 Thank you guys so much for joining us if it's your first time or rejoining us if you just took a little break from the winter series we're excited to be back here for the spring horse grazing management series with NDSU extension. My name is Mary Keena on the livestock environmental management specialist at the Carrington Research Extension Center, and you'll be hearing from me next week and in a couple weeks. Today we have with us Kevin Cervic who is our range specialist for NDSU extension he's also the director of the Central Grasslands Research Extension Center. So Kevin's going to go over horse grazing management with us today. We also have Rachel Wald. She's our egg and natural resource extension agent in McHenry County and Paige Brummond who is our egg and natural resource extension agent in Ward County. So those two are going to supplement some of the things that Kevin's talking about with some more boots on the ground kind of action that you can take. And with that, we will get rolling I'm going to turn it over to Kevin and, and we'll go ahead. This is Mary and it's it is nice to be back on this equine series. It's a bit of, I want to say it's been a nice day here at Central Grasslands which were near street or North Dakota, because we had a quarter inch of rain this morning. And so that in itself is a celebration of the day so we're going to talk about grazing management as it relates to horses and the truth is, it doesn't matter what species you're grazing grazing management is an encompassing concept that fits whether it's horses or cattle or sheep or whatever the difference is you know that horses tend to graze a little bit differently. But we'll kind of cover some concepts here and, and we'll get into some different topic areas as well. Some of the topics we've covered today is obviously a little bit of grazing management but we'll also cover some of the key species that you may find on your on your pastures and you know when it comes to horses we almost typically see common types of grasses in these horse pastures and so we'll talk about some of those grasses to give you a feel for nutritional quality palatability and how they may fit into your grazing program that we're going to hit some topics on management that relates to fertilizing will hit some toxic plants. Just so you get a feel for if you have these in your areas to look for and what to do in case you do have them. If you're looking to see down the pasture will talk about some seed mixes, where you can get that seed from. And then we'll end on this side of the story on on on that that how to manage those grasslands once you see them. Alright, so let's talk about types of grasses. Next, and we'll end with what kind of cover these we talked a little bit ago on fertilizing potential toxic plants or where to plant these grasses. Next, Rachel. So I'm going to start with probably the most common grass that we see in a lot of our pastures in North Dakota, especially horse pastures is smooth broamgrass. Some of you may actually have metal broamgrass in your mixes. The bro grasses are my favorite mixes to put in for horses because horses really like broamgrass, it stays palatable for them much of the season. So it's high quality. It's a nice grass that you can use whether you're grazing geldings mayors, even even mayors the falls on their side. And so it's commonly you'll see these pastures. It's also a common grass that we'll see in our ditches so if you're putting up ditch haze this also fits very well. Next. And this is just a picture of a mature broamgrass to your right and so make those of you to see these blowing in the wind in the ditches and your pastures it's a very broad headed plant. When it gets to this phase it tends to be a little less less palatable and lower in quality and so if you are putting a pay at these stages, especially if you have a lactating mare, or you have some sure horses that you're actually using quite a bit. You may need to supplement some protein with these feeds. Next. Another one we see common throughout North Dakota is Kentucky bluegrass this is true whether you're North Dakota South Dakota Minnesota, whether it was planted in a mix, or it's invaded your broamgrass fields. It's now become common in most of our pastures. It's a much lower growing plant, but it is very palatable horses really do like bluegrass, especially when it's green and lush and in the immature stage. In the ecology business we tend to look at this grass as an invader, because it tends to invade our native prairies, but in terms of horses this is a really good feed for horses. Like broamgrass when it becomes mature, it becomes a little less palatable and also loses the quality and so protein tends to be an issue when this grass starts to mature out. Next. Another thing I'm going to talk about is Crestia wheatgrass and this is more of a grass we see in the western Dakotas, eastern Montana, eastern Wyoming, very common in horse pastures, when I call West River. It does well in the drier climate so if you're in a precip zone of 14 inches or less we tend to go with the Crested over the broams. When horses do like