How to sort out very poor grazing

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chestnutx

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We are buying a field which hasn't been grazed for years and years, it is full of weeds, ragwort, moss and there is hardly any grass. Help! How are we going to sort it out so I can keep my pony on there? It is on a hill and soil is very sandy?

Any replies appreciated :-)
 
You could get an agricultural contractor in to spray it off, the grass will recover and if you are only keeping a pony you won't be needing lush grazing.
 
It depends on the size of the field.
I would divide it into manageable sections with electric fencing to start with. Choose which section is the best and least weeds and keep your pony in that one for the rest of the year.
Then I'd recommend getting some advice from someone like Progreen who have a very helpful website and are helpful on the phone.
If your divided up areas are manageable on foot, get some knapsack sprayers and when the time of year and weather conditions are right, blast all those weeds and leave it till next spring. You'll need to dig out the dead ragwort but at least the roots will be dead so they won't grow back next year.
You might trash the one section your pony is in but you can move him to the next best section for the spring whilst you spray again when growth starts.
Good luck, it will be worth all the hard work.
 
Thanks for the replies both. We were thinking that we would have to fence off a smaller area to start with, I'm just worried about the bits that haven't even been grazed and yet there is no grass at all! We are not paying a lot for the field though so I can't expect much I suppose it would have been double the price if it had been good grazing!
 
It depends on what you call 'weeds'. Obviously you would need to get rid of the ragwort and any docks, large numbers of nettles or thistles but mixed grazing, rather than lush grass is actually better for ponies.
 
chestnutx said:
We are buying a field which hasn't been grazed for years and years, it is full of weeds, ragwort, moss and there is hardly any grass. Help! How are we going to sort it out so I can keep my pony on there? It is on a hill and soil is very sandy?

Any replies appreciated :-)
Click to expand...


If it were me I would first pull the ragwort
Then get a field maintenance guy to top it so I could see what is there.

Its probably too late to weed kill now, so I would spend the rest of the years sorting out,

fencing
water
stabling etc,then start the spring with wed killer.


That is my first idea.
 
I would say be careful with the sandy soil. That would be my biggest worry. We have some sandy land locally and a few (at least 3 horses) have actually died from sand colic and others have suffered with it. If the grazing is poor and thin as it usually is on sand then please look to feed pysilium husk for one week out of every month and this will pick up and remove any sand from the ponies stomach. Sorry I don't want to scare you, but prevention is best. You can check dung for sand content by weekly putting some dung in a see through bag with water and look for evidence of sand after a couple of days. There was a good article in the Absolute Horse magazine a couple of months ago about sand colic.
 
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