[Janet]

I have large pastures and paddocks and enough to do pasture rotation, so, no I don't do either.

Same here.

[Janet]

...mine are only on the grass for a maximum of 5 hours to maintain the grass.

Are you aware of the MARE studies, which show that horses turned out on pasture for 4 hours a day eat the same amount of grass as horses turned out 24 hours a day? The 4 hour horse eat it "all at once" and the 24 hour horses spread it out.

So your grass would probably be the same witjh 24 hour turnout as with 5 hour turn out. It is only when they are out for LESS than 4 yours that there is a reduction in the amount of grass eaten.

[CDE Driver]

Mine come in at night to one acre paddocks with shelters, we pick those daily.

They go out during the day to a 30 acre pasture, we harrow that.

[UrbanHennery]

I pick my gravel paddock daily. I've got three 2/3 acre pastures that I rotate depending on time of year. I don't pick those except for the alley that leads to them. We've never had more than two equines here at a time, most of which pick a "bathroom" spot in each pasture and use it pretty consistently. Piles get broken up by the bush hog when I mow during grass season. Fecals have been consistently clean for the past 3 years.

[EquineJunky]

I posted this because my MIL (who rides with me and helps me clean up after the horses on the weekend) is voting that we stop picking and start dragging. She thinks I'm the only person in the world (ok well...so I'm exaggerating ) that picks the poop out of pastures (dry lots/etc. are different). She says it's getting harder for her to traipse up and down our sloped pastures to pick it up. I think she's ready to push hubby for chickens now...ROFL.

[buck22]

I have 2 on 2 acres and I like to pick. I love the compost for my gardens and I love spreading the black gold on the paddocks. Grass was lush enough this year that I was feeding just a few lbs of hay per day for several weeks.

Recently, with the advent of Sandy, then the blizzard, and now searing heat I have for the first time in 5 years let my paddocks go for 3 weeks with the anticipation that the BO will mulch/mow the blanket of leaves down and so let the manure be harrowed in with that.

I'm not the worlds *most* fastidious person, but I must admit not picking poop is driving me nuts Picking and composting had my horses using minimal potty areas, now the "roughs" are growing and I fear its only a matter of time before they start crapping everywhere

I also like picking, its good quality busy time to let my brain check out and come up with poopiphanies, gives me a chance to inspect the fence and the poop quality daily. For instance, I wandered to a back corner today to discover a tree down over the fence. I could have been there since Sandy for all I know, as I hadn't been picking.

[Bacchus]

It's actually mid-80* temps at which heat starts to become a factor in killing off parasite eggs

Temps in the 45-upper 70's range is quite favorable for larval development with the ends of the range being somewhat less so. But 60's and low 70's? They love it LOL That's really why it's not a great idea to drag in those temps, because you just spread eggs around and don't really increase the odds of killing them off. Cold doesn't kill, so while you won't get larval development when it's 5* out, you aren't killing when you drag either (as if you could drag manure bricks LOL)

Not according to the folks at the University of Kentucky Gluck Equine Center. I went to a seminar they put on last year, and they said in the 70's and above is good for dragging to get rid of worms.

[Megaladon]

11 horses split into three herds in fields on 110 acres...we leave the poop where it lay.

[McGurk]

Somebody help out my middle aged addled brain. I thought part of the rationale of dragging/harrowing was that certain parasite eggs or larvae could be killed by exposure to air or sunlight? Anybody have any recent info on that?

When the horses are at home, we only drag or harrow after we've moved the horses off the pasture and know we can leave it fallow for at least 10 days.

At the neighbor's, it's a little trickier because it's one paddock, so we pick the heavily manured areas and lightly harrow the rest. I do understand it's a bad idea to let horses graze over freshly dragged or harrowed pastures as it increases the liklihood that they'll reinfect themselves, but isn't there a time window during which if the parasite doesn't find a new host it dies?

Is the 10 days - 2 weeks stuck in my head for a reason? What is the correct interval to leave the paddock after harrowing to ensure all the nasties are dead?

I always thought the combination of rotating paddocks and harrowing was best practice, anyone else's thoughts on that?

[katyb]

I have four on 30 acres, so I don't do anything. When I had two in my front pasture (5 acres) I would drag occasionally.

[The Crone of Cottonmouth County]

Daily picker here. Five-acre paddock with 3 horses on it 24/7. I can't stand the sight of all that doo-doo, or the flies. I'm lucky to have a hydraulic dump-thing on my Gator; I couldn't survive without that thing. Only takes me about 40 minutes from here to the manure pile. I've got some dandy compost, too.

