Grass free turnout?

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poiuytrewq

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Seems to becoming quite popular, totally grass free “dry lots”
I can absolutely see the benefits for fatty owners, I assume there is less field maintenance? No weeds, easy to poo pick etc
A local lady keeps 2 ponies and an old TB on an almost completely dry field and I have to admit they all look wonderful, she says she has complete control over their food intake and the ponies used to get laminitis but haven’t had any signs at all since being kept this way.

My O/H states that bare grazing is illegal, no idea if this is true but pointed out sheep on stubble with turnips is pretty much supplemented dry grazing (that shut him up!)
He’s also worried about the ground being permanently damaged. (He has heart failure at how bare I let pony paddocks get as it is)
Does it not become a quagmire In wet weather?
Do horses do ok with just hay, never anything fresh? I mean it could be seen as slightly unnatural the same as feeding grain can depending how you look at it!
I’m interested as I have a horse who had laminitis badly last year.


Thoughts?
 
I completely agree what the lady has said, however I’m not sure I would want to keep a horse that way, unless it was to keep laminitis at bay.
Horses in hot foreign countries are often kept this way due to limited grazing and feed stuff availability. They still get laminitis as the substitute feeds are maybe higher in protein, as they don’t have the wide choice available in the U.K.
 
It has its pros but couldnt work where I am unless it was hard standing or it would become a bog-I have one wee paddock at home like it (although I dont let it become totally bare) and its not usable for much of the year. For those horses that really need it I think its fine.
For mine I like to see them on land they were bred for-they have moorland and river meadow to graze along with bluffs, gravel beds and burns to use and a wide variety of trees and shrubs to browse. Also, I'd only do it if it were completey bare-my type of ponies always try and eat if there is grass there, however short. I know of ponies with ruined teeth from grazing on bare paddocks and also one who's now prone to colic from earth/sand ingestion-and for ponies they arent that old.
 
I have a "dry paddock" I suppose. Covered on woodchip for when the ground is boggy or when I think there may be the chance of lami. The rest of the time they are out in a fairly bare field. But if I were ever to have such a bad lamintic pony of be happy to dry graze and have full control of their diet.

In my estimation there are things much more cruel! - like the horses that don't get grass at all!
 
Mine is pretty much bare. He gets ad lib hay out in the field and a new strip of grass added most days, but the rest if it is dust and some resilient weeds. He is in during the hottest part of the day and then out overnight. Hes also working really hard most days. He is also turned out on the yard once or twice a week and gets to graze all the long grass down on the verges etc. Hes happy and he looks a million dollars right now.

I do have the option of a field of good grass but I dont want him on that. Hes a good doer cob that isnt designed to eat lush grass. What we have now is a happy medium.

In the winter its pretty much the same. It does get wetter but I have spent all winter walking round in trainers with no issue, so its never really muddy.
 
Cobbus isn't in wooodland off grass. She gets hay but as soon as the grass started to come through in spring it was clear it was too much for her as she started to put on weight and get very booted. After last summer I'm being incredibly careful about what she's allowed to eat.
 
I dream of grass free livery. I have a semi-retired pony that is EMS prone and another that is pretty much retired due to hind gut acidosis rendering her too unpredictable when the grass flushes after each rainfall. Even in mid winter I have to be careful with grass intake for her. I keep them in as small a paddock as I can get away with (supplemented with slow feeder hay or haylage depending on time of year), but hate it. I would like them to have much more enrichment than they get, which would be possible on a track with little to no grass. I'd flipping love one to open up in my part of Surrey!
 
I have two tinies being kept on a 30x40 arena, a 20x5 patch of bare stony earth, a 5×15 concrete yard and two full size stables. Ad lib hay/straw, happy as larry. As long as there is ad lib food, I would much rather see horses kept that way than muzzled.
 
My 2 are practically on a dry lot. PSSM doesn't lend itself to sugary grass.

If i had my own land we'd have a fancy track system with different surfaces and hopefully patches of v low sugar grazing. Need a lottery win to take on the housing developers around here though - buying up all the decent fields.
 
If you're working them then I would say yes, fine, or alternatively if you are stimulating movement by having small food sources that they have to move between, but I wouldn't want to keep an unworked or low worked horse on a dry lot with a pile or two of hay. IME the easiest way to keep horses healthy is having them moving around searching for food as much as possible - putting out multiple sources of forage and keeping a piece of land without a surface on it genuinely grass free is much harder work

If I kept my three on a dry lot with hay in a pile the big horse and pony would stand and eat until it was all gone and then get grumpy and fight and the small horse would get bored and cause herself a mischief. So I'd end up with one fat pony, one seized up, grumpy pssm horse and one nutter. Far better to have them trekking up and down a long poor quality field all day :D
 
