We created this small course of information to help you get started with your rotational/adaptive grazing program with your horses.

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Here we go…So how do you rotate horses on pasture successfully?

1. Start with thinking differently

In this section, we’ll focus on the key steps to start implementing rotational grazing principles successfully. My own perspective didn’t shift until I began grazing beef cattle properly. At some point, the lightbulb went off: these adaptive grazing methods could work just as well for horses.

Unfortunately, many horse owners are quick to dismiss rotational grazing with comments like, “This won’t work for us,” “It will cause founder,” or “My horse won’t eat that.” The truth is, horses are herbivores designed to eat not only grass but also legumes and forbs (commonly referred to as “weeds”).

The Role of Forbs in Nutrition

It’s surprising to learn that many plants labeled as “weeds” can provide up to 18% protein and are highly nutritious. With time, horses can learn to graze these plants and even enjoy them. While it’s important to ensure certain forbs aren’t toxic, not all are harmful. Allowing horses to graze on a diverse polyculture of grasses, legumes, and forbs ensures their nutritional needs are met naturally.

Just as children benefit from a variety of vegetables, horses thrive on a diverse diet. Forbs can be an excellent source of essential vitamins and minerals, supplementing their diet in ways a monoculture pasture—or a single type of hay—cannot.

The Problem with Monocultures

Relying on a single type of forage (like a monoculture hay field) makes it nearly impossible to meet all of a horse’s nutritional needs. This often leads to expensive feed supplementation, which could be avoided with a more diverse forage offering. By embracing rotational grazing and encouraging a variety of plants in your pastures, you can reduce reliance on external supplements while promoting better health and natural feeding behaviors.

Rotational grazing isn’t just about managing your land; it’s about returning to the fundamentals of what horses are naturally built to eat. Through thoughtful, adaptive practices, you’ll see your horses and pastures thrive together.

2. The benefits of rotational grazing: Not just to the animals but also to the land.

When bison and buffalo roamed the native plains of what is now the American "breadbasket," their presence shaped one of the most fertile landscapes in the world. These herds, stretching for miles across the tundra, grazed intensely while under pressure from predators like wolves and coyotes. This natural predator-prey dynamic kept the herbivores tightly packed and constantly moving, ensuring they grazed quickly and moved on to fresh grass.

In their wake, these animals left behind thick layers of manure, which enriched the soil and supported the regrowth of grasses, wildflowers, forbs, and a vibrant biodiversity of plants. This continuous cycle of grazing, fertilizing, and moving on repeated over millennia, creating some of the richest soils in the world—all thanks to herbivores and natural nutrient cycling.

Bringing the Cycle to Your Pastures

You can replicate this natural process through intentional grazing with your horses. As Joel Salatin aptly says, healthy topsoil builds itself when you allow it to "uppen"—letting organic matter accumulate and enrich the surface over time.

The Problem with Synthetic Fertilizers

Unlike the natural fertilization process created by grazing herbivores, synthetic fertilizers can be harmful to soil health. They disrupt the delicate balance of microflora, harm beneficial insects like earthworms, and alter the soil's pH, essentially "burning" life within the soil. Over time, this depletes the ecosystem rather than enriching it.

Harnessing the Power of Horses

When you allow your horses to graze intentionally, they fertilize your soil for free, mimicking the natural nutrient cycle. Additionally, incorporating carbon-rich organic waste from your equine operation—such as used shavings and old hay—can supercharge the biodiversity of your soil. This combination of natural grazing and organic waste creates a powerful system that builds healthy, fertile soil while supporting a diverse ecosystem.

With thoughtful management, your pastures can thrive, becoming a lush, sustainable landscape reminiscent of the great plains shaped by bison and buffalo.

3: Understand how grass grows

The equine industry has significantly driven advancements in the hay industry over the decades. Farmers are now under immense pressure to produce hay that is not only palatable but also highly nutritious, meeting the heightened demands of horse owners. However, while horse owners have contributed to the improvement of hay quality, they have largely neglected the crucial areas of pasture and soil management.

I believe this oversight stems primarily from the fact that much of the equine industry is subsidized by outside income, leading to a lack of emphasis on learning and applying effective land, soil, and grass management practices. Few horse farms are independently profitable, and there’s a pervasive sentiment in the industry that keeping horses is inherently a financial drain. Common remarks like, "I’ll just hand over my retirement when I get a horse," reflect this resignation. Many horse owners seem to accept high costs as inevitable, often feeling powerless to improve their land or overall management.

