the april showers that *should* have brought in my pasture

[magical thyme]

didn't due to the cold, cold temps. Then the rains stopped in late April.

May finally brought warmth and sun, but we haven't had rain in weeks. We may get 1/4 inch over the next couple days. And then nothing until next Sundy, when we may get 1/4 inch again.

In years past, with careful management by mid-May my pastures would be able to support 2 horses with 12-hour turnout. In fact, back in 2010 and 2011, I let them live out 24x7 over the summer.

Now4 years later, I've got about 1 day of grazing, maybe 2.

Last year it rained like crazy and the guy that has mowed my pasture for years never come out. He has too many clients now, and even though I've been his client for a nearly a decade, I'm not a wealthy ones he bagged on me, stalling and stalling until it was too late. As a result, the pastures were overrun with weeds. I spent hours late last summer with a scythe, hand mowing to keep things a least a little under control.

So this spring, after working like crazy de-thatching, liming, seeding and watering, I've inspected the green areas closely and determined that I essentially am without pasture this year. With no rain, the weeds are winning in most of the green areas. But a shocking amount is still brown, brown, brown with nothing or precious little growing.

My "trash paddock" that I used during mud season when I had 2 horses has been overrun by inedible weeds. Last year, I got an infestation of buttercups -- pretty but poisonous and hard to get rid of. It spread like crazy.

My 2 main pastures are simply not growing. The area around the barn got trashed last winter. I've re-seeded it and watered like crazy, so it's coming in, but it's way too baby to let horses on.

The *only* area that looks halfway decent in the riding pasture.

In years past, with careful management by mid-May my pastures would be able to support 2 horses with 12-hour turnout. In fact, back in 2010 and 2011, I let them live out over the summer.

Now I've got about 1 day of grazing, maybe 2. Out of 2 acres of what was lush pasture, maybe 1/3 acre is good.

I'm feeling slightly ill, but I think I'm going to have to confine them to the trash paddock, with limited turnout on the arena pasture, and buy hay all summer. I saw some leftover hay advertised in the nearby convenience store last week. Hopefully it's still there.

And then work on one section at a time to see what I can do to get it back. Although without significant rain, there's not much I can do.

I've never had to do this before, but I've never seen such a bad year in terms of both damage to my pasture and then no re-growth.

[Wounded Bear]

1. Mother nature can be unpredictable..

yet I fear you might be seeing the start/continuation of long term trends. I don't recall where you are at, but I sense we may be in for a long hot summer here, too. Here being in Western Washington.

I feel for you, and for the horses, who have little to no choice in the matter, and yet suffer the most.

Best wishes for the near and distant future.

[femmocrat]

2. Sending you green vibes, MT.

I had no idea that maintaining pastures (and horses) was so much work. Hoping for better conditions for you and your horses.

[In_The_Wind]

3. I hope things improve quickly!

[csziggy]

4. Maintaining good pastures is a lot of work - if the weather cooperates

Over the 35+ years we've had this farm we've had years when the grass was so thick we couldn't mow it with tractor and years when it was so dry and hot nothing grew.

Find someone to keep up with the mowing - other wise the weeds will take over. Since I blew out my knee, no one has kept up the mowing schedule and my pastures aren't as good as they used to be. The one good thing is that we have a lot of volunteer trees so we have better wildlife areas - but less grazing for the horses. That's not as bad as it sounds, since I'm not breeding or running a boarding business we don't need as much pasture.

When I was managing my barn, I spread the manure on the barest areas. Horses don't like grazing where there is manure, so that gave those parts a breather from being eaten to the roots. Of course, if you're not getting rain, fresh manure will burn the grass but it's not going to grow anyway. And you only want to do this if you have had a rigorous de-worming schedule so you are not re-infecting your horses.

We had close to a ten year drought during the 1990s and even put out sprinklers to keep the grass alive. The horses loved them and would stand under them on the days it was over 100 degrees. One year it was so bad we put a sprinkler hose down the middle of the dressage arena. The horses would go in a straight line because the cool water on their tummies made them feel better during their workouts.

The cheapest and most durable sprinklers are the impulse kind made from metal - I used to buy just the heads, screw a hose adapter on the bottom, them use hose clamps to fasten them to long pipes. Strap those pipes to a fence post and you can get a spread fifty feet across. Something like this: http://www.acehardware.com/product/index.jsp?productId=1278523&KPID=962164&kpid=962164&pla=pla_962164

Good luck with it - hopefully the rain will return soon!

[magical thyme]

7. I used to do my own mowing

I loved riding around on my little baby kubota with straw hat and cold drink. I sold it to pay for a semester of school. My hired mower (also used for tilling new areas and plowing) was reliable until last summer. (I'm also pissed at his plowing this past winter -- he did a crapload of damage.)

His bagging on me last summer was why I was out there with my scythe getting chased down and stung by yellow jackets when I accidentally scythed over their nest

The pastures were looking very good by the end of last summer; that's why it's such a shock to see them so bad this year.

[csziggy]

8. I loved the mowing, too, on my medium sized Massey Ferguson

Not really the mowing, but getting out there and scoping out ever inch of the pastures. But it had a stiff clutch and I wore the meniscus in my left knee out backing it in and out of a line of trees to clear the brush. The doctor told me no more tractor work in 2001.

It doesn't take long with bad weather conditions to give the weeds an advantage. They can take drought and heat and thrive while grass is struggling to grow at all and is being eaten to the roots by the horses.