it, when it's in the immature stage, they do not like it when it's in the stage we see in this picture here, it starts to head out. And so in this phase we tend to see a lot of it put up for hay versus grazing and almost always is used in cattle feed. And so we call it a wolf plant at this stage and it's just because it has a poor palatability for horses. Next. What I have here is quack grass and I did lump intermediate wheatgrass in this mix we'll call them the wheat grasses on the average horses. Like wheatgrass but they don't really, you know, prefer it over a bromagross or over a bluegrass. Most of our wheat grasses are typically seen in hay mixes. Especially if you do a CRP mix or you're doing a CD mix for horses, you'll see the intermediate wheatgrass and slender wheatgrass put in this mix. Where you have invaded pastures if you have a bromagross field or a bluegrass field, that's a little bit salty. They tend to get invaded with quack grass, which I have in this picture here is quack grass. Horses absolutely love quack grass in this phase, and it's a very good high quality feed. When it enters out, it tends to become less palatable, and you'll get some issues in the next slide, Rachel. You'll see the picture here of quack where it can get a little bit coarse. So the last one we really have and you'll see this more in the western half of the Dakotas is native pasture. When we get east, most of our pastures have been seeded for horses. So if you're in eastern Dakotas, Minnesota, Iowa, you almost always will see a seeded pasture. This is an eastern part of the state, so we'll see native pasture used for horses. It's a very good, high quality feed. It provides year-round grazing because of the mixes of species in an integrated grass mix, and they're also very palatable. They tend to be a little bit lower in production compared to what I call an introduced or improved species like a metal brome or an intermediate wheatgrass, but they tend to retain quality better later in the season. So you can put these in about any different soil type and get your mixes to fit very well. Next slide, please. The nice thing about native range is it is actually the most aesthetic value. Whenever you see the pictures of horses, you're riding a horse across rangelands, it's always a very scenic area. And one of our speakers today, Paige, has some beautiful country up north of Mina where she gets a chance to ride, and she's actually on rangeland. So it gives you an aesthetic value that you can use to enjoy your horse on rangelands besides just a feed base. So next. So one of the management scenarios you can do to improve the tonnage of your forges on those pastures is fertilizing. And so whether you have a crested or a brome field or even an orchard grass field. If you call it from Iowa and you got a Timothy field, they will always be deficient of fertility. Once they get to be about three to five years of age. And so we highly recommend fertilizing these stands to one, keep them healthy and vigorous, but to also increase the tonnage on these stands this is a picture of a typical bluegrass stand that's fertilized in the top, unfertilized in the bottom. And you can see there's quite a difference and there's not like greenness, but you'll see a difference in color. You'll see a difference in quality when you fertilize these fields, they tend to be higher in quality as well. Next slide. And so this is actually a bromagra field taken in South Dakota, you can see the strips, the test strip on the right is fertilized. The control is not fertilized. So you can see how it grows much more aggressively after a fertilizer program, you get a greener color. And so on the average, we tend to produce about 50% more biomass when you fertilize versus not fertilize. And if you haven't fertilized in over five years or more, you can tend to double your production by the second year of fertilizing. So it's just a great practice to increase your quality and tonnage on that hay field or on that grazing field. Next. So when we look at fertilizing, these are some examples, Rod, put fertilizer down this. Brome, crested wheatgrass, intermediate wheatgrass, Timothy, orchard grass, any pasture that's been seeded will not have that symbiotic relationship as we say with the soil microbes and lack what's called a fast nutrient soil flow. Do not fertilize native pastures. Native pastures do not become deficient of nitrogen because of the microbial populations with the native pastures. If you fertilize native pastures, they will change and shift to mainly in our country of bluegrass pasture. So only on these improved pastures. So, and so you can see where the benefit will be in terms of production and quality. Next. So what, what to fertilize with and you can go next Rachel so the most common fertilizer will use is nitrogen. If you go to a sales person and they and you tell me what about fertilizer for your pasture, they're going to try and sell you nitrogen phosphorus and potassium. The only one that actually adds tonnage or production is nitrogen. And so it is the only one that I ever recommend on domestic pastures. If you're in K, you