Horse Talk

[PeepersMama]

But what's funny is how many people who think they are horse people react like the 'non-horse people,' and then wonder why they always seem to have problems with their horses.

Sometimes I wonder if that's me

 

[GingersHuman]

I have about 6 acres of pasture, plus about an acre that I keep fenced off for winter grazing and almost an acre for a dry lot. I currently have 2 horses, and I've always kept my horses out during the day and in the dry lot at night. I have excellent quality (not sparse) pasture.

With 2 horses, I have plenty of grass year round.

With 3 horses, I depended on the 1 acre of winter grazing to supplement their pasture. By spring everything was grazed down.

With 4 horses I had enough grass for the growing months, but as soon as it quit or slowed growing, it was gone.

 

[abigalerose]

Well I talked to my parents, apparently we're suppose to get 6.2 acres, not 7, but they agreed that it only looked like 4 1/2 acres on what I'd shown them, and one of the 1/2 acres is apparently a separate thing and doesn't count, so we're going to talk to my uncle and see if we had the property lines wrong or something, or if something's messed up and they actually do think the 4 acres is 6.
I think my best bet is to split it into three pastures plus the dry lot, and rotate maybe every 3 weeks? And dry lot them at night and probably in the winter as well since the grass won't be growing. But my uncle sells hay to me cheap (I got about 15 bales for $100).
But anyways that would give each lot 3 weeks on and 6 weeks off in the spring and summer

 

[ShrekDawg]

Maybe it might be a good idea to have a surveyor or whatever they're called out to establish the property lines again so you know exactly how big it is?

But wow, that's great you can get hay so cheap!

 

[abigalerose]

I definitely would! But unfortunately it's not up to me lol so we'll see.
But on the bright side I got my pasture all worked out now so once everything's final I am all ready to go.
It'll be split like this. Two of the pastures will have gates connected to the dry lot, so at night I'll put them in the dry lot with hay and grain. And that's where their water and shelter is so I will leave it open all day so they can go between the lot and pasture. And on the weeks they're in the third pasture, the rectangle one at the top, there's a big open building under those trees, and I'm going to build a little fence around the open side so at night I can stick them in there with some hay and grain and keep them off the grass, and I'll keep water in their as well. And it's plenty big enough that they'll have room to meander around during the night when they're not munching on hay. But each of the three pastures will work out to be around 1.6 acres, which is 3x bigger than the dry lot will be, and it took several weeks for 3 horses to chew that 1/2 acre lot down. So I think if I rotate every 3 weeks (giving the grass 6 weeks off in each lot) then the grass will stay good. I just wish they had more room to stretch their legs, but 1.6 acres isn't bad, if they run in a square lol. And my weirdos, as soon as it gets dark all 3 of them lay down next to each other and go to sleep.

My lines aren't exact.

 

[ShrekDawg]

I definitely would! But unfortunately it's not up to me lol so we'll see.
But on the bright side I got my pasture all worked out now so once everything's final I am all ready to go.
It'll be split like this. Two of the pastures will have gates connected to the dry lot, so at night I'll put them in the dry lot with hay and grain. And that's where their water and shelter is so I will leave it open all day so they can go between the lot and pasture. And on the weeks they're in the third pasture, the rectangle one at the top, there's a big open building under those trees, and I'm going to build a little fence around the open side so at night I can stick them in there with some hay and grain and keep them off the grass, and I'll keep water in their as well. And it's plenty big enough that they'll have room to meander around during the night when they're not munching on hay. But each of the three pastures will work out to be around 1.6 acres, which is 3x bigger than the dry lot will be, and it took several weeks for 3 horses to chew that 1/2 acre lot down. So I think if I rotate every 3 weeks (giving the grass 6 weeks off in each lot) then the grass will stay good. I just wish they had more room to stretch their legs, but 1.6 acres isn't bad, if they run in a square lol. And my weirdos, as soon as it gets dark all 3 of them lay down next to each other and go to sleep.

My lines aren't exact.

Aw that stinks. Maybe you could ask your parents? I thought they did it for free or every few years or something? But maybe you have to pay? Idk. We never have.

But it seems like you've got it pretty well worked out anyhow, that sounds like a pretty good plan.

If it were me I might have one big pasture or just two but for the sake of the grass/health, that's probably not optimal haha

Or I wonder if you could fence in the woods as one area and all the grass as another so the grass is in one bigger pasture? But I guess they probably want/need the grass so an all woods one wouldn't be ideal.

But awww that's actually really cute!! Haha

 

[abigalerose]

I talked to my parents, we're going to talk to my uncle and see if we've got something wrong, but I don't know if they'll get around to having a surveyor out or not. I know they're want to get what they're suppose to though, so I'm sure they'll work it out. And I would really like to leave it open. Ugh.
I could probably talk my grandparents into letting me keep the geldings at their house and just keep Jasmine and June at mine. Hehe. My grandma likes it when my horses are there because it means I come over almost every day instead of just over the weekend. But my grandpa says they'll mess up the ground, even though he has 60 acres and only 7 cows lol, I think he's just getting old and stubborn. But if I could convince them, I could leave June and Jasmine turned out on all of it. And that'd give me an excuse to get my grandpa to ride with me when his back's not acting up.
Darn it. Life would be a lot simpler if I hadn't got attached to those darn geldings.
And it's sooo cute, I took a video one night, they were lined up around the hay bale all curled up snoozing and they all let me walk around and pet them, it's on my Instagram but it's pretty dark. I assume when Jasmine gets here she'll probably join in on the group snooze sessions.

 

[res]

Surveys are not free, or at least I have never lived where they were performed for free. I have also never heard of survey's being required to be performed yearly. IME, land gets surveyed when sold, on request, so the new owner knows where the property lines are. Sometimes, the survey markers remain indefinitely, and the land only needs to be re-surveyed in cases of conflict. You may *want* to have it surveyed, though, just so all the family members are clear as to who owns what, and it might well be required before the land gets a new deed. The worst land conflicts I have experienced have been between family members that inherited land.... We have lost A LOT of rented pasture and crop land due to inheritance issues.

One thing to keep in mind in your rotation schedule is the amount of "grazable" land that you are rotating. It looks like the top section, with all the trees, will not have much to graze. You might want to consider using it as the dry lot, instead. That will allow you to have more grass to rotate thru in the other sections. You WILL have to watch the horses closely, in any section with trees, because if they run out of grass or hay, they will start to strip the bark off the trees, killing the trees.

And speaking of hay, I DO NOT feed hay in any of my rotation sections. Hay is only fed in the dry lot, where I can pick up the excess to compost it. Feeding round bales in your grazing areas only results in lost grass turf from the traffic and hay waste around the bales.

 

[abigalerose]

There's going to be quite a few trees coming out, a lot of them are just nasty thorn trees. So I'm going to thin them out and plant grass seed before I ever put up fence. My cousin had her horses dry lotted where all the trees are and they stripped the bark.
If I just have June and Jasmine there Ill leave it all open or split it in half so it won't make much of a difference that way.
But definitely taking out trees either way.
And there's not going to be hay anywhere but the dry lot.

 

[res]

We have those trees on our property in Kansas and Oklahoma, too. Nasty things. But dang, they make strong fence posts! The family farm in Kansas has ~100yr old barb wire on the original hedge posts, and it is still solid. We don't rely on it as a perimeter fence, we are just preserving it as a heritage.

We also use hedge trees as gate posts - they last way longer than any pressure-treated product you can buy. We just search out a good tall straight tree in the row and cut it down, strip the limbs but leave the bark on.