This mindset has stifled creativity and shifted the focus away from meeting horses’ natural needs. Horses are grazing herd animals by nature, yet modern practices often confine them in ways that negatively affect their behavior and well-being. I’ve observed this firsthand: while I use stalls during shows, the change in my horses’ mood and behavior is striking when they are confined versus when they are out on pasture. In the pasture, their demeanor improves significantly, emphasizing the importance of returning to practices that align with their natural instincts and needs.

As horse owners, we often indulge in the aesthetic ideal of straight-lined four-board fencing and lush, monoculture green pastures that we protect from so much as a hoofprint, let alone grazing. Instead of allowing our horses—the natural herbivores they are—to maintain our pastures, we focus on machinery: tractors, mowers, bush hogs, and all the accessories. But this mindset overlooks a crucial foundation of good pasture management: understanding how grass grows.

The "S-Curve" of Grass Growth

Joel Salatin explains that grass grows on an "S curve," with the y-axis representing growth and the x-axis representing time:

1. Baby Grass (Initial Growth):
   On the left of the curve, grass is in its early stage, often referred to as "baby grass." Whether it’s recovering from being grazed or just sprouting, this grass is low in nutrition and energy, as it hasn’t yet had time to develop.

2. Teenager Grass (Blaze of Growth):
   In the middle of the curve, grass hits its growth spurt. It’s actively pulling carbon from the air, undergoing rapid photosynthesis, and growing deep, strong roots. This is the phase where grass is most nutritious and ready for grazing.

3. Grandfather Grass (Plateau and Dormancy):
   On the far right, the grass slows down and matures. Growth plateaus, root systems stop expanding, and the plant begins to go dormant.

Optimal Grazing

The key to effective pasture management is grazing during the teenager grass phase, just before it plateaus. This ensures the grass has developed strong roots but hasn’t yet entered dormancy. Salatin's rule of thumb is simple:

“Prevent the herbivore from returning for a second bite. Move them before they can come back for a second bite.”

When grass is grazed too early (before it has recovered from the last grazing), its root systems are weakened, reducing its ability to regrow. Over time, shallow root systems result in weaker plants that struggle to access water during dry months. This is why many pastures fail to recover well: they’ve been overgrazed without sufficient recovery time.

Timing is Everything

Horse owners need to be patient when they see green shoots in their pastures. Grass must fully recover before being grazed again. Depending on factors like rainfall, climate, and previous grazing practices, this recovery period can range from 21 days to as long as 4 months.

Adaptive Grazing: A Smarter Approach

Effective pasture management requires an adaptive mindset. Horse owners must continuously assess their pastures and adapt to what the grass needs:

• Use tools like poly wire fencing to move horses off recently grazed areas and onto sections ready for pruning.

• Rotate grazing areas to allow pastures to recover and experience the "blaze of growth."

• Balance grazing intensity to ensure root systems remain strong and healthy.

By shifting from rigid, aesthetic-focused management to adaptive grazing practices, we can support healthier pastures, reduce costs, and provide better nutrition for our horses—all while respecting the natural cycles of the land.

4: Manage your paddock sizes

One of the first challenges you'll encounter when implementing rotational grazing is ensuring adequate access to shade and water for your animals. As you map out your paddocks, you might find that reaching your usual water source becomes difficult. Don’t let this discourage you—rotational grazing is worth the effort, and there are numerous innovative solutions to help you make it work. We frequently share these ideas on our blog to make the process easier.

Key Considerations

• Creativity is Essential: Think outside the box when designing your paddocks. Some areas may need to serve as "sacrifice" zones, where animals stay for a longer period to accommodate a central water and shade point.

• Adjust Based on Weather: In my system, certain shade and water points remain in use for up to 3-4 weeks. However, during periods of frequent rain, I move animals sooner to avoid parasite and fly build-up in these sacrifice areas.

• Reduced Parasite Burden: One major advantage of rotational grazing is a reduction in parasite exposure. By frequently moving animals away from soiled areas, you minimize their interaction with manure, decreasing the risk of infestation.

Tips for Success

The following suggestions are just starting points. What works for one farm might not work for another, so adapt these ideas to suit your needs:

1. Portable Water Systems: Use mobile water tanks or troughs that can be easily moved to different paddocks.

2. Shade Structures: Consider portable or natural shade solutions like trees, tarps, or moveable shade shelters.

3. Sacrifice Areas: Designate specific paddocks as temporary "sacrifice" areas where shade and water are centralized. Rotate animals out of these zones as soon as conditions allow.

