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Maintaining a horse pasture
My wife and mother-in-law have horses at our house. There are three paddocks. The biggest one is getting quite long and needs to be cut. My mother-in-law has been mowing and raking the paddock little-by-little; she'll never finish the whole thing. She is worried about the horses getting sick from eating freshly cut grass, hence the need to rake. Is this really a concern? Can I just mow the field and leave the horses off for a day? I know next to nothing about horses, so if anyone has advice/suggestions, please let me know!
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Maintaining a horse pasture
IMHO you don't have much to worry about with the horses, this time of year all the horses eat is fresh grass.
If she is concerned, use a landscape rake to gather all the grass up into a pile, or piles and scoop it up with FEL. Or if a neighbour has an old side delivery hay rake they will loan you, it will make a nice neat row that can easily be picked up.
You can also make a 'rake' for the paddocks pretty fast by just hammering a bunch of spikes through a big plank and making a hitch from some stout rope. Just drag it around points down and you'll be amazed how fast it will gather the grass.
Best of luck.
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Maintaining a horse pasture
Thanks! She's very worried about it for some reason...I think I will try brush hogging it and then go over it with the York rake. Hopefully that will suffice.
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Maintaining a horse pasture
I know very little about horses and am interested in knowing about them eating grass. I was told that the amount of grain given to them needs to be controlled otherwise they get a hoof disease. Does too much green grass give them blooting from gas?
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Maintaining a horse pasture
Here is the key. If the cut grass can dry out the horses can eat it without problems. If the grass clumps up and remains wet, it will ferment and that is bad. A horse that eats that can get colic and die from it.
As far as eating too much grain, what can happen is two things, if eating too much grain, or over indulging in gran, a horse can colic, if given too much grain daily, a horse can get laminitis, or also known as founder, and it is very bad. What happens is the horses hoof gets too much blood flow to it, and the hoof wall seperates from the rest of the foot, and the bone that is embedded in the hoof can fall through the bottom of the hoof. It is a very painful disease and can permanantly lame or even kill a horse. Eating cut wet grass wont cause this condition, but eating a lot of Spring grass can. The sugars in in the young early year grass is too much for the horses system to handle.
OTOH, just let the horse out there and eat the pasture down! I wish I had some pasture for my horses, I had to go and buy two round bales because of the drought, we no longer have any grass in our pastures.
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Maintaining a horse pasture
Here is the key. If the cut grass can dry out the horses can eat it without problems. If the grass clumps up and remains wet, it will ferment and that is bad. A horse that eats that can get colic and die from it.
As far as eating too much grain, what can happen is two things, if eating too much grain, or over indulging in gran, a horse can colic, if given too much grain daily, a horse can get laminitis, or also known as founder, and it is very bad. What happens is the horses hoof gets too much blood flow to it, and the hoof wall seperates from the rest of the foot, and the bone that is embedded in the hoof can fall through the bottom of the hoof. It is a very painful disease and can permanantly lame or even kill a horse. Eating cut wet grass wont cause this condition, but eating a lot of Spring grass can. The sugars in in the young early year grass is too much for the horses system to handle.
OTOH, just let the horse out there and eat the pasture down! I wish I had some pasture for my horses, I had to go and buy two round bales because of the drought, we no longer have any grass in our pastures.
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Maintaining a horse pasture
This is what I was hoping to hear -- let the clippings dry out. In terms of just letting the horses eat, I think the pasture might be too big for three horses. Also, I noticed that there are weeds starting to grow and spread; my hope is that mowing regularly will help keep the pasture lush.
If it makes a difference, the pasture the horses are in is a former hay field; up until last year a local farmer cut and baled at least twice a season.
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Maintaining a horse pasture
You might want to consider having the farmer cut and bale it for you. Would save you some money down the road. Also if you let the horses graze in that field, make sure the manure is either picked out regulary, or spread out well to prevent the accumulation of more weeds and the killing of good grasses and alfalfa. I have a small strip that is a hay field, and I usually get one or two round bales out of it every cutting, but looks like this year there will only be one, the drought has hit us hard here.
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Maintaining a horse pasture
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