Alright, in this lecture we're going to jump into pasture management. And you know, kind of talk about how to preserve your pastures, or establish your pastures and. Again I always like to start off with a review, and you know, reviewing forage, again, a well maintained pasture can help a horse or donkey or mule meet its daily forage requirement. So that's really the purpose of, of pastures. Now some of the benefits of having a well maintained pasture is, it's going to reduce your feed costs. You're not going to go out and have to buy lots and lots of hay all the time year round. So, you know with, with, there are costs associated with pastures, there are maintenance costs associated with pastures, as far as the fencing and all you know, fertilizing, things we don't have time to go in. Go into in this lecture, but, you know, once you get through that you can save yourself some money, you know, without having to purchase hay once they get established. Now, there's many benefits to the horse's health with pastures, you know, they're, they're allowed to get outside and run and exercise. Now, [COUGH] I found this picture after I did my body condition score lecture, so I, I wish I had it but this is the, the perfect example of an obese animal and our ponies and sometimes our donkeys and other hybrids tend to be a little bit fatter, because we don't, we, we tend to overfeed' em. But this is a perfect, perfect example of a body condition score nine. So if you want to look, you can see that really cresty neck and then you can see the, the deep furough. In that back like, like I called it during that one presentation fat fally. I mean that is an obese horse. But he's having fun, he's exercising, so that's good. Hopefully we'll lose some of that weight. But you know, it's very, very beneficial to them to be on pasture, again Reduces stress and boredom. Going back to those behavioral issues, you know with the Caribbean Horse here, if they're outside, they tend to do this less. And again, reducing cost you know, you're not having an animal you know, if they're maintained on pasture, they're not in the stall. You're not going to have to clean that stall every day like you should, your reduced bedding costs reduced waste of bedding stuff like that so, so again very, very beneficial and again then also for the animal's well being. Going back to that social interaction you know these two animals all are grooming each other, nuzzling each other that social interaction, you know these are social species so when you put them together in pastures they are able to act like horses. Now one of the big things with pastures though, is people tend to overstock, they tend to put too many animals in a small area. So you know, the question is how many animals can they fit in a pasture? And you have to remember a pasture is purpose, Is to provide enough forage for that animal, to, to meet their forage requirement daily. So you have to ensure you have enough space. So how much is that? And again, going back into over, overstocking, you know, typical problem in the horse industry, is people putting, you know again, too many animals on, on such a small space. So that's going to result in soil erosion, compaction, over grazing, plants are going to get destroyed. So you're going to end up with a dry lot, you know, in the end. So this is why you always want to to maintain your pastures, and, and, and main, and make sure you have enough pastures for your horses. And that's why management so important. So if we look at the, the, the rule of thumb guidelines, so this is what we always you know teach our students and, and our horse owners, you know so typically you should provide two acres per adult horse or one acre per yearling pony or a donkey you know, a smaller equid, you would put' em on one acre. So how big is that? Well, for us in the United States, or in the America's, that's, that one acre is equal to you know, an American football field. Or for other folks in the world you know, the the 0.8 hectare is going to be equal to about half the size of, of a soccer pitch, or what you call football. So that's what you're looking at with an acre. Now, this is obviously going to vary, and, you know, your environment, or your region of the world, is going to be dependent on how much acreage you'll need. So in drier Parts of the world, or in deserts where plants are more sparse, more spread out. You're going to need more acres, you can some upwards of eight to ten acres per horse, or if you're in a very hydrated part of the world, where, where things grow plentiful. I mean down here in Florida we get lots of rain typically, our pastures are, are green most of the year. You know, you, you, you, that you may need two acres, maybe not, a little less, but you know, will maintain that two acre that two acre rule. Time of year's going to dictate, and we're going to get a little bit more into this here in a minute. You know, but here you can see your, your warm and cool season grasses, so you have some, some peaks here. And then you have some valleys here. So you know, during those valleys you may need a little bit more acreage. If you're maintaining them on pasture and not providing any hay. So that's going to have an effect, and then weather patterns. Drought is something that we all face throughout the world especially with the, the, the climate being kind of crazy as it has been lately and here in the United Sates. So your pastures are, are not going to grow as well. Your plants