Tack Box Talk
Tack Box Talk
Fall Nonstructural Carbohydrates in Pastures: The story of when fall temperatures can bring hidden dangers.
Dr. Krishona Martinson, University of Minnesota, and Dr. Carey Williams, Rutgers University, discuss how temperature changes can affect the nonstructural carbohydrate content of fall pastures. We learn what types of horses this may present and issue for and for which we don't need to worry. We also discuss the current drought affects on pasture and when maybe we just need to shut the gate.
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Kris Hiney: Welcome to extension horses, tack, box, talk series horse stories with a purpose. I'm your host, Dr. Kris Hiney, with Oklahoma State University, and today we're going to be talking about fall pasture concerns. Originally we were going to talk about, you know, non-structural carbohydrates. But we might be talking about drought. So with me today are 2 of our favorite pasture experts. So Dr. Krishona Martinson from the University of Minnesota. So welcome back, Dr. Martinson.
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Krishona L Martinson: Hello! Thank you for having me.
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Kris Hiney: And from a little bit further east from Rutgers University, Dr. Carrie Williams. So welcome back Carrie.
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Dr. Carey Williams: Hello! Everybody!
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Kris Hiney: So well, let's talk. Let's stick with our original plan that we came up with. And that was talking about non structural carbohydrates in pasture, and the reason that we decided well we should do this in fall
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Kris Hiney: is because oftentimes we warn people about it in spring, and then we forget about fall. So maybe you guys help us understand what
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Kris Hiney: normally happens in the fall.
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Dr. Carey Williams: Yeah. So I can start so normally in the fall. And we keep saying, normally, I think we'll eventually tell everybody what's really going on.
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Dr. Carey Williams: But yeah, normally, there is a regrowth of these cool season grasses, because typically so, I know some of you might be listening from further south. And we can talk about that a little bit. But if you're in the Midwest or the northeast, you have the cool season grasses that basically go dormant in the summer, because it's too hot.
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Dr. Carey Williams: Well, once the temperature starts to cool off and get, you know, into the sixties, and you know, maybe even a little cooler at night. They love that weather, so they really start to grow. So when they're growing, they store a lot of those carbohydrates during the day in the nice, beautiful sunshine that we have, and then at night they utilize those carbohydrates, and they try to grow as quickly as possible. So they kind of get this regrowth and this respike of carbohydrates.
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Dr. Carey Williams: Now it's not going to be quite as much as it is in the springtime, like in April and into may in some parts of the country, but it does actually come back, and I think the concern is, if you have those metabolically prone horses to have complications. That's when you're going to see it is in those horses.
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Kris Hiney: So is it the same intensity of non structural carbohydrates that we see in the in the spring? Because I think most people are kind of
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Kris Hiney: familiar with, you know the ponies that's when they get laminatetic, etc, or, you know, once they're lametic, it's all year long. So I mean, how does it compare to spring activity.
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Dr. Carey Williams: You know there was some nice studies done by a colleague of ours out of Virginia Tech. She did kind of a 2 year study and looked at really the long term effects. And granted, Virginia is a little south of us, but you know we can kind of extrapolate. It's probably about half of what you'll see in the spring. Give or take a little, depending on the grasses and depending on the weather. But you're not going to get quite as much extreme highs of the Nsc. Content in the grasses.
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Dr. Carey Williams: But you will see some. So again, if you have those laminitic ponies, or you know those really insulin resistant horses. You do want to be careful
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Dr. Carey Williams: if you don't have any of those horses that need that sort of extra concern.
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Dr. Carey Williams: You know we've got horses out here at Rutgers. Our standard bred mares that have no issues don't have issues. So I think the horses that I would be most concerned about are those horses that just always sort of you need to kind of keep an eye on the sugar and starch content of the grass.
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Kris Hiney: So I think you made a really good point in there, Dr. Williams. Maybe it's worth reiterating again, if you don't have one of these horses right horses have evolved to eat grass, so it's not time to panic for everybody. Right.
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Dr. Carey Williams: Yes, yes, that is true, and like I said, I see many, many horses all around me that are doing just fine this time of year.