For laminitics / horses with metabolic issues it's the only way some of them can be turned out when the grass is going mad and is a better alternative to being stabled for a lot of horses. Ideally if it's literally a bare field then some sort of enrichment should be provided either through multiple forage sources and locations and or hiding weeds / herbs / tree branches for them to find to keep them busy as yeah it's a bit of a slightly boring life otherwise. Even more ideally some people have surfaces down to prevent it turning to mud in winter, some people create loops and figures of 8 and connect them to barns and shelters to encourage movement and give the option of shelter. Some people will incorporate hedgerows / encourage the growth of things that are safe to eat around the edge so that the horses still have something green to nibble on. Some people will only have the horses on the grass free bit for part of the day to give their horse a break from the grass, some people use them all summer and then use the grass they haven't grazed as "standing hay" in winter and some people do the opposite and (if they have a surface down) use such areas as mud free winter turnout. For some horses a muzzle is a better option if it allows them to still be turned out with their friends on a bigger area where they will move more but for others that either hate being muzzled or still manage to eat too much through it or just really can't cope with any grass at all at the moment it can be their only option other than being stuck in a stable.

I have a native with Cushings. In an absolutely ideal world he should be on some sparse moorland somewhere as he is not good at tolerating grass but I don't live somewhere where that exists as an option. In previous years he's just about coped if he comes in off the grass during the day and gets muzzled whilst it's growing / if he goes onto new grass and this worked better than bringing him off grass completely as he was on a massive area and moving constantly. This year the grass has gone so mad that even muzzled he couldn't cope so he's currently in an old pigpen in some woodland that has absolutely nothing grass-wise and I'm doing all I can to encourage him to move about as much as possible (I try to put anywhere from 6-10 hay piles out for 2 horses to share and I also collect cow parsley / nettles / thistles / bits of tree branch and either hang them from trees / put them in nets / scatter them about to be found). It's not ideal and he'd definitely prefer to be back out in the field with all his friends (as would I... much less work than scattering hay about / picking nice things for him to eat / the endless poo picking (getting to the muck heap involves pushing the barrow up and down a little bank which is great fun when it's full of poo) but for now it's keeping him alive.
 
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We have our own land and I'd love a gravel circular track in one small corner so I have somewhere off grass in the summer. Being out 24/7 is fine in the winter but he's been in for 24 hours now after moving to fresh grass and getting pulses. Today I think he'll get turnout on the arena which has some long grass around the outside and back in the stable tonight. The other horses need to eat more grass before he gets back on it. Hopefully have sheep in for a week or two on Saturday which will be good for everything!
 
Food for thought, thanks

It’s difficult isn’t it, a fine line between keeping a horse happy and healthy.
My particular horse gets very obviously miserable strip grazed and just stands windsucking or trying to get out to better grass.
He’s retired and supposed to be living out a happy retirement not stood unhappy.
I can’t do a dry field anyway realistically as it’s not my land and I don’t think I like the idea! but was interested to hear opinions
I did put up a track last year but again the land owner was concerned about the heavy use on the perimeter and long “scruffy” middle 😩
 
poiuytrewq said:
Seems to becoming quite popular, totally grass free “dry lots”
I can absolutely see the benefits for fatty owners, I assume there is less field maintenance? No weeds, easy to poo pick etc
A local lady keeps 2 ponies and an old TB on an almost completely dry field and I have to admit they all look wonderful, she says she has complete control over their food intake and the ponies used to get laminitis but haven’t had any signs at all since being kept this way.

My O/H states that bare grazing is illegal, no idea if this is true but pointed out sheep on stubble with turnips is pretty much supplemented dry grazing (that shut him up!)
He’s also worried about the ground being permanently damaged. (He has heart failure at how bare I let pony paddocks get as it is)
Does it not become a quagmire In wet weather?
Do horses do ok with just hay, never anything fresh? I mean it could be seen as slightly unnatural the same as feeding grain can depending how you look at it!
I’m interested as I have a horse who had laminitis badly last year.


Thoughts?
Click to expand...

Look on the Calm Healthy Horses page - not all grazing is equal and some is detrimental to horses.

I have horses who have been badly affected by potassium high grazing. One in particular has cost thousands in vets bills without any diagnosis. Grass was always a trigger and we assumed hind gut issues, 5 years down the line we have a calcium deficiency diagnosis which is connected to excess potassium and in 6 months on a dry lot and the right supplements and my horse is finally improved. No more gut problems, no more tying up, no more laminitis. I doubt he will ever be able to graze the grass at our current yard as it is thick in clover so he will remain on his patch which is a barren area at the end of the field. He has soaked hay through the day.

