Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
areas. Bloodsucking flies, ticks, gnats, and mosquitoes can carry diseases, including West
Nile virus (mosquitoes) and Lyme disease (ticks).
Handler safety.
It can be difficult to safely go into a group of horses on pasture and bring
one out or to safely turn a horse into a group of horses on pasture.
Wild animals.
Other animals that live in or cross through pastures can cause problems
for horses. Poisonous snakes, bears, coyotes, mountain lions, loose domestic dogs, and the
holes of gophers, prairie dogs, and marmots can cause injury.
Wooded areas.
Heavily wooded areas are a home to ticks and are a source of leg and eye
injuries.
Hunting season.
In many rural areas where there are open hunting seasons on deer and
elk, horses are in danger of being mistaken for game.
Safety.
Utility poles often pass through pastures and pose a potential risk.
Security.
Horses are generally more secure when kept near homes and buildings. Horses
pastured in remote fields can more easily be stolen.
Labor.
Pastured horses need an up-close-and-personal check once or twice a day; on
large pastures, this can take some time.
Maintenance.
Pastures require daily, weekly, and seasonal maintenance: daily fence and
pasture patrol, fence maintenance, manure management (either remove and compost or ro-
tate pastures and harrow), mowing, spraying for weed control, irrigation, and reseeding.
Cost of land.
Good pastureland, especially close to urban areas, is getting scarce and
more expensive. Unfortunately, it often makes more economic sense to the owner of the
land to use it for something else, like more houses or a strip mall.
Cost of fencing.
Safe, secure fencing is essential and initially is a considerable expense.
Not year-round.
No matter how good a pasture is, it will need to rest for part of the year,
and you will need to provide other living arrangements for your horses during that time.
Damage.
Horses can be very hard on pastures, trees, and fences. A horse selectively
grazes 16 out of 24 hours each day, eating 5 to 6 pounds of grass per hour. If a pasture
is carrying too many horses, overgrazing will quickly ruin it. Overgrazing destroys plant
and root structure and results in soil erosion and takeover by weeds. Pawing before rolling
and to expose more succulent grass damages plants. Because horses select certain areas to
graze, to defecate, and to congregate, some patches are constantly grazed short, some are
ignored because of fecal contamination, and others turn into bare dirt or mud holes. Horses
that chew wood are destructive to fencing and can quickly kill trees.
Supplemental feed.
Pasture horses will have to be fed hay and possibly grain during the
late-fall, winter, and early-spring months. How you choose to do this will depend on how
many horses you are feeding. Remember, horses will fight at feeding time, so if you have
personality conflicts within your herd, or great numbers of horses, you will need to devise
a way of separating horses until each gets his fair share of feed. This usually requires you
