grazing

[bananaskin123]

Wonder if anyone could advise me please. We are letting our paddock for the first time to someone who is buying a ten year old thoroughbred gelding. We are newbies at this. The field is ideal, well fenced etc but what happens with the manure, poo picking etc. If its stuck in a pile, say in a hedge, does it gradually bed down into the ground or do you eventually need someone to take it away.

Also up for any advice that you think might be useful for a newbie in their first venture in letting a field.
TIA

I'll assume that the paddock is about 2 acres. Smaller could result in a muddy mess, much larger and some/all might need topping in early summer. Also assuming that you have/don't need planning for change of use.

Poo needs to be picked and the heap removed. Not sure how often it needs to be done, but it won't dissappear by magic. Alternatively, if the paddock is much bigger than the horse needs, you can leave poop in situ and chain harrow periodically.

Make sure you have a good legal agreement - get the horse owner to pay your land agent fees - and make sure that you have insurance.

To be honest, unless you have a burning desire to look at a pony, I'd rent it to a farmer for sheep. Income will be lower, as will stress, but paddock will stay in much better condition.

Is the horse owner planning on riding it in the field? Are they going to have friends and relatives to visit and ride the horse too? If the field is at home what rules are you going to have about times they can visit the horse - are you happy for someone to be there at six every morning and late at night?

Is the horse going to be alone? Please don't rent to this person if it is. Horses are herd animals and should not be kept alone.

Otherwise, I agree with CatastropheKate.

Just to add, have you thought about insurance? Please look into it!

We rent 8 acres - split into two decent sized fields - for our 4 ponies. They live out from March to November and during that time we poo pick twice a day. We dump it along the hedge line and it does get mostly washed away over the Winter.

We have a legal agreement with the farmer concerning access, useage, animals allowed on it (only horses for us although we may be able to ask him about sheep), etc.

The farmer pays for mains water going to a trough our Summer field but we have to take water up in barrels in the Winter (pain!).

He also trims our external hedges once a year and fertilisers once a year. However we pay for another contract farmer to top our fields, trim the brambles etc. and we pay for our own repairs to the post and rail fencing.

We have to strip graze the ponies to make sure that they eat everything otherwise it wouldn't last...

Do you have a stable , not many thoroughbreds winter outside . Personally I’m with the pp , don’t do it , get yourself a few sheep or a couple of llamas instead .