won't be able to pay for it in terms of tonnage, but you might pay for it in terms of different mineral contents within the grasses. But for me, nitrogen is your limiting factor in the western half of the Dakotas, even in the Montana Wyoming we do about 40 to 60 pounds per acre of actual nitrogen. And after you do it back to back years we do it every other year in the eastern Dakotas and in Minnesota and Iowa, we go about 60 to 80 pounds of nitrogen that's actual nitrogen. Every for the first two years and once you get into a program it's every other year. Next. And so when do you fertilize, we are really reaching probably what I call the end time of fertilizing in the northern plains so late April to mid May is preferred and if you give if I gave you the option I would tell you to fertilize as early as possible. So you can do it during cooler climates, and when the moisture is there to give that benefit. The most common fertilizer we use is urea. It is straight nitrogen so it's 46% nitrogen so 100 pounds of urea will have 46 pounds of nitrogen. So we typically will top dress this on a pasture so the picture you'll see to your right just shows you a spreader that spreading fertilizer and you can see the white little molecule or parts of that fertilizer on the ground. And these need about a quarter inch of moisture to get them to dissolve and put into the soil. Once in the soil, you start to see the activity from that benefit. Next. So we're going to talk about the timing so if you do fertilize. Now let's say we get into mid manor fertilizer and it's above 70 degrees. It will volatilize out. So you want to reduce that impact of volatilization so try and do it when it's cooler climates. Thanks. Next. So, let's talk about weeds and it's rarely, I get a chance to go into a horse pasture where there's not some weeds in those pastures and so one of the more common ones you'll see throughout the Dakotas in Minnesota is horseweed and this is an annual weed that we'll see and annuals tend to be a problem when you overgraze your pastures. Next. This is a common, I think give you the flower here but this is dandelion. We see dandelion common in a lot of our horse pastures, especially in the eastern half of the Dakotas into Minnesota. On the average I don't worry about it until it becomes a visually, you know, a quarter of the stand and then I'm going to look at a herbicide treatment to control the dandelions. Next. So this is a very young Canada thistle and I'll give the next picture to Rachel. Canada thistle is common in a lot of our horse pastures. Another one you'll see is absent wormwood. Whenever you see noxious weeds like these coming in. That tells me that the pasture's probably been a history of overgrazing so that niche is now there in the soil profile to capture those seeds and to get some invasion from these weeds. Next. I'm going to talk about toxic weeds and I'm going to focus primarily on the trees today. Next. And so I did a story on toxic toxicity in horses on tree and trees about three months ago, and probably the most common one we see are the maple trees, whether it's a box elder tree and actual maple, the leaves are toxic to horses. They have to consume a fair amount of it to have issues, but it takes about a three pounds of ingestion per thousand pounds of weight can be deadly in horses. So if you do have trees that border your fences or border your pastures and something you need to think about when these trees are when these leaves are to fall off the leaves, or if you're getting too many in there and other horses consuming it. On the average they will not eat many leaves if there's plenty of grass in those pastures. You tend to see severe anemia, depression and increased breathing with maple toxicity. In my career I've seen two of this happen where the horses actually died from maple tree toxicity. Next slide. And so another one we'll see, especially if you have trees within your area like a tree grow is choke cherries. We all like to go get choke cherries and make some choke cherry jam, but choke cherries can be very toxic to horses and in fact they're toxic to almost all classes of livestock, especially when the leaves are stressed or wilted. The bark can be somewhat toxic, but it's primarily the leaves. And what you have here is cyanide toxicity, which is very deadly to any animal as well as humans. Next slide. So this is a picture of the flowers of choke cherry. Next. And then some of the symptoms you'll look at with death. For death usually occurs as flared nostrils. So you'll see them, they'll be breathing hard. Almost like if you're familiar with heaves and horses, you'll see similar that flaring of the nostrils with choke cherry toxicity. So they're labored in breathing lack of coordination and then trembling and agitation. So this is something to look for and you need to get them off these, if these are problems. Other toxic plants that we'll see that are not palatable to horses, but you'll hear instance where horses become sick from these plants. So horse tail. Rachel will show horse tail first. And then we'll look at probably one that gets the most talk about