Pasture Management
for
Horses

Strip Grazing

Introduction

Grazing a mixture of grasses and herbs is the horse’s natural feed, where they are often healthiest and show their most natural behaviour.
Unfortunately there often needs to be some control over this to avoid an animal becoming obese, particularly where native breeds are concerned.
Everyone is familiar with the idea of rotational grazing of paddocks and how this may be beneficial to the pasture, allowing it to recover from hard grazing, and encouraging a reduction in the worm egg population.
This can be achieved if you have several paddocks available and enough animals to use the herbage produced, though there can still be difficulties introducing a horse or horses into a field which has been rested and produced a growth of lush grass.
Many horses are kept in situations where there is only one paddock available and this is grazed constantly, resulting in a paddock which is fairly devoid of herbage throughout the summer, leaving a considerable proportion of bare ground on which weeds may germinate, a and an obese horse or pony.
This is where strip grazing can be a useful management tool, allowing control of the horse’s access to herbage at all times.

The Strip Grazing System

This will require a small outlay on suitable fencing (ie electric tape which will be highly visible to the horse), plastic stakes which can be moved, and an energiser.
A management plan will begin in the spring when the paddock first starts to have surplus herbage. At this stage it may be possible to position an electric fence which divides the paddock in half, or perhaps smaller, but still allowing access to shelter and water. This will be moved slowly later on but it can be assumed that most of the area cut off by will not be grazed for sometime and can therefor be safely fertilized, and if droppings are not being collected regularly, it would be worth collecting them on this area.
If the area on which grazing has been allowed is not too large, the fence will need to be moved after a while to ensure that the horse has enough to eat. Ideally this should be moved a small amount every day, and this will be easier if it is not in fact a straight line but a slight zig-zag, enabling parts of the fence to be moved without moving the ends. It will then only be necessary to move the end posts once a week.

In any case, the aim should be to swing the fence around with one end remaining stationary. A ‘back fence’ can then be added to keep the area being grazed roughly constant. It will only be necessary to move the back fence once a week.
Again the area cut off by the back fence can be cleared of droppings and fertilized in the knowledge that it will not be grazed for some time.

As the season progresses the fences will both be swung around, with new areas behind the back fence being cleared of droppings and fertilized, until the first fence has almost been swung as far as it can go. At this point it will be necessary to stop fertilizing the new areas behind the back fence as this will soon become the front fence and this area will be grazed.
If the grass is still growing well at this stage, the original fence will become the back fence and will be slowly swung back to its original position, as the back fence is also swung back.

If the paddock is entering a period of reduced growth, then the area being grazed can be increased to suit the horses need.

Summary

It will be seen that by following this method, it will be possible to rest and fertilize most of the paddock at some time during the season, and at no time is it necessary to suddenly turn horses into large area of lush grass, as may be the case with a rotational paddock system. If sufficient herbage is available, it will be possible to avoid feeding hay until well into the autumn or winter.
The system will be of benefit not only to the horses nutrition and control of obesity, but also to the paddock itself, where there will be less bare land for weeds including ragwort to germinate, and also the creation of conditions which will allow various herbs to flourish.