Pasture Prep: The Story of your timeline for great grazing

Dr. Krishona Martinson, pasture exert from the University of Minnesota, provides advice on how to get your pastures ready before the horses are turned out.  Patience is key, if you want your horse grazing throughout the year.

Transcript

Kris Hiney: Welcome to extension horses, tack box, talk series horse stories with a purpose. I'm your host, Dr. Kris Hiney, with the with Oklahoma State University. And today, since it's March and it's starting to green up here a little bit in Oklahoma, maybe not everywhere else. We're going to talk about spring pasture preparation. So we have our returning guest, our pasture expert. Welcome back. Dr. Krishona Martinson.

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Krishona L Martinson: Thank you, Dr. Hiney, for having me. I'm happy to be here.

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Kris Hiney: Now, are you getting any bit of tinges of green in your neck, of the woods?

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Krishona L Martinson: Oh, no, no, no! The snow is currently gone, but there's a prediction for a large storm this weekend. But this is a Minnesota spring. We have 60, and then we have 20, and then we have 40, you know. Just wait 15 min. Bring all the clothes, and you'll be fine.

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Kris Hiney: Right? Exactly. Yeah. We've had wild swings of 80 back down to 40, and here, there, and everywhere. So.

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Krishona L Martinson: Yes, I think we're in our 3rd Fall spring, as we say.

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Kris Hiney: That's awesome.

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Kris Hiney: Okay? So obviously, maybe the spring preparation has to start a little bit earlier down here than it does up there. But if people are thinking about you know, we talked last fall about maybe putting the pasture to bed. Now we're thinking about all right. If I had my calendar of things right, and the calendar on the month day is going to be different for everybody. But what do I start thinking about?

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Krishona L Martinson: Yeah. So that's a really great question. And I think

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Krishona L Martinson: you know this depending on where you are geographically, march can be great, or march can be risky, and the biggest thing we struggle with in areas where we have frost is a lot of times our snow will melt, but the frost won't be out. So we have water that sits, and that just creates a lot of mud and a lot of potential for hoof or wheel traffic.

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Krishona L Martinson: So until that frost is out and things are really dry. I would just be really cautious with doing things in your pasture. Obviously don't turn horses out, because.

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Krishona L Martinson: of course, they're going to run and kick up their feet and slide. You don't want damage, but even skid loader and tractors and heavy lawn mowers can create ruts that just make maintenance more difficult. So this time of year, I think that one of the things you can do is start looking at your fence, you know, over the winter we have deer and other critters that can take down, you know, wire fences. If you are in a wooded area, limbs can fall and crack boards

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Krishona L Martinson: so things that don't require a lot of heavy equipment. Just walk your fence line. Maybe you can start piling larger sticks and branches. If you're in a wooded area for cleanup, once things dry out and you can drive out a little skid loader or a tractor with a bucket or something.

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Krishona L Martinson: So I think right now it's really maybe just look at your fences and look for sticks.

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Kris Hiney: Hi.

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Kris Hiney: So now, if you're an Oklahoma resident, and there's no such thing as frost. So hopefully, we've already, you know, wind season is here, so that creates the sticks. So we have other things that we have to deal with here. But let's say, all right. Our frost is what is, you know, for people down here what might be our 1st thing that we think about, because we're not frosty people.

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Krishona L Martinson: So I well, and also you're not a big moisture state, right? So, or maybe I mean sometimes.

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Kris Hiney: Which side of 35 are you on the east side of the west side? So we have quite a bit of variability.

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Krishona L Martinson: We have the same 35 up here. It's a straight shot, Kris. Straight shot right to you. I can be to you in just a couple hours right?

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Kris Hiney: Amazing.

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Krishona L Martinson: Amazing. You know. I think this time of year it is really about being patient.

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Krishona L Martinson: right? We have to wait for things to start to grow. But it's also a time, you know, on that 1st 60 degree day everyone wants to be outside after you've hibernated all winter, so get out and walk your pasture. What does the ground look like? Have you had any rodents, you know, activities? I don't know if you guys have gophers or moles or volels. Yes.

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Kris Hiney: And then the dogs eat them.

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Krishona L Martinson: See, Kris, that's why the dogs are so valuable. Right? Just rodent control. But, you know.

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Krishona L Martinson: look for it. Start planning. Are you going to need to overseed an area. Sometimes in this current environment, it can be hard to get seeds right like start looking for the appropriate seeds for your area. Talk to your local extension office, talk to your local, you know university and cooperative experts, and ask what you should be planning and then try to secure that. Really, as soon as the soil dries out.

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Krishona L Martinson: you can take soil tests. You can take soil samples for a soil test. If if you are due. The general rule of thumb is to take, you know, a soil sample every 3 years. It's good that sample is good for 3 years warranted. You don't have some extravagant change like you bulldoze the whole place, and, you know, start something new right.

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Krishona L Martinson: and as soon as the soils dry out you can do that. But it's really right now is just surveilling and being patient.

