A Green Pasture Solution for Healthy Horses: Cross Grazing
Sharing pasture – who makes a good companion for your horse?
Most horse owners dream of acres of lush green grass for their horses, and there’s no doubt that pasturing your horse on good grass is the way to healthy, natural, and economical horse care. Good grass provides the best forage and nutrients for your horse, suits its natural digestive processes, and keeps your horse happy too. But getting good grass – and keeping it – can be difficult, especially if you don’t have much acreage, your soil isn’t good, or you are starting out with poor quality, weed-ridden grass. Unless you can afford expensive tractors and mowers and harrowers, have the time to pick up droppings by hand, and if you want to avoid using harsh and dangerous herbicides and anti-parasitics, you need some other options.
Many horse owners are looking for more creative ways to manage their pasture, and one of them is cross-grazing with other livestock. Not only can some stock help keep your grass clean and healthy for horses, some animals live very well with horses and can provide companionship. But which animals work, and which don’t?
Cattle
Horses can be grazed happily with cattle, but don’t expect to find much benefit for your grass. Cows, like horses, can be finicky eaters, and often leave large areas of grass untouched if it doesn’t taste just right. Cattle and horses do share many parasites, so pasture sharing with cattle won’t break the life cycle of some common worms. Plus, cattle droppings are often even more difficult to harrow or pick up than horse droppings. In short, unless you are trying to keep grass down on a very large pasture, cows aren’t the best choice for sharing with horses. Horses also seldom bond with cattle, and can even chase, herd or otherwise stress cattle. Cattle are also notorious carriers of ringworm, so keeping your horse ringworm free when it is around cows may be a never-ending battle. Unless you have a lot of acreage for your animals, grazing with cattle isn’t going to bring many benefits for either animal.
Sheep
Grazing with sheep has real benefits for parasite prevention. Sheep don’t share many parasites with horses, and their through grazing means that they actually pick up and destroy many parasites that can affect horses. Adding sheep to your pasture management can be a valuable tool in your parasite management, although it will not remove the need for deworm altogether. Horses have also been known to form close bonds with sheep, and at the very least seem to leave them alone, so mixing the two usually works well. On the down side, sheep graze much closer to the ground than horses, and can quickly decimate a small pasture, so this is an option for larger pastures or as part of a pasture rotation cycle. In a smaller pasture, adding just a few sheep can bring some of the benefits of companionship and parasite control but you will need to keep a close eye on your grass and move the sheep if the grass begins to get too sparse. Sheep are also less susceptible to many dangerous weeds, and although they can’t be relied upon to clear a pasture of weeds, they certainly help.
Goats
Goats bring excellent advantages to pasture management; especially for weed control. Goats are not fussy eaters, and many enjoy eating weeds, brambles and shrubs and will keep these well controlled in pasture without taking up much of the grass you want for your horses. Goats are less effective than sheep for parasite control, but again they don’t share many parasites with horses so will help to break the life cycle of some parasites. Goats and horses have been known to make good companions, but not always – if you don’t know how your horses will behave around goats be sure you manage the introduction carefully until you are sure your horse will welcome the goats. The down side to pasturing goats s that they can be very difficult to contain – fencing that works for horses may have no effect at all on whether your goats stay in the pasture or not. Also, some goat feeds and mineral licks can contain chemicals that are toxic to horses. If you have the right fencing though, goats can be a great part of weed control in a pasture rotation program.
Donkeys
Horses and donkeys usually get along very well, and a donkey added to a paddock can make an excellent companion to prevent loneliness. If you have a few horses, and often find you need to leave one pastured alone, a donkey can be a valuable friend to the lone horse. Donkeys aren’t as particular with their grazing as horses, but will usually choose the best grass first, so don’t expect them to do much for weed control – and being closely related to horses they share much of the susceptibility to the same dangerous plants and parasites so can’t help to manage those either. However, caring for donkeys is fairly similar to that for horses, so adding a donkey or two won’t change your daily routine much. The only real risk with grazing with donkeys is that they can be carriers of lungworm, without showing any symptoms, and pass this deadly parasite on to your horses, so be sure to keep your donkeys regularly dewormed.
Llamas
Llamas and alpacas are becoming increasingly popular as pets and pack animals, and generally make a good mix with horses. Horses and llamas can get along well, and llamas are seldom bothered by horses because they are larger and more assertive than goats or sheep. Horses may not form close bonds with llamas, but a few llamas in the pasture is usually enough to keep a lone horse comfortable for short periods. Llamas also help to break the life cycle of many parasites, and will also remove some weeds and poor quality grasses (although like cattle they usually choose the best grass first). Their care is not dissimilar to horses, so adding some llamas won’t require different fencing or bring many changes to your routine. Adding llamas or alpacas to a pasture rotation cycle is becoming increasingly popular and seems to benefit the grazing for both animals, so much so that many alpaca breeders are adding horses to their pasture management programs too!
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