Відео

Yes it should be dormant - the light levels in February are low to keep it dormant. The only thing to consider is any large change in horse's diet - if it is eating little grass at the moment, to eating more grass (if it's green, that is), give her some stalky rough hay to balance her forage with more fibre. If your field of extra grass is rather brown/yellow, and thus fully dormant, than there is no worry as it's like feeding your horse hay. As for the horse being fat, not sure if you have rug on it when it's out. Keep it without the rug and it'll use its body fat to keep itself warm, thus by spring it'll be leaner. Even in wet weather, horses can cope well, and use their fat to keep themselves warm - which is essentially what getting them fat in summer was evolutionary for, so they can go through lean, wet, cold winter.

The worms can (within the animal that is), but the eggs don't (in the poop that is)

The grazing units are set up with mobile electric fencing - fence posts and electric tape. If you check the video on How to build a grazing unit for your horse, you'll see the grazing unit set up. I make a new electric fence enclosure next to their current one, then allow them go in it, and then move the back fence after them. I give them more space by using the previous day's grazing as a space to move in, the size then becomes about the size of a small riding arena. That will all depend on your situation and horses.

Well, harrowing will mean bringing in some kind of machinery, which will compact the soil, even if it's just a quad bike, and will damage some of the grass. It would be better to leave the tractor or car where it is, save yourself some petrol and time and leave the manure piles as they are, or kick them about with wellies when you have some time or think about it. Harrowing disturbance is not the same as animal disturbance and may hamper your grazing and regenerative goals as it may seriously damage your wildlife as well.

Hi Sarah, for the area we have, it is only enough grazing for 2 horses. No other grazing animals go through the area. Unless you have a whole farm and you can keep horses and cattle or sheep together, then you could run them as 1 herd, by all means. I do run laying hens, broilers and ducks for meat through the same area as horses, behind horses in fact, as poultry prefer the grass to be shorter so they don't have to wade through it. If you leave enough time after the grazing, that is at least 40 days before you go back with the horses to the same area of pasture, the parasite eggs will decay by then so you will not be re-infecting your horses. I test my horses' manure from time to time for worm eggs and it's always zero worm egg count, the animals become very clean with this system.

over time as the pasture improves the soil and conditions change in a way that decreases the opportunistic early succession species and favors later-succcession species which tend to be more nutritious, safe, and easily digestible. so if you can train the horses to avoid it, it will likely "go away" more or less on its own. do your horses like to eat the ragwort? most noxious forage is less pleasant to the organism and is passed over unless more preferable forage is unavailable (animals left on overgrazed pasture and not moved frequently are much more likely to eat and get sick from noxious forage). if your horses are moved before all the preferable forage is gone, you may be able to observe that they avoid it on their own. if not, spray/douse them with cayenne or something unpleasant but safe before moving the animals to that area. (just some ideas)

:-D Nature indeed somehow magically created all life on this planet in the middle of absolute nowhere, and it has been doing it for millions of years. It's pretty good at it - it's us who are completely ignorant to its processes and functions. Back to your dock and thistle problem. Both plants (and other weeds as well) occur in nature for a reason. Thistles are one of the only plants capable penetrating a capped soil surface - i.e. hard and compacted surface where water has created a cap that other plants cannot penetrate through. But thistles can. So they grow and continue doing their job until they are no longer needed - i.e. until the conditions have swayed in favor of perennial plants. Weeds like thistles are low succession plants. If you think of upward succession of plant bio-system from bare rocks and capped soils, to moss, to thistles and other weeds, to annual grasses and plants, to perennial grasses, to bushes, to forests. There, you can see that if your soil is becoming more habitable to thistles, there is a reason for it, as it's going downward in succession, and nature is responding in trying to push it upwards (thistle colonies), otherwise you would end up with moss or bare soil. As for docks, they are great nature's recovery tool too. They have a deep taproot, usually deeper than thistles. They often occur in waterlogged, poorly drained acidic soils. Docks also indicate mineral deficiency of the soil, and that's what they are bringing up from deep layers of soil - calcium, potassium, phosphorus and iron. In practice, what I do with weeds, I scythe them down as and when we move through the pasture (unless the horses have trampled them down), so that their leaves and stalks decay and can release such minerals to the soil. Over time (however long needs to be), they won't be needed. I don't bother removing the seedheads - weed seeds can survive pretty long in soil (I think docks for 20 years), so it's a waste of time, as the soil seedbank already contains all kinds of weed seeds.

Ouch! Major disagreement with your first point. A perfect design as nature or our body, does not create itself out of nothing. It had to have a designer. Otherwise, I’d agree. We are the problem. The Bible states that clearly.

In the winter, when the soil is water-logged, it is best to keep your horses in a stable or on a hard standing and feed them hay, otherwise you risk poaching and damaging your soil. The land will become better at keeping your horses over winter over time, as the grass roots get deeper and soil structure improves. Sleet and thawing snow can be particularly damaging with horse hooves, as it's like water sitting on top of partly frozen just melting surface, so keep your horses elsewhere. You also feed hay on the floor when you can keep the horses out on the pasture, and move them according to your plan.

That is true from one perspective, however, the situation is much more complex in climate and heating the planet - nothing is as simple as just albedo effect - otherwise, deserts would be cooler than rainforests... Plants by breathing remove some of the heat. Plus the constant release of water vapour and bacteria from plants also draws cooler air of low pressure and brings about clouds and rain, bringing with it more cooling of such land. On the other hand, the hot air over deserts creates a high pressure dome which cannot be penetrated with cool low pressure air. So deserts become unbearably hot and as the surface becomes hotter and hoter, more heat is being reflected into the surrounding air, making it hotter too. I'm sure you've felt the difference of walking on hot sand versus on gras-covered soil.

@@naturewayfarm595 The largest desert on Earth is cooler than any forest.