Nothing too exciting has gone around here the last few days - just the way I like it! We have been integrating Winston in with his new roomies and he has settled in with them beautifully. From start to finish I think I heard one squeal, the whole process couldn't have gone any better. That is the most interesting thing that has happened this week. Hopefully the rest of the week will continue on in the same way.
Winston and Faune
Baby
Baby on the left, Elfin in the back, Homer in the front
Levendi
Apollo and Levendi up front, Dustin, Tony and Ivan in the back
Tony and Dustin
Leo
Lucky, Clay, Lightening, Chili, Teddy
Lucky and Chili grooming each other
Buffy
The goats; Billy and Bubba in the front with Jo and Mina in the background
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6 comments:
Nice that Winston gets to be with friends! As always, your pictures of peaceful horses make me feel peaceful, too!
Great photos Melissa as always! We have a severe thunderstorm forecast all day here today. I had a good ride yesterday on Glory in our dry paddock although she was wanting to go over to the gate into the pasture with the others....she knew it was grazing time! Could not have been a better birthday for me! So I worked her at the gate and she was much better. I retreated and went back several times and she was giving nicely. Then I turned her out in another pasture all by herself as a reward with long grasses! On Mother's Day I also got to ride in a nice arena at our trainers....we took our black and white mare for 30 days of training while we continue to work our 3 year old. We thought she would settle in better if we took our mare along for the ride and she did just great. Winston is one lucky guy to be there!
There has to be something special about your place. All of the horses seem to get along really well, like grooming instead of rearing and striking out at each other. At our barn, I never see much grooming going on. Either the horses all do their own thing, grazing away, or they are picking at each other. It's just nuts.
Yes, sometimes nothing happening is the best thing.
Wonderful peaceful horse images, thank you for sharing! It does me good to see horses mutual grooming: ) And the video of Poco playing, it really touched me.
Since your situation is similar to mine, older horses on grass, I constantly think of you guys when I have a new horsekeeper's question. Yah, I'm a newbie at pasture care. My question is for the future.
At some point hay will be cut and taken out of our one 5 acre pasture. Then my horse will be free to utilize all that land, opposed to now. Now he lives on two separate swaths of grass we've fenced off on two sides of the field, and we alternate so they can recover. Rotating pastures is critical, I've heard. But when the big field is finally available, is it important that we subdivide it for rotation? Even with only 1 horse? Do you guys rotate and let fields rest even if you are not overgrazing?
Curious,
~lytha
Yes we do.
Horses tend to graze one spot down to nothing and then persist on that spot until the grass is killed out completely. Whether it's one horse or 50 doesn't matter much....the only real difference is the size of the spot they graze down to nothing !
In order to thrive, grasses need to build root mass and there's a direct correlation between plant height and root mass underneath. Grasses grazed down low persistently never redevelop root mass so they can't withstand stressors (heat, drought, freezing) nearly as well as their taller cousins.
With one horse on five acres I might try to create two paddocks and see what happens. If that isn't enough, maybe three or four. If you start seeing lots of patches persistently grazed down to the ground, you probably need more paddocks.
Hope this helps.
Interesting! I actually have noticed this weird grazing tendency to totally obliterate a tiny patch and ignore lots of other stuff.
What is up with that? Apparently some grass out there tastes WAY better than the rest, and is in danger of being eaten away to nothing. If only my horse could read, I'd show him your comment.
So we'll be splitting it up.
Thanks!
~lytha
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