A question re strip grazing and also grass growth

Supertrooper

Supertrooper

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Those of you that strip graze, how often do you move your fence? Do you move the whole fence or just sections??

Also how quick does grass grow, if the conditions are right???
 
Mine is a good doer so I just move the fence by a couple of feet in a couple of places! ie not the whole 150meter strip!
Summer.
If its been raining etc I do keep an eye on it. But we have hardly had any rain except last night so I did give him a bit more yesterday.

Really just walk round and see if you can see lots of grass shoots un nibbled, if you can I would not move it much if not at all. At the moment the ground is so dry and the grass looks more like it does at the end of the summer very dry so I did give him a bit more!

The other thing I do is if his head is down grazing I know he is eating away, mine does not stop he eats constantly. They can make you feel very guilty too!

Mine blows up overnight so I know if he has had too much??Sorry to waffle but thats how I do it. oh I also see how many poos a day and if they are sloppy grassy ones, if so i know he is getting probably too much.
 
Thanks, that's all really helpful. New to strip grazing and the horse I share will eat the grass down to about a cm in no time at all. So paranoid about laminitis!!!

What i've been doing is just moving say every 3rd post every few days xxx
 
I section my field into strips so when eating down one strip the other can grow back. Each strip is about 20m wide and I move it about 1ft morning and night. They eat it right down and the field is bare, and asre desperate when I move it, but they are still too fat.
Talking to my farrier yesterday he said that considering we have had virtually no rain and the grass hasn't grown he has never seen so many fat horses.
Mine have started diets today and are stabled in the day for the forseeable future.
 
I think it all depends on your grazing, horse, weather conditions, amount of work etc.

With my TB who is in medium work, I move the fence line by about 2` maybe every other day. ( The field is about 40` wide )
With the two natives, I am afraid they only get a tiny bit of fresh grass to share, as one is retired and naturally looks very chunky and I am paranoid about avoiding laminitis.
 
I went to a talk on Laminitis last year. One of the things that really stuck in my mind was this. The vet giving the talk said that if you could go in the field and pick a carrier bag full of grass in half an hour or less, then there is too much. For good doers it should take you a couple of hours to pick the bag full. Made sense to me and I think about it on this on an almost daily basis. It has worked for me and I think it is a nice simple way to work out if your grazing is too much/not enough or about right.
 
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