aren't going to grow as well during times of drought. Unless you can irrigate, which does become a problem during drought. You know, you're going to have to increase that acreage and, and, You know, I've dealt with some severe drought here in the south, southeastern United States, and it was very, very difficult for horse owners to, to maintain and save their pastures, and also find hay. Because everybody else was, was looking for hay to supplement and it was really kind of a critical period a few years ago, with that. So that always be prepared for those for really dry times. Now we'll talk about different forages in a pasture you may have. You know, it's always recommended that you have a mixture of grass and legume plants which we will talk about in different ones. And then you want a combination of warm and cool season plants. And we'll kind of talk about what that means. So, this is going to be based kind of of on, on here in Florida. And, you know,, the first part we're going to look at is grass and our warm season grasses. So, two typical grasses that we have here in Florida is Bermuda grass and then you may see some Bahia grass. So, you can see in this image the growth curves, you know, for The Bahia Grass starts in April, Bermuda Grass in May and kind of carries through October. So we have good coverage during the summer months, or the warm season of these grasses growing. Now when we mix in our legume plants. So in this example I used Red Clover, and Bush Clover is not as, not as more common in Florida, but it's common around the world, so I kind of put it in here. You can see this bush, this Red Clover, starts growing in, in, in March and then kind of tails out in July. But overall if you look at this pasture, we have good coverage from really mid march to, to mid late September. So, we have enough mixture of plants, that it should provide enough forge for our animals. And typically you know you have one grass and one legume, or you can mix and match a few of them. Now we have to start looking at our cool season plants. So we'll start with our cool season grasses and rye grass is pretty common here in Florida. So you can see rye grass doesn't really get going until mid October and then around May, end of spring it starts to peter out a little bit. So again we have good coverage during the winter months. Now if we add in our legume plants or cool season legume, So in this example is white clover. You can see white clover starts beginning in September, and then kind of grows through, similar to rye grass, into May. Now in this example, we have pretty good coverage throughout the year, but you will notice, really, the months of September, you know, late August through September, we don't have really good coverage. And this is where you would, you would most likely want to take your animals off pasture. Allow those pastures to recover. Stick your animals in, in kind of a dry lot area, or a sacrificial area, and we, we'll talk about this more in a second, and feed em hay. You know, that, that's always a good management practice to save and maintain your pasture. So the different types of grazing systems, and one is continuous grazing, and this is where the animal has access to the, the pasture year around. So they're out there all the time. And you have enough, hopefully to take care of 'em, but this is generally not recommended because this is the number one system that results in, in overgrazing, especially with smaller acreages. And especially when you don't have a lot of wiggle room, you don't have a lot of acreage, and all the sudden, you know, your pasture gets kind of wiped out in a season, there was drought They got overgrazed and you are spending a lot of money of trying to reestablish that pasture. So, so typically we don't recommend this system with horse owners. Now, another system that that kind of helps alleviates some of those concerns is, is partial grazing Or partial-season grazing management system. So this is where you put the, the animals on the pastures when during the growth season so depending on where you are in the world and what type of forage you have we will dictate when you would release those animals out on to your pastures to allow them to get their forage from those plants. Now again, this is a good management tool, is when you're not during the growth season, you, they're off pasture in, like, a dry lot area, where you provide them hay. So they're still getting daily forage, just in a different form than their pasture. And then this kind of rolls into ano, another different type, a partial season or limited turnout time. And you know since the behavior we, we talked about. Horses need to be turned out daily. You know this is a one management system as you turn em out to the pastures, for a limited amount of time per day. So some people, you know they'll release them in the morning when they get home, in the evening they'll, they'll bring their animals in. Some people only put them out for a couple of hours. And you can see from this example here, these horses are limited turnout, because they're fenced in. You can see that fence all the way around them and that's just, they're turned out to that portion of the pasture, allowed to graze and either shifted or brought in. Now this is actually a very, very good management system for especially the lush times of year. So let's say for example you've had an animal who has been eating dry hay throughout the winter months. And then bam, it's