesota, 2/5/2018 https://www.extension.umn.edu/agriculture/horse/pasture/transitioning-horses-to-spring-pasture/

Meszoly, Joanne, “Danger in your horse’s grass: fructan”, Equus, 3/22/2005 https://equusmagazine.com/management/fructandanger_032205-8262