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Dr. Carey Williams: But again, if you have those horses, and your vet has said, you know, be really careful. The sugars and starches, or the Nsc. Content. They should actually be careful. And maybe it's just that they have to watch when they turn their horses out. So there is kind of this
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Dr. Carey Williams: this rule that. Yeah, if it's a really sunny day, like we're having a beautiful sunny day today, it's nice and cool the cool season grasses are going to be storing all that those carbohydrates, and then they'll grow quickly overnight. There's a couple things that would affect that if we get a frost tonight, if we really get, you know, into the low thirties, and it's going to freeze. We don't. We're not allowing the grasses to metabolize those carbohydrates. So they're going to be really high in the morning.
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Dr. Carey Williams: If I had a pony, and it was prone to laminitis, I would not turn it out the next day, just because they're going to be much higher in the carbohydrate, the non structural carbohydrate content than it would have been if
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Dr. Carey Williams: they would be able to utilize like in the fifties utilize the carbohydrates all night long.
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Kris Hiney: So Dr. Martinson and I know you are like, really know the plant physiology and all the fun stuff.
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Kris Hiney: I mean, do owners have to like, keep checking like the climate data and know temperature every day like, is there just a maybe a little bit easier guideline or something to be like, okay, they grow. Now, this is when they're scary.
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Kris Hiney: This is what temperature or like. Do we have to be meteorologists?
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Krishona L Martinson: So that's a great question, and I think you have to pay attention when you are in a northern climate, or any State that has distinct seasons. You do need to pay attention in the fall.
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Krishona L Martinson: So, just to kind of review what Dr. Williams has said. Cool season grasses can accumulate really an unlimited amount of non-structural carbohydrates these bright, sunny days. What do plants do they use the sunshine for photosynthesis? And they store up non-structural carbohydrates to really live overnight when there is no sun.
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Krishona L Martinson: What happens is when it's really cool, when it gets down to those low thirties. What happens is the plant’s ability to respire or to use those non-structured carbohydrates slows down, and that is why we get a spike in the fall, and for some reason it seems in the spring we just have this general kind of warming of our climate, and in the fall we get these huge swings right. It could be 40 degrees one day and 80 degrees the next day.
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Krishona L Martinson: and for whatever reason I mean, none of us are meteorologists. That doesn't. Yes, we have spring. We have these big. We have these big shifts in the spring.
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Krishona L Martinson: but it's more of a gradual. We're in the fall. We have these giant peaks and really low valleys. So, getting back to your original question.
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Krishona L Martinson: you do sort of have to be a meteorologist in the fall in States.
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Krishona L Martinson: where you have distinct climates, but, like Dr. Williams says, especially if you have horses where you are controlling their diet and non-structural carbohydrates.
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Krishona L Martinson: If you have a horse that is active is healthy, and is at a healthy body weight. You can probably be less of a meteorologist, but you have to watch those freezing and thawing, and a general rule of thumb that we have in Minnesota, and we have extrapolated this data from research,
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Krishona L Martinson: is when you have the very 1st killing freeze, and from a meteorologist standpoint a killing freeze ends the growing season, so things may still look green, but they no longer regrow. That is usually about 28 degrees for a few hours. That is kind of considered a season ending killing frost.
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Krishona L Martinson: We would like you to not re-graze your pastures for 7 days, keep all horses off as just a general rule of precaution. Remember now, after that your pasture won't regrow. So if your pasture still has some forage to regraze
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Krishona L Martinson: after that 7 days you can let them graze until, on average, the pasture is down to about 3 or 4 inches.
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Krishona L Martinson: If your pasture is already at 3 to 4 inches. Your grazing season is done, because, remember, that is a season ending frost, and nothing will regrow, although it can retain its green color. But again, it's not regrowing, so you do sort of have to be a meteorologist.
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Kris Hiney: So what about for those of us that live a little bit more south? Because we have cool season forages, too? Right? So we have our warm season that are like grow grow. And that's where
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Kris Hiney: our cool season just are like, I give up right? So they don't grow anymore. And then, theoretically, in the fall, when things are cooling off that they'll start to grow again.
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Kris Hiney: So
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Kris Hiney: what about our rules? Because we don't have these things that you talk about with killing frost, I mean, come on now, so like.
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Kris Hiney: how does it work, or do we not have to be worried down here. If we have these metabolically challenged critters.
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Dr. Carey Williams: I would say, and the better agronomist than I can correct me. If I'm wrong.
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Dr. Carey Williams: that anytime you have a grass that's going to be rapidly growing like you said. You know it goes dormant in the summer, but then it does start to grow more in the fall anytime. You have kind of that resurgence of growth. If you have a metabolically prone horse, you should worry.
