Pasture management principles are similar for large or small horse properties. The main objectivesinclude reducing the worm (parasite) burden, controlling weeds and improving the grass.

How these are achieved involves a multi strategy action plan that can be carried out on any property. Firstly youneed to understand horse grazing behaviour.

Horse Grazing Habits
When grazing a paddock horses will dung in one area and graze in another. Horses will not eat around their own dung(thought to be a natural worm prevention strategy) therefore this behaviour leads to increasingly large areas wherethe grass gets long and rank (‘roughs’) and areas that get overgrazed (‘lawns’).

Weeds also dominate the roughs over time and the whole paddock has an imbalance of nutrients as the horse takes fromthe lawns and deposits in the roughs. A paddock in this state is sometimes described as ‘horse sick’.

Rotational Grazing Of Horses
Having several paddocks rather than one large paddock will allow paddock rotation that improves pasture growth andparasite control. This sort of management helps to prevent the under/over-grazing pattern present in so many horsepaddocks. Horses should be allowed to graze a paddock until the average height of the grass is 5cm. They should thenbe rotated on to the next paddock and so on. The horses should be allowed to graze the paddock again when the grasshas reached an average height of 15-20cm. Any bare patches in a paddock should be mulched with manure, old hay etc toprotect the soil.

Rotational Grazing With Sheep Or Cattle
Sheep and cattle will graze areas avoided by horses. Sheep will tackle most weeds found in horse paddocks. Neithercattle nor horses will eat pasture around their own droppings, but they will eat pasture around each other'sdroppings.

Alternating cattle or sheep with horses also helps to rid the pasture of worms because, with one exception, wormsthat live in horses cannot survive in cattle or sheep.

Using Yards/Stables
Unless there is a lot of pasture available yards or stables can be used to conserve and improve pasture. Horses canbe confined and fed hay for part of each day. Also in very wet or very dry periods horses should be removed from thepaddock to reduce the damage caused by hooves. In fact horses should be removed from pasture whenever it is showingsigns of too much grazing pressure. Signs such as bare patches and grass that is too short. There is no point inhorses standing around in bare dusty paddocks making them more bare and dusty.

Harrowing
Whenever a paddock is rested it should be harrowed. This breaks up the dung pats and exposes worm larvae to the air.Frost and hot dry weather kills worm larvae. Harrowing also gives a quick return to the soil of the fertiliser valueof the dung and increases the grazing area.

Dung Beetles And Free Range Poultry
Dung beetles are very useful on horse properties as they have numerous benefits (go to www.csiro.au and search fordung beetles). Free-range poultry scatter manure and eat some weed seeds that may be present in the manure.

Mowing And Slashing
If cattle or sheep are not available to eat down the rank growth then the paddock should be mowed or slashedperiodically. Mowing the pasture during the spring period of rapid pasture growth can also be advantageous. Ideallythe pasture should be mowed to a height of 8-10cms. This keeps the pasture short over the whole paddock, encouragingthe horse to graze the whole area and it prevents dominance by broadleaf weeds and thistles.

Manure Removal
Manual or mechanised removal of manure will drastically help parasite control and increase pasture availability. Invery small paddocks manure removal is imperative however in larger paddocks harrowing is usually a more cost and timeeffective option.

These are just some of the things that can be done to improve your pasture. Other management strategies includefertilisation, spaying for weeds, re-seeding and improving drainage.

This information for this article is from the book Managing Horses on Small Properties (published by CSIRO) by JaneMyers. The book is available from the CSIRO online bookstore www.publish.csiro.au.