March grazing

We got some more electric fencing at the weekend and the field BG is in is now split into three sections. There is the section she was on for the whole of February, which has hedges on three sides for shelter. The middle section has a hedge at the top and bottom so not a lot of shelter, but this section is the one her field shelter is in. Lastly there is a section with hedge top and bottom and the perimeter fence. This section doesn’t have much shelter but, since it is the muddiest section of the field, I don’t intend to use it for a good few months. I might even leave it to recover for winter grazing.

I am trying to preserve the fields but ensure BG has enough to eat. I can’t wait till the spring grass starts coming through, then I’ll probably complain there is too much grass. The sections can then be split down further, and hopefully I can rest some of the field enough to have a decent amount of grass in winter. The main thing I need to ensure is BG has plenty of access to shelter, especially in the hot months which is about the only time she uses her shelter for shade and to escape the flies.

Having had a month on the far strip of the field we moved her onto the middle strip on Saturday night. I was quite excited when BG seemed to find lots of bits of grass to snip off with her teeth – there is grass after all! I thought I could cut back on hay and would need to start managing her weight more, but after a couple of days she doesn’t seem as excited by the new grass, she must have eaten all the tasty bits. Although she will head off to graze when we leave rather than stand watching us expectantly I do wonder how much grass there is there for her.

The spring grass might not be coming through properly yet but there are signs of spring – the first few strands of BG’s winter coat is starting to come loose from her neck. She’ll be loosing all her winter coat in the next few months.

We weight-taped her on Sunday and I think we got it very wrong. I would have expected her to be in the 420-430kg range, last time we did it she had dropped a bit to 417kg. The weight-tape read 387kg! In summer when she is perfect weight she is 400kg and you can feel her ribs. Sunday there was no chance of feeling her ribs, they were nicely covered and not just by her winter coat. I think we got the weight-tape position wrong, she wasn’t stood square which she should be, although I don’t worry too much about that since I use the tape as a guide only. I can’t feel her ribs and you can still see a belly on her so I think she is doing fine weight wise.

I picked out BG’s hooves last night, I hadn’t done it for a while. I’m not as religious about it as some people. She isn’t shod and her hooves do tend to keep themselves reasonably clean, if they do get anything in them it is mud and not stones. At the moment I will take out the mud and then she’ll go straight back out in the field and they get fill again, hence why I don’t bother all the time. Often the mud drops out itself when it dries a bit and you find big hoof shaped lumps of mud in the field. I picked them out last night so they would stay clean for at least the duration of her staying in the shelter to eat her hay net.

She was funny about having them picked out again. She sprung her front hooves up in the air so fast she almost kicked her belly. The back hooves she tucked under herself and didn’t want to stretch back, when I asked her to she went to put them down again, and she moved about to avoid me being able to take hold of them. I don’t know what that was all about.

After a battle to get them all picked out I went round once more just to hold them up and she was better about that. I did them again this morning with my husband holding her. She was better again, much more like her usual self. I just need to do them a bit more regularly I think so we can tackle any issues she has with it before the farrier is due in a few weeks.

So BG is on her March grazing now and has settled into that section of the field. The second night she was in there she was a little un-nerved and could hear something in one of the hedgerows. She took a mouth-full of hay then shot out her shelter, and didn’t really settle after that. We did a full search by torch-light and couldn’t see anything, but she obviously had her senses heightened by something that day. She may get another horse in the field next door in April, that might be nice for her as a bit of company, even though they won’t be in together. It might make her settle more when there is something around as there will be someone else to be on the look-out for danger too.