Make Sure Your Horse's Pasture Has The Best Plants To Graze On
Posted on: 15 August 2017
When you are pasturing your horse, you want to make sure that all the foliage in the pasture is safe for your horse to eat. Not only that, but if they can get some added nutrients from the grasses and such that are in the pasture that can help balance out their diet, you are killing two birds with one stone. So, what can you put in your pasture that will help your house and be safe for them to nibble on while they are out there.
Starting Your Pasture
Before you start your pasture, you need to do a couple of things. One is that you need to test your soil. You need to know what the pH balance of your soil is as well as the soil composition. That can help determine what kind of coverage you put in. Different plants do better in different kinds of soil. You can amend the soil by putting in things like NPK or other fertilizers. You also need to be able to control where your horse is going to graze. That's because horses will trim everything down to the ground and then go back for more. So, if you can put up fences throughout your pasture to partition it out, you can have places for your horses to graze while other sections rest and recover from having your horse nibble down all the grasses and other plants.
Legumes
There is a wide variety of legumes that you can use in your pasture. These plants will help your horses to get in some added nutrients that can balance out other parts of their diet, so that it's more rounded. These legumes include things like clovers, alfalfa, vetch, and rhizomal peanut hay are all good plants to put in your pasture. They are really good to put in with other grasses to act as companion plants. These legumes are also good to plant in cool weather pastures, or to add in to a warmer weather pasture to help when cool weather strikes. An added benefit of adding in legumes to your pasture is that they are going to fix nitrogen into your soil, which can help other plants grow and which can save you from having to put fertilizer down for the plants to grow.
While you make sure that you feed your horses the best feed, you want to make sure that the plants in their pasture are going to be safe for them to eat and will help to provide a rounded diet for your horse.
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