Unfortunately, you're right - the only way to keep your pastures (unless you want to replant them) is to keep the horses off them. We had to do that with 25-30 horses and it was a nightmare. The only plus was that we got lots of manure to spread on the bare spots.

With just two of us running the farm it made it really hard to keep up with the work, especially with the heat. We'd be out there before dawn to get the stalls clean - and then my clients didn't think it was getting done because by the time they got out of their office jobs and came out to ride at dusk the stalls were dirty again. We'd pick them out again in the evening if we had time but it was hard to keep up with.

No wonder I can no longer do any of that work, thinking back on what I did when I was young!

[Kali]

5. can you string temporary electric and do a mini-rotation?

might help keep things cycling at least.

[magical thyme]

6. before Algiers died, I did rotate as part of my pasture management

I stopped with Dahli because she couldn't keep up with the grass anyway.

I have 4 rotations, each is about a hectare and normally is good for 2 horses for a week, so each mini-pasture gets 3 weeks off for re-growth. 3 pastures are separated by swales, which are already nearly dry. The 4th is the "trash" pasture and is a mix of high/dry and low/wet.

I'm looking at my bare nekkid trees right now and remembering that everything is weeks behind; it's really more like mid-April than mid-May.

Normally the black flies come on May 1. You could set your calendar by it. This year, I didn't see any until the evening of May 7. On May 8th there were enough that I had to get my fly mask and I got numerous bites. Yesterday they were finally normal, which is to say awful.

Yesterday we were possibly going to get thundershowers. We got some rumbling in the distance, but no showers. The air is so overhung I feel like I need gills, but no rain and no dew this morning because it's all in the dk grey sky.

My arena pasture looks pretty green throughout, but is only about 1/2" tall except along the edge by the swale where it's a lovely 6-8".

The 2 main pastures are about 2/3s brown from a distance, with the wet sides green but only 1/2-1" high. One has been getting greener over the last few days, and up close I can see the grasses coming in slooowly. The other has large patches with little to nothing growing that I can see.

My trash pasture is looking pretty green throughout, but the low part of it, which I *thought* was looking really, really good, turns out is growing inedible crap. That's ok, though. I was planning on starting them off lunging down in that area to tear it all up and then re-plant when they rotated out. Then when it looked like it was coming in with good grass, I started looking for a new plan. So now I'm back to the original plan.

Mostly I'm just frustrated. If I'd know it was going to be this bad, I could have had them out weeks ago and just trashed the little back pasture. Instead, we've just used up a lot of bedding. And now I can't turn them out because I'd limed that pasture ahead of predicted rain that never came.

But I've also gotten a crapload of work done that I wouldn't have otherwise. So I'm going to bite the bullet and give it one more week to finish off the cleanup and get the gardens ready for planting. Next week, I'll hose away whatever lime is still left on the trash pasture and get them out and going.

I don't see how it can be so grey out and not be raining. Just checked the forecast. The predicted 1/4" has been reduced to <1/10th". I'll be hosing the new grasses in the barn area again today...

[riderinthestorm]

9. Maintaining horse pastures is such a wretched task, I feel your pain

although here in N IL, we're incredibly lush at the moment with the spring rains and I'm mowing twice/week....

Burdocks are the bane of my paddocks and are a constant battle.

I HATE dragging hoses around to water them. I'm just not strong enough to drag hundreds of feet of heavy hose to shift them easily to new spots in the paddocks.

Have you thought of advertising on Craigslist for someone to mow? Or ask at your local feed store, farrier or vet? I get pretty much all of my help from friends of friends but there's almost always a few on CL looking for labor - hand scything grass isn't actually that hard as much as its time consuming and you may find a young strong back looking for work.

Kali's suggestion of portable electric fence tape is a good one if your horses are respectful of it - easy cheap rotation.

The past couple years' weather have forced us to change a few of our turnout routines (more horses out overnight in limestone lots, horses out by five am and everyone in by noon when the weather is too hot etc).

I too wonder if this is the new normal...

Hang in there!

[magical thyme]

10. I bought a new portable electric system 2 weeks ago

I'll be setting it up I think at the end of this week. Hopefully it'll work. It's been a few years since I bothered with my electric fencing...since Algier died I stopped worrying about rotation. It was a shock to discover the tiny little pine that I kept meaning to cut down some day as a little christmas tree is suddenly 10 or 12 feet tall and totally blocking my solar charger. I could have bought a plug-in charger since I have outdoor cables that I've run down from the garage. But I decided that I wanted to try the little portable setup -- that way I'll be able to subdivide my subdivisions to make certain that they eat the scary corner where a tree came down years ago and the one where Algiers saw a coyote come through He passed his fears on to Dahli, lol. Maizie isn't so easily influenced, she's just curious and fearless (except of Dahli. she fears Dahli).

I always manage to get myself soaked while dragging the hoses around. Luckily with just 2 acres of pasture, and 1/3 of it very low, there's not a lot to cover.

I ran out this morning and bought a new sprinkler system. It's working great. The dogs ran for their lives

Until I know what's happening job-wise, I'm planning on doing as much as possible myself. I suck at supervising anyway, and right now I have plenty of time. I just am having a hard time motivating myself this week. Yesterday was excrutiatingly hot and humid. Today is cool and humid. And the black flies are out in full force!