is local weed. Next. Oh, there's no pictures. So local weed is one that get it. It's one of the broadleafs that horses tend to you have individuals that will pick it out. And they call it local weed because it affects the nerve system that's attached to their eyes. And so everything looks big to them. So they tend to tend to run around and they're going to local. So it's a common one you will see milk weeds are very common in the northern plains. And you'll see horses pick on the leaves on this one, but normally they won't eat it. If you're in the western Dakotas, even in the Minnesota we have oak trees, both the acorns and the leaves can be toxic late in the season. If the grass is not short, you typically will not have a problem. And then poison hemlock and ragwarts are also can be common very deadly, but oftentimes you rarely ever consumed next. And so we also have nitrate accumulators. And these are basically plants that have nitrates in them that have horses consume it can have an effect on nitrate toxicity levels. Horses tend to not die from nitrate toxicity, but they'll run a very high fever. And then you got to get a hold of that and take care of that situation before they do die. I've seen nitrate toxicity in horses a couple times. They almost always run a high fever. Death can follow, but it is pretty rare. And so common plants that you'll see is Kosha Russian thistle in lamb's quarter. These are common in pastures that tend to be overgrazed. And you can see the story I'm coming with here. Keep your pastures healthy. And usually annuals and toxic plants are not an issue. If you start to get areas of overgrazing, these annuals will come in. And then you have the issues. Next. So the last thing I want to talk about, and obviously it'll be here for questions, but is you're looking to seed a new pasture, or let's say you have a pasture that's got some bare ground in it and you want to oversee that pasture. There are some options you can look at. Where do you get seed? You know, for me, in North Dakota in particular, I usually call my local dealer. I'll call into the local town if I'm living near New Rockford, I'll call my dealer in New Rockford, or I could call anywhere you want that sells seed and they'll find most of these seeds for you. There's also larger seed companies in the Dakotas. South Dakota, my example here is just Agassi seed, but there's a number of companies that have access to my seed. So let's go to the next slide. And we'll talk about what I call are my favorite mixes for horses. Probably my favorite grass, especially in North Dakota, is metal brome grass. And especially metal brome with a little bit of alfalfa in that stand, which then keeps the nitrogen flowing in that plant, is a very nice quality feed for horses, whether you graze it or hey it. As we get into the South part of the state, into Minnesota, you'll see orchard grass also commonly used. I don't recommend orchard grass in most North Dakota because it winter kills out. But if you're in South Dakota or Minnesota, especially Southern half, orchard grass can replace metal brome. The beauty of both those species is they regrow really well. So in a grazing system where you rotate, you can get good grazing use, get regrowth and come back and graze that plant. My second choice is the intermediate wheat grasses or pavescent wheat grass mixes. They're not quite as palatable as the metal brome, but they do very well in our climate, even in our drier climates. And they put it right. When you get to that boot stage, they also make really good hay. The trick is you got to get it up before you go to seed or the quality or the palatability really drops. And that's true if you're grazing it as well. And the last one, if you're in the Western Dakotas and into Montana, you know, across your wheat grass, alfalfa mix is a really good option for horses. And I do like alfalfa because for the most part, horses don't blow. But if you had about 10 to 20% of the stand alfalfa and like any of the other animals, they almost always pick the grass over the alfalfa when they're grazing. It gives you a way to keep nitrogen flowing in that system. And so it's a nice mix for horses. Next. And so the best time to see these mixes is right now. If you need to do any kind of seeding early April to late May is that window of opportunity. I like to put my seed in right about now or end of April, early May. I know this year has been pretty dry. So timing will be more critical and hitting the range when you put it in. So you can time that with the future rain events to do that. The second best time period is a dormant seeding or we call it dormant seeding. And that's mid October to early November. You basically want to seed it, but you don't want to germinate in the fall. And you want to germinate the following spring. That's why it's called a dormant seeding. It's very successful and almost as good as the spring seedings. It's just a matter of when you can get it in. Next. And so let's talk about this overseeding. And even I have done this in my pastures is I've overseeded when I get my pastures are about 25 years of age. So I'm seeing