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Dr. Carey Williams: you know you might not have the frost that's going to really accelerate or really exponentiate the amount of Nsc. Or the non structural carbohydrates in it. But you are going to have higher levels than you had in warm season grasses which we can touch on a little bit there, but not as much of a concern, and not near as much as you do in the spring, but I would say anytime you start to see. Oh, look! They're growing, that means, hey! Look! There's more carbohydrates.
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Kris Hiney: Okay?
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Kris Hiney: And and if it's the time of year where, despite your best efforts, you never have to mow the grass again. Then that probably means they're done.
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Krishona L Martinson: Yes, and I would just like to say that sometimes I identify as a cool season grass in the summer. I'm just gonna give up like you, said Dr. Heine.
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Kris Hiney: Yeah, there are some people down here that are warm season people, but I don't know that I am.
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Kris Hiney: Let's see.
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Krishona L Martinson: You know you you bring up a really good point. I think so in transparency. I've never lived in the South. I've never had to manage pastures in the South.
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Krishona L Martinson: but if I think about cool season grasses in the South
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Krishona L Martinson: anytime cool season grasses are under stress, they tend to hold on to their non-structured carbohydrates, because, remember, that is kind of their defense mechanism against drought or insects, or any kind of weird weather swings. So even if you have cool season grasses in the South, and you do not have a killing frost.
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Krishona L Martinson: If you have a drought time period that is considered a stress to the plant, and we routinely see spikes and non-structured carbohydrates because those plants are holding onto those as a defense mechanism.
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Krishona L Martinson: If you have a weird grasshopper infestation, or some kind of a bug infestation. That is, a stress to the plant, some weird blight that comes through like a mildew or something.
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Krishona L Martinson: Those are all considered stresses, so
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Krishona L Martinson: I wish I wish I could tell horse owners you know what grass is a great feedstuff. You can turn them out and turn your back and turn away. It can't you gotta! You just gotta keep your eye on the horses. Keep your eye on the pasture and keep your eye on the weather to some degree.
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Kris Hiney: Okay, now is this, and I didn't try to get us out of the lane here on nonstructural carbohydrates. So don't you know? Smack me. But is it similar to like when we talk about nitrates, that
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Kris Hiney: the little changes can be a big deal or not?
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Krishona L Martinson: So we have done some in our grazing trials, in
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Krishona L Martinson: we have looked at nitrates primarily in our warm season grasses, because they are known to accumulate nitrates.
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Krishona L Martinson: and it is somewhat similar where, when warm season grasses tend to be under stress, they tend to accumulate these nitrates from the soil, whether it's heavy fertilizer applications, heavy manure applications, but a lot of times.
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Krishona L Martinson: It is just kind of bad timing. We put on a nitrogen application for these grasses to grow, and then we hit a dry stretch and they really accumulate it. There are ways to manage it, obviously not grazing and testing. We don't feed a lot of in like silage. We don't feed any silage to horses in this country, or very, very rarely.
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Krishona L Martinson: There are methods of ensiling that help beef and dairy producers manage nitrates that just really aren't available to horse owners. But you're right, Kris. Warm season grasses have their own caveats and nitrates are one of them.
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Kris Hiney: And I'm guessing, Dr. Williams, you don't have to worry about nitrates much up in New Jersey.
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Dr. Carey Williams: No, not really. I mean, if you're grazing a really heavily heavy legume pasture a little bit. But and we did play with some warm season, grasses that are more the forage varieties here.
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Dr. Carey Williams: At Rutgers. They were, you know, some of the forage variety crabgrasses, Bermuda grass things like that. And we did also see that the nitrates were high. They weren't high enough to cause a lot of concern, but we did test for them just to make sure they weren't high.
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Dr. Carey Williams: But the problem is with those grasses in New Jersey is you need to reseed them every year. They don't just automatically grow back because they are an annual. So you have to manage them a little bit differently. But that was more for a research purpose.
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Kris Hiney: And just for our horse owners, I'll give the shout out that nitrates are not as big of a deal in horses as they are in cattle, so things that your cattle you might be like. No, no, no.
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Kris Hiney: this is the one time that horses are like Meh.
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Kris Hiney: pay it no mind.
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Krishona L Martinson: And you are right, like the only time horses are less susceptible than cattle. Yeah.
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Dr. Carey Williams: Yeah.
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Kris Hiney: Everything else. Horses, you know whether it's a fence a weed, whatever they're gonna be like.