All of my horses are affected, they all show it in different ways and I would have them all on a dry lot with hay and minimal access to grass if I could. The others I have now are out on grass but remain on the CHH products to help balance it all out. A lush green field is my idea of a nightmare now and I believe that lots of issues we have with horses can be connected to the grazing we keep them on. Ours is an ex dairy farm with rye and clover and that gets fertilized.

I know a few people now who have seen improvements in health and behaviour with the removal of grass from their horses diet.
 
Fransurrey said:
I dream of grass free livery. I have a semi-retired pony that is EMS prone and another that is pretty much retired due to hind gut acidosis rendering her too unpredictable when the grass flushes after each rainfall. Even in mid winter I have to be careful with grass intake for her. I keep them in as small a paddock as I can get away with (supplemented with slow feeder hay or haylage depending on time of year), but hate it. I would like them to have much more enrichment than they get, which would be possible on a track with little to no grass. I'd flipping love one to open up in my part of Surrey!
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Ditto! I have searched the length and breadth of Surrey for such a thing. Ideally a track system where those that can cope can be allowed access to grass when appropriate and those that cant can stay off it and have hay.

I have one that we believed had HGA and was in and out of work - turned out to be a mineral deficiency due to the grazing we have been on (we are also Surrey), he was also diagnosed with EMS but again this can also be connected to the minerals in the grazing and was resolved with magnesium after metformin made no difference. He's on a bare patch now with the right supplements and feels better than he has in years.
 
I think the operative word in "dry lot" is "dry"! Easier to achieve in a drier climate. I think bare pounded earth isn't a long-term solution in the UK, because sooner or later it'll turn into mud.
On the continent, they have quite a lot of so-called "active" stable systems that are essentially a dry lot with shelter and ad-lib forage (and/or elements of a track system). But they all have surfaces that are meant to hold up to a lot of wear and in wet weather, and not just created by letting the horses graze down a field. Some of them also have access to grazing areas which can be managed by letting out horses for shorter periods of time.

I really like the concept of these stables. The horses get everything they need: herd life, space to move, ad-lib forage. But it needs less overall space than keeping the same amount of horses on grazing, and removes the necessity for traditional stables (solitary confinement) in order to preserve the grazing in winter. And intake can be monitored much more easily. The only downside I can see on the nutritional side is lack of vitamins and omega 3 fatty acids found in fresh forage, and that this sort of system can also invite trouble if overstocked, or if there's a lot of movement into and out of the group (leading to horses beating each other up).
 
ycbm said:
I have two tinies being kept on a 30x40 arena, a 20x5 patch of bare stony earth, a 5×15 concrete yard and two full size stables. Ad lib hay/straw, happy as larry. As long as there is ad lib food, I would much rather see horses kept that way than muzzled.
Click to expand...

^^^^^
this
 
DabDab said:
If you're working them then I would say yes, fine, or alternatively if you are stimulating movement by having small food sources that they have to move between, but I wouldn't want to keep an unworked or low worked horse on a dry lot with a pile or two of hay. IME the easiest way to keep horses healthy is having them moving around searching for food as much as possible - putting out multiple sources of forage and keeping a piece of land without a surface on it genuinely grass free is much harder work
Click to expand...


yep, a comprehensive track system would be fab-with alot of environmental enrichment, inclines etc-afraid the slow feeders in each corner of a pokey paddock doesnt cut it for me but then thats why I moved away from livery yards.
 
Well I had cold feet this morning so he's out for the day with a muzzle and he'll have it off tonight. He ate and drank worryingly little with 36 hours in the stable ( with being let out for a leg stretch every 4 hours or so)

Might need to bring him off again tomorrow in the day but the trouble is then he just sleeps til he's out again! Hopefully the others will have eaten down more by then. It's hard management between having too much grass and having stressed grass, new strategy and paddocks this year which I'm hoping will work
 
I've got a bit of a track system going on because I fenced off the middle of my field to keep the Appy off the grass. I spread soaked hay in piles around the perimeter. It definitely keeps them moving and they both mooch round with their ears pricked to see if the hay piles over the other side are nicer. We need more rain down here because my rested patch has barely grown.

The Appy self entertains by trying to come up with imaginative ways to destroy the electric fencing.
 
Tracks are brilliant, unless my horses could not cope at all, I like them to be able to have grass. But I have them on a thin track with plenty of weeds and some log stalky grass which they are not that fussed on, so they move around a lot to graze. Keeps arthritic boy moving and my 2 fatties a bit less fat! I do put out hay at times but even with sparse grass and having to travel they are not interested at the moment as it isn’t completely bare yet!

My friend has wood chip pens off stables. But the ponies don’t really move very much- each hay in stable and then sunbath on the chip! Plus for safety as 2 show ponies and 1 moody mare, they can’t be in together.

The middle of my field looks like a jungle now, which reminds me how good it is they are on so little, as it has grown like mad. Keep checking my battery is charged....
 
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