some age issue with my grasses. So I'm going to go in there on the bare spots and broadcast it in and then I'll drag it in. If you get drilled in, it's even better. But it's an option you can do to kind of get more production out of it. If over grazing is your primary reason, you're going to have to still drop back on that grazing pressure, especially if you want to seed it and get some growth before you put the horses in. If you need about, you know, I would say about four months of growth for that grass, get enough root structure so it can withstand the grazing pressure. And putting on your pastures, I like to seed a like species. So if you have a brome grass field seed with brome, you have a crested field seed with crested, you don't want to seed a brome in the crested, because the horses are going to always pick the brome and the crested will get seeded, so seed what's in that mix. And the preferred technique is drilling it in versus broadcasting. If you do have access to broadcast and you can drag it in, that is another option, especially when it comes to over seeding. Next slide. That's the end of my talk. And so I think we're going to turn it over to, I believe it's not in terms of it's Rachel or Paige, but I'll be on for the rest of the session and we can take any questions at the end. A lot of what Kevin talked about actually coincides with grazing strategies and grazing ideas. So with the season that we have this year, we're actually not, you know, we're looking more into the limiting term out time or rotational grazing instead of continuous grazing because of the fact that there's no short on moisture that the ability of those blocks or those pastures to come back after some pretty hard continuous grazing is going to be a lot harder because we don't have the moisture to bring back those grasses. We also noticed just a slight discussion on this because we're going to talk about drought next week, but we did also notice that there are some delay in these grasses as well. So we really want to watch that before we turn out to pasture. And again, we'll talk more on that next week. But this is a good picture to show so that you know you have a sacrifice area with water or shelter, a place that you can feed your grains or supplement or dry hay and then hopefully be able to rotate them through the pasture so that you can, you're able to keep pressure off of one area more than the other. So this is just kind of a good idea for grazing strategies so again that rotational grazing meaning that you'll go from pasture one to pasture two to pasture three to pasture four throughout the season. turnout time to your critters maybe keeping them in at night after they've had a little bit of supplemental grain or possibly a little bit extra hay to make sure that they're not putting too much pressure on that pasture. So with the rotational grazing you want to take into thought the number of paddocks that you have available to you and how many days with how many horses you're going to be putting in there. So those are some things we really want you to look at especially with the situation that we're in this year. Grass is going to be a hot commodity this year so if you're able or you have any or you're able to graze on this is one thing to really watch to make sure that you do not overgraze those paddocks or or different locks that you have set up for your horses. This is just kind of a rule of thumb so if you have two paddocks in the spring you turn out to one that's that's appropriately the appropriate height for grazing then you're you're looking at maybe 14 days of grazing with 14 days of rest so and then it changes throughout the summer because in the spring you're going to have your full season grasses that are that are coming up and that's what your horses are going to graze on. In the summer you're getting your warm seasons or your later for a year later cool into your warm season grasses and then in the fall it is your warm-saving grasses too so making sure that these are able to come back for fall grazing or you know keeping that pasture available so that fall grazing is a possibility for you. So it all just depends on how many how many pastures you have available how many horses are going to be going into that so this is all part of what what you'll need to watch for rotational grazing this summer. I'm going to just lightly touch on some of the weed management for pastures Kevin did talk about you know how a lot of a lot of pastures that are overgrazed you're going to see more weeds in them and this is this is something that that is really needs to be watched as well as it's weed management is basically whole pasture management so starting with whole pasture management is going to help with any weeds that you get and then there's there's several ways to control them the three main ways that we're going to talk about is is cultural chemical or mechanical so there's not not a ton of cultural methods but chemical or spraying is is one of them and then mechanical is the other so mowing them down instead of spraying them could be an option for you especially if you have smaller pastures