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Kris Hiney: Now I die. So
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Kris Hiney: all right. So we've been hinting. Oh, no! Dr. Williams has something that she.
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Dr. Carey Williams: And I. And it's funny. I think I'm going to go where you're going, because I think it really fits into the stress grass topic that we were. We're going to talk about, and and I have a little anecdote, but I also have a question for Krishona along those lines that I always get and don't know that I have a good answer for. So
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Dr. Carey Williams: so you can start the topic because I think we're going to the same place.
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Kris Hiney: No, I want to hear the the anecdote and the question, and I'll I'll just wait.
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Dr. Carey Williams: Cause. You know, we talked about stressed grasses, right? And and that's and you know, we kind of, we laughed at the beginning of this podcast because
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Dr. Carey Williams: nobody on this podcast has had a normal year, particularly in New Jersey. Our summer was abysmal. We got very very little rain, and even in the fall. We have very, very little rain, so our grasses, while we can normally graze into November. They've kind of said peace out. So we have a lot of our cool season. Grasses have just given up. We haven't had enough rain to get that regrowth, so we've had this drought
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Dr. Carey Williams: for a long time this summer, and now we're into the fall. So a lot of our pastures just aren't regrowing. So yes, they're stressed. And they've stored carbohydrates, and we would think they're high in carbohydrates. But how long does that actually last? Will it last months and months and months, and as long as the drought lasts? Or does eventually the grass utilize all of those carbohydrate stores, and then they just die.
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Dr. Carey Williams: which is what I know happens in the winter. But we're not in winter yet. So that's my agronomist question. There.
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Kris Hiney: Yeah, and my like, they're brown and crunchy. Krishona. So be they dead?
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Krishona L Martinson: Well, you know it honestly, Carrie and Kris, I think that is an awesome idea, and I know a lot of us have
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Krishona L Martinson: have really kicked around this idea of a larger nationwide research project. Looking at grass fluctuations.
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Krishona L Martinson: I know there is some research out of the higher elevation, like Rocky mountain region where they have shown that if you have these beautiful, bright, sunny days like we have, and then you get a foot of snow that just happens to stay, and there are instances where we go from, like spring, like from summer to winter. We kind of skip fall.
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Krishona L Martinson: that underneath the snow. But the snow is a great insulator that those plants can retain fairly high levels of non-structured carbohydrates for long time periods.
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Krishona L Martinson: Right now all of us are in a drought. We don't have snow. I would say that those plants are essentially dead in the material that is in there
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Krishona L Martinson: is relatively void of anything of any kind of, you know, measurable nutrients. But I have seen just some anecdotical kind of like one sample type, things
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Krishona L Martinson: of brown, crunchy grass that is incredibly high in non-structured carbohydrates, but it's nothing that is widespread, or I would feel would be repeatable across your region, so I don't know but I would be very suspicious because of what they have seen on the
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Krishona L Martinson: on the west coast.
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Dr. Carey Williams: So then maybe, could we recommend to people listening here if they have one of those laminitic ponies that they're really concerned about to take a grass sample, send it off to their local forage lab, and they can even just get a carb package just to see what
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Dr. Carey Williams: carbohydrates in it. If they're really worried about it.
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Krishona L Martinson: Yeah, I think you know, that would be a great recommendation, because in theory.
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Krishona L Martinson: you know, if everything is dormant because of the drought. We aren't seeing the regrowth until we get rain, but then, if we're into winter, it comes in the form of snow, and we're not getting regrowth because of the temperatures. It might be good, but I also think that one of the most dangerous pastures for laminate course is an overgrazed pasture, right? Because we know that a lot of these plants like to store the highest amount of their non-social carbohydrates in the lowest 2 inches.
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Krishona L Martinson: and because of the horse's mouth structure. They can graze right down to the ground like a cow. They just can't. It's really hard for cattle to overgraze, because they just don't have the teeth and the lips to do that. What horses do so I don't know, Carrie. I would love to see a bunch of samples, but I would be really suspicious, and I would not
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Krishona L Martinson: put any horse out on a dead and dying pasture, not only from the horse health perspective, but I just don't want all that extra hoof traffic and stress on a pasture that's already probably hanging on by a thread.
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Dr. Carey Williams: Good point, because we're not talking just about horse health. We're talking about pasture, health as well, and
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Dr. Carey Williams: being good land stewards.
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Kris Hiney: Right. So for so for all of us that and this is.
