Anyone else worried about their grazing?

I am fed up of this wet weather! The horses usually live out 24/7 but the ground is so bad they have to come in at night now. I planned ahead and saved a field to use- nothing was on it all year, and it is just about useable but only for the 5 hours they go out a day.

I was looking at the pools of water in the fields thinking they may have dried up a tiny bit... then it rains heavily all night long :mad: going to be putting flippers on their hooves soon! already got one out in a poultice wrap due to abscess
 
rhino said:
Ours are as bad as I've seen them; coming off a rubbish summer last year when the grass just didn't grow :rolleyes:

First winter ever I've been needing to give decent amounts of hard feed on top of ad lib haylage when they're in.
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Where are you? We had more grass than we knew what to do with :eek: Asked our farmer about cutting it for us for hay but he said he has more than enough work on his own land to be doing without doing for anyone else :(


Our mud is calf deep in places and of the welly sucking variety so every time I get out with boots attached is a bonus :D We have 2 fields totaling around 22 acres. The larger field is clay based :( and is suffering the worst whereas the other field is well draining and nearly always has grass but even that is boggy at the moment.

Really looking forward to Spring and hopefully some warmer and drier weather
 
Widget, he was the same, he went into winter as fat as a barrel, he has a wonderful thick coat but if I'm honest he's now barely a 2, dentist coming tomorrow in case I have missed something but it has all of a sudden dropped off and I'm not sure why. He has had constant access to hay all winter, but quite often he has not been that interested. Hoping that some time in and some TLC will improve him. I was hoping he would have. Long and happy retirement as a lawn mower but now it's making me consider what is bests for him :(
 
It's not just oldies causing stress regarding weight. My TB is never a round horse but keeping weight in him has caused me a pretty impressive amount of stress.
He has ad lib good quality haylage even out in the field, 2 good feeds, he's well rugged & not in too strenuous work yet.....hmmmph.

I have never, ever kept my horses in. They go out everyday.....but they are in today. I'm working until 5 & they will just be stood in the mud until then. They may as well be stood in the warm & dry TBH.
[sigh]
 
our fields are a disgrace, hardly a blade of grass, very churned up, extremely muddy, gateway and good several metres into field are a foot deep in mud. The summer does dry it out but the growth doesnt come, i was putting hay out until June and started putting it out in Sept, he comes in Oct to April...

We are on a diy livery yard but we arent allowed to maintain the fields as such and as a result they are over horsed and they never get rested, rolled, harrowed, fertalized or sprayed for weeds... we always ask for something to be done / for the gateways to have some hardcore put down / a drainage system put in to be told no...

its extremely frustrating as there arent many yards near us and it has the advantage of an all weather surface, good hacking, its close to home and its generally a nice yard, the other liveries are nice...
 
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I can now see my field after the snow has gone, all it did last night was rain. Today was lovely and sunny - yay... And then it rained.. Again... :(

My fields don't look that muddy apart from the gateway, they're just under about an inch of water.. :( My boys were still out tpday for 5/6 hours, but they come with soaked legs halfway between their fetlocks and knees, poor bubbas!! I'm just thinking myself lucky I have a place to get them in the dry. Those who don't have hardstanding/stables, I don't envy you!!
 
Has anyone any experience of growing rice and can you feed it to horses?! I have a farm of paddy fields!! In fact my neighbour, an arable farmer, even had water standing on a field of plough this morning so that is really wet!
 
