Pasture

A lot of brilliant guidance already exists setting out advice on good pasture management to benefit both horse and landscape.

Some examples are linked below.

• Managing Grasslands for Nature – The Wildlife Trusts
• Paddocks for ponies and biodiversity – Flora Locale
• Pasture Management – The British Horse Society
• Conservation Grazing – The Grazing Animals Project
• Managing grass for horses. The responsible owner’s guide. Elizabeth O’Beirne-Ranelagh. Pub. J.A. Allen

In an ideal situation horses would be grazed over fairly extensive areas of native, mixed species grassland in herds.

While this can be difficult to achieve in most UK horse-keeping situations, it is possible to make small changes that can be beneficial to horse health and the environment.

Guidance recommends for horses getting most or all of their food from grassland, roughly 1ha per horse.

Of course there are many variables involved, soils being a critical one but this figure is also a good guide to the carrying capacity of the land.

The more intensively land is grazed, the more likely negative effects will arise.

These have knock-on effects for horse health and wellbeing, landscape and the biodiversity and natural processes it supports, but also indirectly in terms of time and costs.

Some of these changes are explored further in this section.