How do I improve my grass? Perhaps an easier question would be: how long is a piece of string?
Grass growth will vary from year to year, depending on weather conditions, and even one or two weeks’ overgrazing at the height of winter can damage summer growth. Strip grazing is a very popular method for “fatties” but is detrimental to the grass and the ground underneath, often leaving you with dirt instead of soil. You may be thinking: what is the difference between dirt and soil? The answer is everything!
Dirt is dead. Dirt is made up of sand, silt and clay. It has no minerals, nutrients or living organisms, and therefore has no ecosystem and cannot support life.
Soil is living. Soil is alive with worms, insects (hopefully, dung beetles!), bacteria and organic matter. It supports life with its naturally occurring minerals and nutrients, and is a complete ecosystem able to support life.
Loafing areas or sacrifice paddocks are the perfect way to protect the land from overgrazing, by making a small area of dirt which is easy to repair and easy to supplement with hay, but only if you are lucky enough to have access to them!
Overstocking seems an obvious answer, but this is usually due to compaction damage, which often leads to waterlogged ground, in turn causing a lot of damage to the soil and making it almost impossible for roots to survive.
These are just a few tips and hints for us to think about. Don’t worry, we all get caught out by them sometimes.
Managing land is a really difficult task, especially as many people on livery will have very little control over their allocated plot, and often find it is overgrazed and not rotated. But to end on a more positive note – land is always repairable and, if all else fails, we can always buy in hay!
Once again I threw Arlo in at the deep end, affiliating him purely for the Arena UK second round show, and once again he pulled it out the bag. How lucky am I to have such a wonderful little horse? We haven’t really competed this year. I don’t really compete over the winter, and also my horsebox was away for repairs up until the beginning of June, so I had no transport even if I’d wanted to.
With the dry ground we don’t seem to be having much luck with shoes, as little madam managed to pull both her front shoes off within 12 hours the other day! We entered the arena with two shoes on for a schooling session and left it with one missing (took about an hour to find it). Then that afternoon, as I went to put some hoof ointment on, I looked down and had to double take, thinking I was looking at the wrong hoof. But, no, the other shoe was missing too.
After having a long wait and some lunch at the onsite café, it was time to get ready for the Joan Wolfe Overall Supreme Shetland Pony Championship. I got changed out of my usual showing outfit into black trousers and a maroon top with white spots, as you are expected to be a bit more “bling” in the evening.
We were all set to go for our next outing, and were super excited. That was until I heard the dreaded clunk of a loose shoe! I checked it over, praying it wasn’t too loose, but, nope, it was going to need a refit.