or maybe don't want to spray because you're not able to if they're the horses are in there we don't recommend spraying while any animals are in there and then also calling the label on any chemical that you utilize on the first thing you want to do to make sure that you get proper control of any weeds is to ID those weeds so knowing what you're you're up against knowing what you're handling is going to help in a go a long way when you're talking about possibly either chemical control or mechanical control because then you know you know when the best time to mow is when the seed head comes um when the best time to spray is and when you're going to get the best control for it so those are the things that we really want um want to look at because when you have kind of an overall control or overall um management of your pasture your grass is going to grow well enough to outcompete those weeds so making sure that you're taking care of the weeds that you have so that your grass can you know help you with the control of those weeds in the future so making sure you know weed management starts with pasture management and then Kevin also talked about uh fertilizing your pastures we did want to mention a little bit there is a possibility of you know you can do some soil testing on that pasture to see how much nitrogen you may want to put down um and then he also mentioned you know you don't usually want to put down any phosphorus for potassium but when you're doing soil testing we then can see how much is there which is good like he said for the nutrients in the plant or the the minerals in the plant so that's good to know as well um pH and organic matter is also good to know especially if you're needing to oversee on anything you're able to know kind of what seeds would be able to be put down um with the pH levels that you have there usually when you soil test you go to a depth of six inches um and you don't want to just test in one spot you want to you want to test the whole field and you can collect samples kind of in a zigzag pattern using a spade um and adding you know six inches of dirt into the into a bucket mixing it all up and then putting it into a bag um like there is on the right hand side I do have one right here too um and we do send that off to the NDSU soils lab so that's that's normally what you get back is the nitrogen phosphorus potassium pH and organic matter um usually you can can do soil testing about every three years so it's not an every year sort of thing um and Kevin had mentioned to you know you're not going to fertilize every year once you get into it it's going to be either every other year or every two years or every every third year sorry um so you just want to make sure that that's kind of kind of how you're going if you do have um different areas of a pasture so a high area and maybe a low area I would suggest soil sampling those separately so your low area and your high area would be two different samples so you'd end up putting in um two different areas so that you know you know kind of what's going into both of those and next I'm going to actually turn it over to Paige. All right so let's talk about when to initiate and see grazing a lot of people decide when to turn out just based on the calendar and that's not the best method as it's going to vary year to year depending upon the weather conditions and then also what part of the state you're at and what species you have in your pasture. One of the recommended ways to determine when to start grazing is by leaf growth stage is the most accurate for most of our species and and the majority of them you know as a general rule of thumb we're going to say three to three and a half leaf stages when you want to start so this picture on the left we have one full leaf two full leaf three full leaf so this picture on the left is a three leaf stage the one on the right is that three and a half leaves three full leaves and then this fourth one is just about halfway um out so that would be the recommendation that you can use in your own pastures. Some people really like to go by height of the pasture as well and that doesn't consider species differences so there are some recommendations that you'll find out there from different um universities and grazing management publications that'll say you know start when grazing when the grass is six to eight inches tall. If you're in an area where you have a majority of grass species in your pasture that don't ever get that tall even in a high moisture year that's not going to work for you um so you really kind of need to know what what species you're dealing with but if you're going by the the height method and that's a lot of our cool season grasses that follow um those recommendations in in some publications you want to stop when the majority of grasses are about four inches tall. That's also an issue too when we hear people say take half and leave half and that is a good recommendation but we want to think of that by the volume of the plant or the weight of the plant and not just the height because again some of our grass species don't get very tall but they may have a lot of