spring, everything's greening up. Lots of moisture in, in those plants, a lot of energy they're very energy dense, you turn your animals out. And if you don't bring them in, they can get too many nutrients and overwhelm that digestive tract, which can lead to laminitis and colic and some, you know, other disorders. So, this is an ideal system, especially early in the spring, where you turn' em out for a limited amount of time, bring' em in. And then adjust them, which we'll talk about you know, especially with the colicluture on their new diet. Now rotational grazing is the number one recommended system, or the most recommended system to manage your pastures. And this is where you take your acreage and you divide it up into small pastures. Okay? And then, you're going to turn the animals out, when the forge reaches about six to eight inches. So here, you would turn them out, allow them to graze until most of the forage is down to that three to four inches, or you can see they are in centimeters. So it's always good to have a ruler that you can go and, and measure your forage or your, your grasses and plants to get an idea of how high that is and then you take' em off. So you let' em out, let' em graze, take them off and rotate them to the next small pasture. Now, some things to take in into consideration is, you know, it could take 30 to 60 days for each of the small pastures to grow back. So once you take them off that pasture, you know, should take that long for them to grow back. And each pasture should last roughly a week. So you put them out there, you know, that acreage should last that animal about a week and then you can rotate them to the next one, and then hopefully by the end, you're able to rotate them back to the first pasture that they started on. Now, if the plants haven't grown back tall enough yet, don't stick them back out on the pasture. Stick them in that sacrificial area that you have and give them some hay and allow those pastures to rest. So in this example you can see you know on this picture on the left you have one, two, three, four pastures and then you have this kind of coral area. So you would rotate your animals you know through that system and then if the pastures weren't recovered sufficiently, you stink em in that coral system until they have. Then you can release em again, and start, you know going through that rotation. So that is, that's the ideal system, and really it takes a lot of playing with you know, your own part of the world. Or your own acreage to, to get an idea what's appropriate. Now just some final tips on, on pasture management. You want to, clip or mow your pasture so there's even growth. Horses will typically go and eat the more, the more succulent plants, the better tasting plants which is generally the younger plants. So if everything is kind of, at the even height they can't really selectively graze You do want to, what we call harrowing or dragging your pastures. So you want to go out and you know, with the manure build up, when you do this, it helps break up the manure balls and you know, exposes those parasites that are in there to the environment, so they die off. So that's always a good management tip. You want to identify and, and remove any poisonous plants to, to your particular part of the world, so you know, this list may not be representative of, of where you are in the world. So you want to make sure that, that there are not those poisonous plants in there. Now, I will say, You know, the equids typically don't go out and, and eat poisonous plants or look for poisonous plants to eat. You always get that crazy animal that doesn't want to live anymore and they will, you know, find that poisonous plant, but generally they won't. Where this becomes a big problem is. Is either with overgrazing, or during times of droughts when they have nothing else to eat, and it's either, I starve or I eat this horrible-tasting plant here, so they tend to, to eat the horrible-tasting plant and then they get sick and then we have problems. So if they don't have that option, that, that's always good. Now things like, you know, spreading manure. I know that doesn't sound fun but it's a typical practice in the equine world. You can see a manure spreader there. You know when you spread manure you don't want animals currently on that pasture, so, because there's a parasite load, there are parasites in that manure, when you spread it You want to let the environment get at it for, for a few days or a few weeks. Let them kill off the parasites. And then you can put the animals on that pasture. And we'll cover the parasite control more in detail during the week we talk about health. And, you know, it's you know, important to always deworm your animals so you don't have that problem. And then, you know the, the. The final thing is you have to experiment with what's best for you and your system. You know, I, I can't sit here in Florida and say, you know, for those folks over in England, this is how you should manage your pastures, or those folks down in Australia, or in Asia, you know, you're going to have to play with, with what works in your area, talk to your other horse, horse, excuse me, horse owners or, you know, donkey owners. And find out what's working best for them and then try to implement that in your system. So, in the next lecture, we're going to kind of talk about what's colic and, you know, how to do, how to try to prevent colic from happening in your horses. So I'll see you then. [BLANK_AUDIO]
