Let it grow

No mud, no poo-picking, no worms, just healthy grass with a mix of wild flowers and year-round turnout on around an acre per horse. Too good to be true? Some intrepid horse owners have managed to achieve exactly that. Leslie Blissfinds out how

GRAZING. It’s the most fundamental equine food source. With feed prices ever increasing as well as a desire to be more ecological, a growing number of owners are looking at ways to maximise pasture. With prolonged wet winters and drought adding to the challenge of growing grass, landowners are experimenting with different systems.

Three years ago, farmer’s wife Ellie Smith, who lives on the Welsh border, decided to try regenerative grazing with a 16.3hh hunter and 13.2hh pony on two adjoining paddocks, of 0.9 acres and 0.8 acres.

Her husband has been mob-grazing his cattle and sheep for more than a decade. Both these systems are essentially the same, mimicking grazing in the wild.

It’s about short-duration, high-intensity grazing, moving your animals on average once a day, then leaving the grass to recover for between 40 to 100 days. It’s nothing new; strip and track grazing, even rotating fields, follow the same principle.

“The results are phenomenal,” says Ellie. “The huge amount of rest the grassland gets means it has enormously long root systems, so there is no mud, surface water or compaction. The grass grows nearly waist-high in spring and summer, so the soil is well protected and soil temperatures are lower than fields with shorter plants.

“We don’t fertilise. We leave the horse droppings where they fall and they feed back into the system. We have thousands of dung beetles and droppings disappear within 12 weeks. I used to worm regularly, but now do worm counts and don’t need to.