Worried about grass

[Groom Mum]

Hi
me again !
my three ponies have been in their field three weeks. The grass is almost now non existent. It was ok when they came in but its now a churned up hardly any grass mud bath.
I'm moving the fencing another third across the field tomorrow but im concerned this wont last through the whole winter.
Any suggestions ?

I am reluctantly giving them a small amount of hay per day, they are dropping weight which is good as they were FAT !!
But I dont want them to drop too much.

 

[be positive]

I would not expect the grass in the field to last all winter if they have got through 1/3rd in 3 weeks it will last another 6 on that basis, dropping some weight is good if they were fat but they do require some hay to stop the weight dropping too quickly especially once it gets colder, I have 2 that are not yet getting hay but they are on about 6 acres and it is not churned up and I hope they will not need any until Jan, I have another 2 on just 2 acres that are now getting hay as there is less grass and I don't want them dropping weight too quickly.
If they move onto the new field they probably wont need hay for a while although I think I would probably give them a token amount to just keep something going through them and it may stop them churning the field up so quickly.

 

[Groom Mum]

Thank you. That was helpful. It is a worry. Because they are both a little overweight I wasn't too worried. But I noticed yesterday my young one had definitely dropped weight. I was giving them a handful of hay per day. Nothing much. I'm moving them into a bit more of the field today not all of it. Just about another 20 ft wide strip. I think I may have to up their hay a bit. I'm also going back to two ponies as the third was just holidaying with me for a couple of weeks.

 

[Knockadoon]

Mine are completely out of anything resembling grass and today the lower half of the field is actually under water. We had to go to plan b and now they're on hay twice a day and we're closing in a turf shed to create a winter stable so they'll be in lock up at night then. It's the first year in this area and we were totally taken by surprise by how badly we managed to outwinter.