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  Discussion on New horse pasture for fatties
Author Message
Member:
scooter

Posted on Wednesday, Sep 16, 2009 - 10:02 pm:

Dr.O. my horse pasture got ripped up on one side and I have reseeded it with a regional pasture grass mix.

29% climax timothy
19% park kentucky bluegrass
14% spring green festulolium
14% italian rye
11% annual rye grass
7% potmac orchardgrass

We have a bunch of ground "ripped up" so we harrowed it and made nice seed beds. Hubby decided to drill in the rest of the pastures with winter rye and alfalfa to avoid erosion before the grass was up good. The winter rye was up in 3 days! and the alfalfa is coming in well too.

The horse pasture was NOT suppose to get any of the winter rye grain or alfalfa. I see tho that there is winter rye coming up in the horse pasture...no alfalfa, so I'm not sure what happened when he was drilling this that the winter rye got in the horse pasture.

I asked hubby if it would grow back, next spring after it seeds out this winter...he said if we didn't mow the seed heads it would

I don't see being able to mow the seed heads off without ruining my grass that is just barely starting. Winter Rye is soo beautiful and green come spring I can only imagine it is a founder waiting to happen with the fat pigs. Do you know anything about winter rye grain and horses? Just the sound of it screams high carb I can't find much info on it

Thanks
Moderator:
DrO

Posted on Thursday, Sep 17, 2009 - 8:28 am:

Hello DianE,
Most of the world refers to winter ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum) as Italian Ryegrass so you may have more luck using either the genus and species or the more commonly used name in your research.

Having used winter ryegrass whenever I establish new pasture as a cover my personal experience has been good with horses grazing it and as a spring cut hay.

However the literature is not so encouraging. It repeated states that during the early growth stages (before seeding out) annual rye grasses are high in nonstructural carbohydrates and the majority of the NSC's being fructans. This would make it a bad choice for spring founder prone horses at least during the actively growing stages. Following seeding out the NSC fall rapidly to a low level and should be fine. As I have already noted I have never had problems with it.
DrO
Member:
scooter

Posted on Thursday, Sep 17, 2009 - 8:34 pm:

Thanks Dr.O. I'm sure it will be headed out before that pasture is established enough to graze next year. It IS a very good cover crop, I can't believe how fast that stuff came up.
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