Improving Your Pastures Starts with Evaluating Your Pastures: Introduction

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- [Laura] Are your pastures lush and green and lovely?

Do they need a little pick-me-up?

Or are they so far gone that they need a complete overhaul?

I'm Laura Kenny, equine extension educator with Penn State Extension.

And in this short video series, we'll explain how to decide what your pastures need with two easy evaluation methods.

Aside from looks, why is it important to have nice pastures?

There are two main reasons, your horse's health and the environment.

Horses are designed to graze.

Their small stomachs are meant to have small meals often throughout the day.

As an added bonus, many horses can meet all of their nutritional needs on high-quality pasture throughout the grazing season, saving you money in grain bills.

However, it is important to remember that some horses, your easy keepers, are highly efficient and can get obese with unlimited pasture access, so they might need a grazing muzzle or a limited pasture time with plenty of exercise to keep them slim and healthy.

Horses at risk for laminitis often shouldn't have any pasture access and do better on a dry lot.

Environmentally, lush pastures help to prevent soil erosion when it rains.

When raindrops fall on bare soil, the impact dislodges soil particles that then get swept away.

You lose some of your valuable topsoil, and the sediment can reach surface water, like streams, where it clouds the water and harms the aquatic ecosystem.

Sediment is the biggest source of water pollution in Pennsylvania by volume.

However, when the soil surface is covered by thick pasture, the plants take the impact of the raindrops.

Pasture plants also increase water infiltration into the soil, meaning less water ponded on the surface, and absorb water and nutrients from your horse's manure, keeping stormwater runoff clean when it enters surface water.

Improving the forage stand in your pastures can have great benefits, but how do you know if your pastures are fine as is, just need some renovations, or if you need to completely start over?

The next video will describe two ways to find out what condition your pastures are in.

You will find out what percents you have of desirable forage, weeds, and bare ground.

Then you can use these numbers as a guide to make pasture renovation decisions.