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Kris Hiney: you know, the question of best management versus, what do you, what do you have available? Because
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Kris Hiney: now we're also talking, we're going to extend our forage season, right? So our harvested forage season. Well, then, that becomes another issue itself.
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Kris Hiney: So is this the rock and the hard place over
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Kris Hiney: which one do you pick.
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Dr. Carey Williams: Yeah, that's what I always get asked about a lot is like, well, you know, then I'm buying more hay and hay is x amount per bale. And I'm not gonna say a number, because we're all different across the country. But
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Dr. Carey Williams: you know, it's like, What do you do? Do you spend more money on hay, so you can save your pastures, or do you spend money on the pastures next season, or now, and reseed your pastures? So you know I will say it does depend on your management goals for your farm and for your horses, and then you should probably, since you are a business, more than likely at a farm, or at least should run it like a business.
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Dr. Carey Williams: Do do some economic analysis, and find out. You know how much it might be to reseed your pastures every season, if that's what you're doing, and I know there are people who do versus spend $15 for a 50 pound bill of hay.
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Dr. Carey Williams: You know
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Dr. Carey Williams: it. It.
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Krishona L Martinson: Yeah, Chris, I think that's the 1 million dollar question. So in Minnesota we went from one of the
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Krishona L Martinson: 5 wettest springs and summers on record to the absolute, driest September on record.
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Krishona L Martinson: Therefore there is quite a bit of hay out there. A lot of it has had a little bit of rain, which isn't the worst thing for metabolic horses in all honesty.
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Krishona L Martinson: But right now hay is relatively affordable in the Upper Midwest, because we did have a very wet year, which means there's a lot of hay.
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Krishona L Martinson: I think people assume that a pasture is kind of a 0 input system
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Krishona L Martinson: where all of us know when we have done. The breakdown seed is incredibly high. Fertilizer is incredibly high. Hiring someone to do the work is incredibly expensive. Buying the equipment yourself is equally as expensive.
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Krishona L Martinson: So when we pencil it out, it's about 250 to $300 per acre
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Krishona L Martinson: to establish a pasture that is, Minnesota money.
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Krishona L Martinson: It might be different in Oklahoma, in New Jersey.
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Krishona L Martinson: so several $100 an acre. But it will last indefinitely if you you know.
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Krishona L Martinson: if you take care of it. So if you have 5 acres, unless 300 for easy math, $1,500,
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Krishona L Martinson: what's more affordable, buying $1,500 of hay to extend your grazing season for a couple weeks, or I mean to extend your hay feeding season by a couple weeks, or is it more
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Krishona L Martinson: cost effective to put in your pasture, and maybe, if you own your own equipment, it is more cost effective to just put in the pasture.
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Krishona L Martinson: If you don't. It's probably more cost effective to just buy more hay.
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Dr. Carey Williams: So here's another thought, though, on the grass versus the hay, and we're leaving out the fact that grasses are the number one source of vitamins for horses. So especially if you have a really high performance horse that is doing a lot of exercising and needs more antioxidants and just needs has a higher
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Dr. Carey Williams: nutrient need in general. Then you're also talking about not just the hay, but you're adding on additional supplements to that hay to meet their needs where horses on pasture pretty much all intents and purposes. Most of their vitamin needs are met by, you know, adequate pasture consumption.
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Kris Hiney: So now. But I'm going to ask the question again. Our plant physiologist there is that still true
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Kris Hiney: in the current state of the pasture
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Kris Hiney: like, how much? What is the vitamin content when it's like?
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Dr. Carey Williams: Dead pasture. No, I'm talking about yeah. Lush. Nice pasture that's been managed correctly. But yeah, winter pasture wouldn't be.
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Dr. Carey Williams: It would be probably not quite as low as the you know, the the hay that you're getting that's been actually cut and sun cured. But it is going to be lower than green pasture.
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Krishona L Martinson: Yeah. So I you know, Kris, that's a great question. And we haven't looked at that in a pasture. Because, like Carrie said, when we look at vitamins and minerals in the pasture. It's fresh, they're fairly high. We do have some unpublished data where we looked at cool season grasses, primarily orchard grass. We looked at Teff and We looked at pure alfalfa.
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Krishona L Martinson: and we looked at Hay, and we are primarily wanting to look at vitamin and mineral content.