leaves at the base of the plant so the idea is is that you're taking half of the plant and leaving half. We do have more information on that in another publication. So the detriment of grazing too early is that you're going to reduce plant bigger it reduces the amount of plant leaf surface or leaf tissue area that's needed for photosynthesis and growth so you're going to end up with weaker plants thinner stands lower total forage production and increased risk of those disease pressures or weed pressure along with disease and potentially some insects. So that all comes back to what Rachel's talking about for grazing management grazing too early and overgrazing a result in these issues and it can take several years to regain productivity. On the flip side of this you can also graze too late Kevin mentioned especially on plants that are unpalatable once they head out and reach maturity like crested wheat grass if you wait until the plant is headed out the horses aren't going to eat them and they're going to end up wasting that grass. So here's a visual for overgrazing when we say take half and leave half let's look at what that could mean so if we remove 50 percent of the volume of the leaf the percent of growth growth stoppage is two to four percent so just a small amount but as we increase removing 70 percent of the volume of the leaves you stop or reduce that root growth by almost 80 percent and if we remove 80 percent of the leaf volume you completely stop root growth. Okay so that's some of the underground things so sometimes we just look at what's growing above ground and what's happening with the forage production that way we have to keep in mind that their root growth is also very important for your plant figure. Next thing we're going to talk about is transitioning your horses to spring grasses we have an issue with some horses and sometimes we forget that this can be an issue when they go from eating a dry forage that is maybe a little bit lower in non-structural carb rate, carbohydrate production and we suddenly turn them out onto a lush green grass pasture like we have in the picture here that sudden change can cause hindgut destruction meaning that normally the nutrients that are absorbed in the small intestine get bypassed into the cecum and can cause some issues in horses primarily they'll start with symptoms that are similar to colic maybe some diarrhea and gas and if we don't manage that or back them off of this new change in diet and higher levels of our non-structural carbohydrates it can continue to cause issues to drop the pH and result in some laminitis problems so the key thing to remember here is to adapt your horses to spring grass slowly so say right now if they're on a full hay diet in a dry lot while you're letting your pasture grow and reach the appropriate stage before you turn them out when the grass is ready to graze start by letting them graze that 15 to 30 minutes a day at a time and increase that each day until they're grazing and out on grass for more than four hours a day at that time you're usually safe to consider or safe to let them graze the entire time or stay out on pasture the entire time that allows the microbes to adapt you want to monitor your horses closely if they have any of the symptoms that we talked about remove them from grass and certainly consult with your veterinarian if the symptoms are severe here's a couple methods for managing higher risk horses so our insulin resistant horses horses that have been diagnosed with cushions or horses that are obese can use grazing mussels try to avoid grazing in sunny afternoons you can consider turning them out just overnight after they've been adapted to that spring grass even at the lowest non-structural carbohydrate levels in the early morning hours can still exceed the recommended intake for some of these at-risk horses so again you want to work with your veterinarian to come up with a good strategy and realize that all horses are at risk but some of our horses are even more at risk so that's all I have for you today I'm going to go ahead and turn the floor back over to Mary and she's going to finish out the webinar okay so are there questions this is the time when you guys can unmute and ask questions and we can actually Rachel if you want to send it back to just the gallery view then people can go ahead and unmute and ask some questions we did have some stuff rolling through the chat so while you're thinking your question Veronica had asked about horses being treated after eating red maple tree or other toxic plants and Kevin just went ahead and answered that if that is a potential to call your vet they can possibly treat with activated charcoal or mineral via stomach tube and so calling the vet in the case of emergency is always good other thoughts or questions okay Mindy says can we fertilize with manure that is one or two years old if so when's the best time to do that so I am going to see what Kevin has to say about this just from a grass standpoint even though I'm the manure person so I'm going to let Kevin take a shot at this and then I will follow up well I'll say you know spreading