The land I rent is called the marshes .................... So that should give you all an idea of what we are dealing with. I can only hope that the horses knee deep winter mud pit can somehow recover from this awful last 12 months. I haven't dared look at their legs, I don't have a hose or anything to be able to wash them off, and they are sound etc with no heat, so hoping the "au naturel" look has prevented the dreaded mud fever thus far ........ I have no facilities there ie electric, water, shelters etc just decent rugs on their backs. I pulled their shoes in September as we weren't riding as it was so foul we just turfed them out to get on with it. They are getting fast fibre and Alfa a oil to bulk their fibre intake up with a bale of hay at night between them and have been maintaining weight (one has even put on weight somehow), but as others have said they just look so miserable. When it was completely frozen we put them into their summer quarters for the fortnight with. Round bale of haylage to munch and share with the sheep, but they ended up sheep chasing/herding them away from the feeder, so the sheep had to move...........
They have in total about 11 acres split into various fields and share this with 25 sheep too.
Yuk, roll on decent weather ............. Please
 
Well I have a clay field and yes it is awful but it will recover come spring and resting. Then I will be knee deep in grass. I strip graze my lad throughout the winter and because I had to start doing it a lot earlier last year I am getting close to running out of grazing...which is un heard of for me. Normally I have a good third of my field left that just never gets eaten down and is cut for hay with the rested part...but this year I am not far off the end of it and then I will have to start with hay...never had to feed hay in the field in all the time I have had him.
I do bring my lad in at night though but that is to prevent laminitis, but it serves a good purpose of drying his feet and legs off for a few hours.
 
The fields at my yard are horrendous.

The winter turn out is primarily a muddy track although they do get hay put out some days - there is another slightly less trashed paddock that we sometimes use. 5 out of the 7 horses are being kept in most days either due to bad mud fever or them being underweight due to lack of grazing - and I'm talking about cobs here not TB's! Even my chunky cob has struggled this year and I had to put him on high oil feed for a month!

There are 3 paddocks being rested and even the don't look that great and I suspect once they move into these fields (if it ever dries up enough) then they'll be trashed or eaten down very quickly and unless we get a brilliant spring then I think we'll struggle in summer too!

I think that unless yards have a significantly greater ratio of grazing to horses then they will struggle - the 1 acre per horse rule no longer works in this country due to the weather.

I also think that Y/O's might need to invest more in field maintanance to make the most of their grazing or look to having proper hard stand available for the winter months!
 
My land is in an awful state too, looks like it's been ploughed. I'm thinking now is as good a time as any to kill it all off and do a total re-seed because the dock seeds that have been lying in the soil will now be ready to burst into life as soon as they get some warmth and it'll be a disaster if I don't get it all killed off.

Where the beasts are going to live while all this is going on is another question altogether!
 
My fields are like bogs.

I have 26 acres for 10 horses and will sell on 5 this summer. I'm not at all convinced that this cycle of wet weather will end anytime soon given the position of the jet stream. I'm planning to move in the spring and if so will build a big barn and maybe one individual stable so that if this continues I can winter in the remaining 5, deep litter straw a bit like cattle. I'm also rethinking whether I seriously need to put in an indoor school as well.

Hellish, really hellish.
 
I've gone past worrying. I've only got 3.5 acres and it's all mud. Nothing I can do about it as I'm not prepared to keep them in constantly. I'll get it rolled, harrowed and reseeded and if all I get is a bit of grass coming through then so be it. With two good doers I can always feed them hay and not be worrying about laminitis.
 
At last a nice dry sunny day!! Just what everyones fields needed!! Instead of being out for half a day today I decided it was too nice for my boys to be in, considering the weather they;ve been out in recently! So, for the first time since I started my new job, I left them out!! :D

Half expected them to have done some sort of hoodini and be gone forever, but they were still there when I got home tonight!
 
Our fields aren't that bad there's winter fields which only got rested for a month down to bad weather should have moved to summer fields to be honest there's more grass than horses can see laminitis hitting us this year.
 
Our paddocks are actually in the best condition at this time than they ever have been purely because no one has been turning out much for the last 2 months, and only for 2 hours 2/3 times per week.

It always surprises me though how established grazing can recover, and very quickly. It just always looks so awful at this time of year. Just make sure you keep a close eye on the weather forecast so you can harrow and roll at the right time. Too wet and the tractor sinks too much and makes more mess, too dry and you won't be able to level the ground out. Ours can be too wet and then too dry in a matter of 2-3 days so it's so important to keep a close eye on the ground/forecast.
 
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