At one of my old boarding barns, they'd dump non-composted, ammonia-soaked stall refuse in their 1/4-acre dry lots and turn the horses out on it straight away. The smell, my god the smell. You always knew it was Shavings Dump Day because the stench would hit you a quarter mile before you even pulled up to the front gate.

[JB]

Somebody help out my middle aged addled brain. I thought part of the rationale of dragging/harrowing was that certain parasite eggs or larvae could be killed by exposure to air or sunlight? Anybody have any recent info on that?

Eggs aren't killed by air or sun or even cold (at least not the kind of cold anyone in probably anywhere but Siberia and the 2 poles have LOL). It's heat that kills them, above 85*F for prolonged periods of time.

When the horses are at home, we only drag or harrow after we've moved the horses off the pasture and know we can leave it fallow for at least 10 days.

And unless it's above 85* for all 10 of those days (day temps), then all you've done is spread the eggs around.

At the neighbor's, it's a little trickier because it's one paddock, so we pick the heavily manured areas and lightly harrow the rest. I do understand it's a bad idea to let horses graze over freshly dragged or harrowed pastures as it increases the liklihood that they'll reinfect themselves, but isn't there a time window during which if the parasite doesn't find a new host it dies?

Got 10 years or so? lol

Is the 10 days - 2 weeks stuck in my head for a reason? What is the correct interval to leave the paddock after harrowing to ensure all the nasties are dead?

I always thought the combination of rotating paddocks and harrowing was best practice, anyone else's thoughts on that?

the combo IS best when temps are in the right range and you leave the field sitting long enough

[EqTrainer]

I have enough pasture to be able to rotate and drag them while they are resting.
At this point I am resting pastures for about six months.

Lucky me, an organic farmer just moved down the road from me and wants every iota of what I compost out of the stalls and pick out of Nannys paddock. Score in trade!

[merrygoround]

Large pastures, too big to drag or pick up. Rotated bi-annually. Mowed frequently in between.

So we leave it lay.

[msj]

I have 2 pastures about an acre each that I rotate the 2 horses on for about a 12-15 hr time pd. Rest of the time they are in separate sacrifice paddocks that are ~ 110' X 110' each that open off the horse's stalls. This is spring, summer and fall. I drag the pastures after I move the horses from one pasture to the other, and then about 3-5 days later, re-drag to get the rest of the manure to break up. I also feed oats so the oat hulls go through the horses and into their manure for the birds to pick apart the fecal balls.

The sacrifice paddocks are picked up several times/day and the manure put in a dumpster.

So I both drag and pick up manure.

[susanne]

My ornamental shrubs and small trees and my sister's garden beds all thrive on the "Mini Magic" collected from our corrals and shelters.

[shakeytails]

I either leave it or the bush hog does a dandy job of dispersing piles. Heck, they're out so I don't have to clean stalls! The smallest paddock is about 1 1/2 acres, the big field where most of them are- around 15 acres.

[TheOtherHorse]

I pick up manure daily near the barn and in the small paddocks, but I leave it in the bigger pastures. Between mowing and weather patterns, it gets broken down on its own. However, I have a closed herd of just my own horses, so not a huge quantity of manure to deal with, and no new horses coming in and out.

[McGurk]

I did some research after participating in this thread and discovered that I am not as addled as I thought. Dragging or harrowing then leaving fallow IS effective parasite management in DRY weather - it's not air, sunlight or temperature that kills worm eggs and larvae, it's drying out. And two weeks of dry weather after dragging is plenty to kill off eggs and larvae in the scattered manure. That was from the U of Kentucky web site.

What I didn't find is how long parasite eggs or larvae can survive outside the host in ideal conditions without finding a new host - does anyone know? So far I haven't learned anything that will dramatically change my pasture management, but I would like to know how long I need to leave the pasture fallow in wet weather to be safe, and I'm pretty sure the answer is less than 10 years.

[danceronice]

Combination of all three...we have a four-acre paddock, and when it gets bad, I'll pick it out, Dad periodically drags it (more in an effort to combat the every growing mole mound population but it does scatter the poop, too) and some just winds up decomposing where it is. And the turkeys will wander through and scatter it, looking for bugs (they flattened our whole pile the first month Lucky was there, we couldn't figure out who was scattering the manure pile until we figured out it was the wild turkeys, looking for insects.)