manure on tame grass pastures is a technique to add fertility and and Mary will tell the details on this but it does add nitrogen into the profile as well as p and k and so it is one of those that you can use and you can you can really spread fertilizer any any time but the best time and I'll let Mary cover that is you do get a benefit from that manure now Mary can tell you when and how much so yeah we we like to soil sample to tell us the how much and the when I would just say so Kevin had talked about you know using urea or using a nitrogen that's going to be really readily available manure is less readily available it takes a little more time especially a horse manure horse manure is very neutral in how the the nutrients are mineralized so it's not so there's like a liquid manure would have more of the properties of right now nitrogen whereas horse manure it just takes a little more time and so that is I I wouldn't recommend it if you're going to say we want to spread it right now and have beautiful green pastures probably going to go with Kevin's recommendation from earlier but if you're thinking I have all this manure and I want to spread it I compost it I want to spread it I want to spread it raw absolutely spread it it is for fertility just keeping in mind when you're going to do that and so probably I would recommend doing it in the fall so it has time to mineralize and then by spring we should see some benefits from that. Well a great question Paul up there I don't know the answer to this but maybe Paige does obviously horse manure can carry parasites is there a time period when that when you get less live parasites in terms of age of manure? Well this one back at Mary too and making sure that if you're applying manure that it's correctly composted and heated to the appropriate levels to interrupt the life cycle of those parasites. What was the follow-up question? I'm sorry. I don't know if you've had any specifics on you know what temperature the pile needs to reach in order to make sure that we're killing those parasites through all of its life stages. Okay yep so we want it between 130 and 150 is a really good good place to have that so we're going to be killing weed seeds pathogens all of that stuff between those temperatures we're still having some composting action happen under that 130 I mean if you stick your hand in there you're like wow this is pretty warm so there is some action happening but if you want that actual pathogen and weed seed kill we're going to want to make sure that we are under the are between the 130 and 150 we don't necessarily want to go over that either because that's where we then kind of kill everything we just kill the entire process and so that's more of what happens in stockpiling we have one really great heat cycle and then it stops so that is what I say there and it looks like Brooks has a question are there any forages that are better for a horse that has foundered? From a grass standpoint I think this is hard to manage because the nutritional values of grass has changed so quickly throughout the grazing season that I believe the recommendation for horses that have foundered or at high risk for foundering again is to manage their diet a little bit more closely with forages that have been tested so you know I would definitely work with the vet because it's going to depend on the risk level of that particular horse you do see some horses that have just a mild risk of foundering or mild laminated case that you know they can graze for a short period of time with a grazing muzzle and they're fulfilling their nutritional needs with a balanced dry forage on the other hours of the day so it's going to really be an individualized case and if anybody's wondering why Rachel is sharing this again I just asked her to this is a new reporting that we have to do and so if you want to scan that QR code or I put the link in the chat if you want to do that you're more than welcome to just some demographics age race ethnicity questions are there other questions relating to and so under management we're going to go into just a little bit next week we're going to touch on and then we're going to have an entire hour of it in two weeks and so certainly if you have questions and you didn't put them in the registration when you registered you can register again and type it in or you can just send it to me when I send you the the link for where we're putting this recording you can just send a question back if you have something specific you'd really like me to cover in the mineral talk and next week we're focusing on drought management which is a very pertinent and timely topic for the entire state of North Dakota this year yes and so that's where we'll learn more about feeding during the drought and grazing during the drought a little bit of dry lotting and winter management during drought and so all things that you're wondering about and again if you have questions specific to that that you may not have answered are asked you can send those to me too okay I think with that we will be done for the day so thanks guys for participating and we'll see you next week