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When winter begins to wind down and spring is right around the corner, many horse owners are excited to turn horses out on pasture. However, there are some potential problems to be aware of and precautions to take when transitioning horses to spring pasture.
Winter Turnout Options
Your spring transition will depend on whether your horse stayed out on pasture all winter or if it was confined to a dry lot or sacrifice lot.
In order to protect pastures and encourage rapid spring establishment, horse owners are encouraged to keep horses off pastures during the winter months. Horses are hard on pastures to begin with, but during the winter, forage plants are dormant and cannot recover from grazing. When soils are wet, horse hooves easily compact soil and damage plant root systems. When horses are kept on pastures all winter, the pastures take longer to recover in the spring.
However, keeping your horse in a stall all winter is not a good solution. Instead, it is recommended to use a sacrifice lot (also called a dry lot) for turnout during the winter months. This is a small area that is not intended to grow forage, but rather to keep horses off pasture when conditions are not ideal for grazing. Horses kept in these areas over winter will need to be gradually transitioned to the new spring grass when winter is over and pastures have recovered in the spring.
On the other hand, some farm owners cannot confine their horses over the winter and instead allow them to remain on pastures throughout the season. These horses will be gradually transitioned to the new grass as it grows in, and will not require horse owners to manage access to the same extent as those whose horses have been confined during the winter.
Why to Transition Gradually to Spring Pastures
Most horse owners are aware that horses should be transitioned slowly to any new feed source. The microbes that inhabit the horse’s digestive tract vary depending on what it is eating. When the diet changes, the microbial population must also change. A sudden feed change does not give the microbial population time to adjust and can cause colic or diarrhea. Therefore, we recommend changing to new feeds slowly over the course of a few weeks. Going from hay to spring pasture is no different.
Early spring pasture grasses also tend to be very high in non-structural carbohydrates (NSC) during spring growth, which can be a problem for certain horses. Non-structural carbohydrates include sugars, fructans, and starch. These carbohydrates are an important energy source for horses, but they can trigger laminitis for some horses with certain health conditions (such as laminitis, insulin dysregulation, Equine Metabolic Syndrome, and Cushing’s/PPID). If you have a horse with these health problems, you should consult with your veterinarian about whether your horse should be allowed to graze or if access to spring pastures should be limited.
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