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Krishona L Martinson: You know, most of your loss, like Carrie mentioned, happens within literally
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Krishona L Martinson: 2 to 3 days of the cutting and the and the drying.
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Krishona L Martinson: The one exception is, the minerals are fairly stable
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Krishona L Martinson: after that 4. After bailing, we'll just say, after it's been dry down to 15% and bailed.
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Krishona L Martinson: The vitamins are what are unstable. And the reason we haven't published this data is, we have a really hard time measuring for those in dried hay, and in fact, we were getting numbers all over the board where we know we have to go back to the drawing board, and my expertise is not coming up with different
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Krishona L Martinson: ways to measure vitamin A and E and the precursor to vitamin D, and hay, I don't know how to do that. And when you have your levels really going up and down throughout a full year. We know that doesn't happen.
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Krishona L Martinson: They either are going to stay stable or decrease. They're not going to increase, then decrease. So we were just having a lot of struggles
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Krishona L Martinson: just with the analysis of it. And that's why we haven't gone forward with that but again Carrie would know more on the horse end. But in the plant end
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Krishona L Martinson: it's pretty stable. But in the case of a drought like we're all in, currently, there's nothing.
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Kris Hiney: Well, that's what I was. Gonna say, yeah, I kinda chuckled. When Carrie you said like, Oh, hay, a sun cured. I'm like she's pretty sun cured right now.
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Dr. Carey Williams: Good point. Good point.
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Dr. Carey Williams: yes.
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Kris Hiney: So so that may be a thing right now, like, okay, guys, recognize that.
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Kris Hiney: Yeah, maybe your vitamin content of your if you're still trying. And maybe we're gonna try to convince you in our cost balance right that there's no vitamin content left out there right now. And so you need to think about that as well. Right.
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Krishona L Martinson: And honestly, what we have gone to. And, Carrie, you're you are the nutritionist here.
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Krishona L Martinson: but you know, in Minnesota what we have found is a vast majority of horse owners have more horses than they have pasture. I mean, I'm in that same, that same situation. So I feed primarily hay year round. Our research horses are on hay, they rotate, but just for consistency.
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Krishona L Martinson: We give a pound of ration balance here year around to these horses. Now they are idle horses, and they're in good. They're fairly easy keepers. So, Carrie, it was a great point. I wasn't even thinking about the vitamin and mineral mix. But I wonder
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Krishona L Martinson: how many people give a ration balancer year round, or maybe should, because I don't think they'll reach a toxic level of anything in a ration balancer, right like during the summer. If they do have some access to grass.
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Dr. Carey Williams: Yeah. And and really, I'm I'm saying this less and less. But I want to say, Chris, was it maybe a year ago me and Dr. Leibert did the ration balancing podcast so
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Dr. Carey Williams: can put a tout in for that, go ahead and do a search for the ration, balancing? Podcast you know they used to be very, very underutilized, but I think you know, in our Nutritionist realm we have been pushing those for a lot of horses that are very overweight horses
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Dr. Carey Williams: that we just, and people who don't test their hay or their grasses have no idea what they're feeding. We say, Yeah, you know you're not going to hurt them by throwing in even just a half pound of balancer. You know you're just, and granted a lot of the consults. I do. The horses do not need the full one or 2 pounds of balancer that is recommended on the tag. If and I've done a lot of these, where I look at the past, the hay, or the pasture analysis.
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Dr. Carey Williams: and I balance it with a ration balancer. Most only need about half pound in order to really meet their vitamin and mineral. Well, mineral levels, I will say, because you're right. Vitamin assays in hay is miserable, and it's very, very hard to even find average numbers, you know, let alone exact numbers.
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Kris Hiney: Yeah. And it for me. I'm like, Oh, it's just so much easier. And maybe maybe I have to grade so much. I want the rest of my life to be easy. But
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Kris Hiney: so you know, one of the arguments will people have, because I think, like with the ration balancer, and I use it right. So is the sticker shock. But you got to remember you feed so so little of it right? And like you, said Dr. Williams. In the summer you may be only needing a half a pound, and then, when they're on full or cured hay
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Kris Hiney: a pound right? So it it may not be as expensive as you think.
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Dr. Carey Williams: Right?
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Dr. Carey Williams: Yeah, yeah. I was just in tractor supply the other day getting stuff for my puppy, and you know my friend was there, and I said, Hey, how's it going? She goes. Oh, can you believe how much of this stuff is? And she was pointing to one of the ration balancers. She's like, Look, it's like $50 a bag. And I'm like, yeah, 10 years ago it wasn't $50 a bag, but it was still higher than most feeds.
