Sustainable Pasture Management for Horses

Sustainable Pasture Management for Horses

Summary

The goal of the Sustainable Pasture Management for Horses project, known in our area as “The Mid-Atlantic Equine Pasture Initiative”, is to develop a pasture management program for horse farms in New Jersey and surrounding states in the Mid-Atlantic region. Of the thousand plus agricultural extension agents, Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) representatives, and other related agency and industry professionals in NJ, MD, DE, northern VA, eastern PA, and southern NY, our goal is to have 25 professionals that will understand and advocate best pasture management practices, and will help impact farm managers adapt better manure management, reduce weed competition, increase nutritive value, and promote application of fertilizers to maintain soil nutrients based on soil tests in their pastures.

This sustainable emphasis over a three-year period will lead to improved pasture quality and water-soil conditions. We seek to accomplish this through the professional development of extension agents and other industry professionals as field consultants and advisors. The essential elements of this pasture project include regional training meetings to extension, NRCS and other industry professionals, test soils and pasture forage for nutrient content, provide material accessible via web site, and video documentation. Some of the key educational components include soil fertility, weed control, poisonous plants, grass species selection, pasture composition, paddock design and fencing, on-farm strategies to protect water quality, manure management, and proper fertilization based on soil test results.

This project will expand the knowledge base at the extension staff and industry professional levels; it will provide a longer-term programmatic focus on sustainable pasture management. Our goal will be monitored by pre- and post-project evaluations from each of the professionals in the participating states. These evaluations would evaluate our training seminar and the tools given to assist the professionals in developing their own program. It will also evaluate pasture program plans and then if they were carried out and as to how successful they were in the eyes of the producer.

Objectives/Performance Targets

Of the thousand plus agricultural extension agents, NRCS, and other related industry professionals within the Mid-Atlantic region, 25 of these professionals will understand, and advocate best pasture management practices; this group will then impact farm managers to adapt better manure management, reduce weeds and increase native nutrition, improve water quality, and maintain proper nutrient soil loads in their horse pastures.

The three-year period will lead to the sustainability of the project and improved pasture quality and water-soil conditions on many of the participating farms. In order to attain this programmatic goal and forge stronger client ties into our academic community, we will outreach established agents coupled with a new Program Assistant to assess, implement and monitor sustainable practices. We seek to accomplish this through the professional development and training of agricultural extension agents and those in the private professional service industry as field consultants and advisors. This pasture project will expand the knowledge base of extension personnel and provide a longer-term programmatic focus on sustainable pasture management. We have seen too many instances of resource mismanagement in equine operations that are too densely populated, poorly maintained manure disposal, inappropriate selection of turf grasses, poor nutrient management plans, and associated runoff problems of non-point source pollutants.

Verification that our target will be attained by seminar sign up sheets and evaluations, pre- and post soil and pasture grass surveys, grower data bases and input cards, participant mailing lists, photo and video documentation, website expansion and environmental surveys from each of the agents and professionals in the participating states.

Accomplishments/Milestones

Our major milestone this year was to complete milestone #2 in our application: to publicize training meetings to a thousand plus extension, NRCS and other related agency professionals (e.g. feed and seed dealers, veterinarians, etc.) in the Mid-Atlantic region. These are to be held at Northeast Small Farm Expo (rotating between Rutgers University, Penn State, and Cornell), regional research farms, and other Mid-Atlantic farms and venues.

Our training sessions were publicized and took place in New Jersey on the 8th of December 2005 with 44 attendees. The second training seminar took place on December 15th in southeast Pennsylvania with 75 participants. Attendees at our training sessions were provided with a training module, which included fact sheets from the participating universities on all aspects of pasture management. The module also came with a CD containing electronic copies of the fact sheets, evaluations for our project and one to be tailored to the individuals pasture programs, and nine PowerPoint presentations with curriculum notes in each to help the individual when preparing their own presentation. The nine presentations included topics on importance of pasture to horses, soil fertility, manure management, forage species ID and selection, forage growth and rotational grazing, plants toxic to horses, weed control, pasture renovation, and environmental concerns of horse operations. A hard copy of the module will be sent to accompany this report.

Our milestones have changed slightly since our original proposal. The ICM assessment of 25 farms throughout the region will be performed by the professionals and educators we are training. They will use these farms as their initial client base as a result of the SARE training. They will then train the farmer to perform follow-up tests after the proper fertilization, liming, etc. has been applied. We are adding a milestone consisting of follow up demonstration meetings/pasture walks/farm tours to help demonstrate the concepts that have been trained at the December seminars. These will take place by our original team or by our trainees, as they feel comfortable.

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

Our outcomes of the 2 training sessions in December were evaluated by each participant at the end of the day. The evaluations asked the participants to rank each category on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the most valuable and 1 being the least valuable. The attendees felt the training module with PowerPoints was the most valuable portion with an average score of 4.7. Attending the actual training session with speakers demonstrating the module PowerPoints was given an average of 4.6. The availability of fact sheets had an average of 4.4, mostly due to the fact that you can find these on line for free already. However, our team realizes that the ability to access everything you need dealing with pastures in one place instead of having to hunt around on the web for it is valuable enough. Participants valued their opportunity to create a network of pasture professionals that will be able to assists them in developing their pasture programs for equine operation managers and owners and gave this a 4.3. Unfortunately due to bad weather we had to end the second training session early to ensure all attendees returned home safely so networking at that session was cut short.

The evaluations asked the participants to rank the value of each PowerPoint presentation and the scores ranged from 4.1 to 4.7. When the attendees were asked to list their plans of developing equine pasture programs, 43 % commented that they plan on hosting a workshop, seminar or short course based on the materials within the next year. Fifty percent are going to host more informal twilight meetings or pasture walks this spring and more than half will at least write a fact sheet, popular press article, or dedicate a section of an existing newsletter, or develop a new newsletter on what they have learned at the training. Almost all of the attendees listed that they planned on taking more calls and answering more questions one on one to equine producers regarding pasture management.

The final question of the evaluation asked what other programs they would like to see the SARE project fund and there was an overwhelming response to develop demonstration meetings to follow the classroom training. This is why we have planned to host demonstrations in various states utilizing the professionals and trainers that attended these sessions.

It was evident in our attendance at the two training sessions that our publicity of the project was well done and hit all the key areas. Before the sessions I received calls from outside the region as well (e.g. Georgia NRCS, Maine Cooperative Extension, and a Massachusetts pasture renovation and education company). Some of those calls sent people to attend the training others are interested in obtaining a copy of our training module.

Some overall comments selected from the evaluations show the type of response this project is receiving from our target audience. “I am glad to finally see research and time invested in horses and farms within the agriculture field. So much of the agriculture research done by other schools only relates to dairy and traditional livestock. Horses are a large and growing, often unrecognized industry and I will benefit from reviewing and distributing the supplied materials.” “This workshop was an excellent idea. Something like this was sorely needed the equine industry is underserved though the local and federal agencies. Thank you.” “Glad to have programs on horses – big industry that is over looked, people want to know how to better manage their horse farms.” “Excellent resources!” These are just to site a few. There was also an overwhelming number of verbal thank you’s for a wonderful and very needed program. A copy of the two evaluation summaries will be included in the hard copy materials sent to the SARE office.

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