Pasture Management?

Question

Howdy, We have 5 acres in No Cal that we just purchased. The previous owners did not take care of the pasture. They are a mix of weeds (no star thistle though), and natural grasses and wildflowers. I would like to keep it as natural as possible but just improve it. We bought a heavy duty harrow and I have started to drag the pastures. It is cleaning up the weeds and breaking up the areas with piles of old p**p. We plan on getting a good manure spreader so we can spread the composted manure with some grass seed and fertilizer. What else? What is a good grass mix and where do I buy it? THANKS!!!

Answer 1

I don't know about California, but in Texas each county has one or more County Extension Agents. They can answer these questions, test your soil, and advise you when and what to plant for best pasture management, and their sevices are usually free. If you guys have something similar, its a great way to get real expert advice.

Answer 2

Tractor Supply has Kentchy grass seed and many others to pick from.  I would take about 1/4 acre for shelter, feeding and locking up when needed or smaller, then take 2 acres each and separate, I'm guessing the home and such will take up about a acre?  But every couple wks move.  How many horses?  If you got all 5 do 2 acres, 2 acres, and 1 with the small area.  Don't let the pasture grass get two short before you move them, and you may want to keep right up on the worming from the sounds of the pastures current condition.

Answer 3

If you are going to have horses graze the pasture, I would break it up into 3 parts. One part, the smallest would be your sacrifice area. This would be where you would feed hay , water and have your barn or shelter. The other 2 areas would be your grazing area. You would rotate the horses back and forth between the 2 pastures. This will prevent your horses from over grazing. If both have been grazed down, you would keep them in the sacrifice pasture, and feed hay, until the grazing pastures recover. It would also be a good idea to mow the the pasture to a height of about 4 inches once you have moved the horses out.

I seed with brome grass seed, but there is also a pasture mix that has clover, alfalfa, timothy and other grasses in it. You should be able to find these at Tractor Supply or any other farm store.

Answer 4

You will want to cross fence the field so that you can rest parts of it and rotate the horses around.  Check with your local ag extension office for what seed mixtures will work best in your area.  Just by mowing the weeds down regularly will allow the grasses to grow.  A quality pasture takes years to establish but keeping horses on it will benefit as long as you don't allow them to overgraze.  I keep chickens - they patrol my pastures and scratch through the manure spreading it about.  This helps with several things.  The chickens eat the undigested seeds and parasites.  They also eat any fly larvae helping to control the fly population too.  They don't cost much to feed, haven't seen a cockroach or cricket in the house in ages and they give free eggs.  What a bonus!