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Dr. Carey Williams: So I'm like, well, you know, you're feeding a half pound to a pound. And yeah, granted, she has 5 horses, and one of them is 18 hands, almost 1,500 pounds. So you know, they're gonna eat more sorry.
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Dr. Carey Williams: But yeah.
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Kris Hiney: Yeah, yeah. They still, you know, if you if you did the math on nutrient analysis, they're still oftentimes going to be a little bit more affordable.
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Dr. Carey Williams: Exactly. Yup, yup.
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Kris Hiney: Okay. So I like to do the sum up to to our recap. Okay, so
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Kris Hiney: most of the time fall for all of our normal horses. Not a problem.
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Kris Hiney: Fall is only a problem for our
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Kris Hiney: carbohydrate crackheads right
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Kris Hiney: way to put it.
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Kris Hiney: But if you have one of those, so the ponies, the EMS horses, all, all of those. Those are the ones.
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Kris Hiney: If it has a cold frost right? Then the rule is off for 7 days.
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Kris Hiney: Yeah, or if we're getting
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Kris Hiney: one, okay? And then if we're getting, if you see that essentially, the if the grass is growing rapidly, right? So it's like Woohoo. I got some water. That's when we need to be a little bit more careful, correct.
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Kris Hiney: and do you still in the fall follow the same. Theoretically, it's safer early morning after it's been the dark times.
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Dr. Carey Williams: Yes, yeah, the times, you know. If I had that laminated pony I wouldn't.
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Dr. Carey Williams: I wouldn't put them out, you know, in the peak of the afternoon, so don't turn them out, you know, after noon. So 12 noon, and you know, just try to focus on the early morning, and that's not after a frost. So if you don't have a frost, turn them out early, as you can, get them out. You know, if you want to get out there at 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning. That's great. Bring them in by noon.
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Kris Hiney: And if you live in the part of the country that any of us live in that has been really.
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Kris Hiney: really dry.
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Kris Hiney: really warm, where nothing's growing, it might be time to call it.
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Dr. Carey Williams: Yes, save your pastures for next year.
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Krishona L Martinson: Yep, I agree.
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Kris Hiney: Okay.
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Kris Hiney: maybe I should ask one more question just because I thought of it.
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Kris Hiney: You okay, with that.
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Dr. Carey Williams: For it.
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Kris Hiney: Okay. So since we do and live in a little different climate, and we do expect things to grow in the winter
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Kris Hiney: if it, if it miraculously started raining again.
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Kris Hiney: Is it then, okay, to reuse our pastures? If if they're planted with cool season.
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Krishona L Martinson: Yeah. So, Chris, I would say, anytime you're going from an extreme to the other. I would say yes, with a couple caveats you would want those cool season grasses to grow up to 6 to 8 inches before you start grazing.
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Krishona L Martinson: I would also want you to transition incredibly slowly. 15 min on day one. I know you're going to chase them around for another half an hour and just keep adding 15 min each day. So day, 1, 15 min. Day, 2, 30 min. Day, 3, 45 min, until you get up to about 5 h. That'll be about a 10 ish 14 ish day transition.
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Krishona L Martinson: because really, anytime you change any kind of feedstuff, it doesn't matter if you're going from grass hay to grass pasture.
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Krishona L Martinson: you have to do it slowly over that course of that 10 days to 2 weeks, and
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Krishona L Martinson: starting to re-graze in the South after a drought, when things because things will eventually turn around, we hope right like. That's what we're all counting on.
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Krishona L Martinson: You just have to make that transition slowly and allow it to regrow.
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Kris Hiney: So you'd treat it like spring, essentially.
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Krishona L Martinson: Treat it like spring.
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Kris Hiney: Okay. Yep.
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Dr. Carey Williams: I agree with that.
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Kris Hiney: Well, very good guys. I think this has been, as always, very educational, and we try to be practical at the same time. We're not trying to live in our ivory towers and recognize that it's it can be tough to make choices. So
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Kris Hiney: anything we've missed about fall carbohydrates.
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Dr. Carey Williams: Not that I can think of.
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Krishona L Martinson: Me neither. You covered it well, Kris, as you always do.
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Kris Hiney: Okay, well, I appreciate everyone's time. And again, this has been another episode of our tech box talk horse stories with a purpose.
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