Remember, no idea is a bad idea unless it doesn’t work for you. Flexibility and adaptability are the keys to making rotational grazing successful for your animals and your land.

Tips:

• Try to use trailers to keep things portable- We use a trailer as our feed and water tote and we have it stationed at the ‘sacrifice” area where we feed. It also holds things like medications, flysheets, extra posts, and polywire reels. This makes it very easy for water set up because it is a 250 gallon water tote that we fill up about every 3-4 days. Check out this video here of how I set up my feed trailer and stay portable.

• Design your paddock rotation around a tree, or along a line of trees. - The nice thing about poly wire and step in posts is that you can truly put your fences anywhere. If you need to create shade, just continue on a paddock through a group of trees. The horses will stomp down any brambles or bushes, which contributes disturbance to the land.

5. How to measure out paddocks

Determining the right paddock size for rotational grazing takes some trial and error, but don’t worry—this is a flexible process! One of the great things about rotational grazing is that if you make a mistake, you can adjust the size (larger or smaller) within 24 hours. The goal is to ensure your horses consume 50% of the available dry matter and leave the other 50%.

Calculating Paddock Sizes

There are various ways to calculate the appropriate paddock size, but one effective method is the Available Dry Matter Calculation. Dr. Allan Williams provides a simple yet effective explanation, which you can find here.

Common Challenges

When starting out, paddocks are often too large. If paddocks are oversized, horses will graze unevenly, leaving some areas overgrown and others overgrazed. Smaller paddocks encourage more uniform grazing, as the horses are closer together. While rotational grazing does bring horses closer, they generally don’t mind as long as they have space to spread out when not actively grazing.

A Time-Saving Routine

To streamline the process, I like to plan out a week’s worth of paddocks over the weekend. Here’s how I do it:

1. Plan the Main Layout:
   Map out the major paddock areas on a Saturday or Sunday. This gives you a clear plan for the week ahead.

2. Set Daily Fence Lines:
   Each day, simply move the temporary fence line to expose fresh grass while closing off the previously grazed area. This method keeps things efficient during the busy week.

For a detailed explanation, check out this video where I demonstrate how I set up my lines for the week.

By preparing ahead of time, you can save hours during the week while ensuring your horses are grazing efficiently and your pastures remain healthy.

6. Equipment you will need to get started

In order to be successful with adaptive grazing, there are some simple yet necessary tools to be successful.

1. Polywire- Polywire will be your bread and butter when rotating horses. You don’t have to use polywire, but it’s the easiest to roll/unroll and as long as horses can see it, they will respect it. Depending on how many herds you have,

   Tips:

   • Don’t get very thick poly tape because it just takes more reel to store it. It will sag as well

   • Use polywire that is conductive is recommended. The more conductive, the more effective the polywire will be at delivering the shock down the line as you get bigger paddocks.

   • Don’t put more than 660 feet or so on one reel. I have some reels with only 300 feet and then larger reels that hold 600 feet for the sides.

2. Polywire reel- I’ve been through several different types and you will need to assess for yourself

   • Hands free version - It has a strap for your neck so you can use your extra hand to pick up posts

   • Supa-reel- This is where the handle is interchangeable between reel to reel which can be nice if you keep all your reels the same brand.

   • Orange Cord Reel- This is my new favorite because it’s only $8 and it works perfectly with polywire. It’s easy to wrap up and roll line out. Again, it’s only $8 on amazon.

3. Step in Posts: There are multiple different options but we are still using primarily the white step in posts from tractor supply. Just know they get brittle and will break over time but if you take care of them, they can last.

   • Longer term we plan to buy 4 FT rebar posts and have insulators on the post which can withstand heat/col.

   • use a rubber mallet to pound the posts in the ground and you won’t break them as easily

4. Solar Charger- We have bought several Solar chargers and they all work, but the Gallagher S40 has held up the best. It delivers a decent shock and can handle the electrical requirements that our fences need.

   • Can also use a Speedrite 3000 fence energizer and two deep cycle marine batteries (one will always need to be charging) . *

   • For a grounding rod, you can use a simple rebar post and then just pound it into the ground with a post pounder or your rubber mallet.

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