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Kris Hiney: So I have some kind of follow up questions, and the and the thing you know that I will say right now is the horses. The horses do not have patience.

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Krishona L Martinson: No.

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Kris Hiney: Right. And so I've definitely seen, like the little green weeds that are starting to grow for horses that are on pasture right now. Those are getting taken down right.

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Krishona L Martinson: Yeah.

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Krishona L Martinson: oh, absolutely. And we are such suckers for them. They have sad eyes, too, right? They've been trapped in their little dry lot or smaller area, and you know, eating hay, and they can kind of start to see that tinge of green coming. They see us out in the pasture, and they whinny, and they knicker, and they hang their head, and we feel so sorry for them. They just want to run, but no, be strong. People be strong.

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Krishona L Martinson: I'll leave him in so.

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Kris Hiney: So you talked about overseeding and then soil testing. So if you were going to do a timeline for people, is that what they start with the soil test or like how? Because I know we're going to talk a little bit about fertilizing and herbicide like what is like the step one? Is it always soil, test?

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Krishona L Martinson: Yeah. So that so that is a great question. And I don't. I mean.

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Krishona L Martinson: you have to do what works best for you. But let's talk about a perfect world right in a perfect world. We wouldn't want any weeds to soak up fertilizer right? We want the fertilizer going to our beneficial grasses.

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Krishona L Martinson: But you know weeds don't really follow our playbook all the time. So in a perfect world, you would address any weed issues you have either with mowing or with a herbicide in the spring. The problem is, weeds kind of emerge about the same time. The grasses do right. There's a similar growth trend there

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Krishona L Martinson: so ideally, we would address any weeds. But you can really soil sample anytime because the weeds don't impact that. So you're right, Kris. The 1st thing is, take your soil, sample.

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Krishona L Martinson: address any weeds you have, and then

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Krishona L Martinson: you really want the fertilizer to be readily available for the pasture, and especially new seedlings. But you don't always want direct contact, because new seedlings are sort of wimpy

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Krishona L Martinson: and not, you know, they haven't developed that root structure. They don't have cuticles on their leaves to help with things, so sometimes they can have a little bit of fertilizer burn so ideally we would fertilize. Let that kind of go into the soil where the roots would be and then plant in. But of course, sometimes Mother Nature goes really fast, right? We can go from essentially having 3 inches of snow in Minnesota to 60 degrees in 2 days.

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Krishona L Martinson: Right? And so

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Krishona L Martinson: I guess I'm kind of rambling here, but I hope that just conveys that it depends. But again, soil sample should be first. Ideally, we would address weeds, we would then fertilize, but have it be fairly close in time to any kind of overseeding or new seeding, so that the fertilizer is readily available for those newly emerging plants.

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Kris Hiney: Gotcha. Okay?

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Kris Hiney: Now and then you said that mowing is a way to deal with weeds, so you lop their heads off right. But most of them, like their little seeds, have already gotten to where they're going, because they make seeds in the fall right? And then they

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Kris Hiney: now you have baby weeds and.

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Krishona L Martinson: Yeah. So you know, there the

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Krishona L Martinson: weeds are so resilient, so early in the spring, you know the perennial weeds that we traditionally think of like the thistles that are maybe harder to control.

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Krishona L Martinson: You know those are perennial, so those are a little bit slower to grow. But in the spring we have a lot of what we call winter annuals, and those are the weeds that we see. Have you ever done those like rapid experiments in high school with. Like Brassica plants, they go from seed to seed in like 30 days. So in a college setting or a high school setting, you can do little experiments because they grow so quickly. So those are a lot of like your wild mustards, your shepherd's purse.

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Krishona L Martinson: So all of those winter annual weeds emerge like you are thinking, how is this even warm out? Right? But they're already starting to emerge. They go to seed, and it's all within 30 days. So we see them very early in the spring, really late in the fall. Those are the ones that you would want to try to mow, to stop from going to seed. But you're right. A lot of the weeds is kind of a fall type thing. With the exception of these, what we call winter annuals.

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Kris Hiney: Now in herbicides. And this is where you're going to see that I don't know the things as much on these specific things. But don't. They have like? There's pre-emergent and post-emergent. And so in my head, pre-emergent is before they grow, and post is after they grow right. So.

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Krishona L Martinson: Absolutely.

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Kris Hiney: 2 different types like, do I have to use all these different types of herbicides?

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Krishona L Martinson: Yeah, so, Kris, I'm always impressed by how much you know. You gotta give yourself more credit.

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Krishona L Martinson: But you know, pre-emergence aren't

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Krishona L Martinson: commonly used in pasture settings, because think of a pre-emergent! It would be mostly used for row crops like corn and soybeans, or things that you plant annually, and while those are a little bit slower to emerge. We have these more rapidly emerging weeds.

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Krishona L Martinson: And so a pre-emergent works well. A pre-emergent works well in like your lawn, because crabgrasses will emerge before the Bluegrass, at least in the northern part of the country. The problem is, crabgrass really isn't a problem in a horse pasture. It's not.

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Kris Hiney: There, sometimes right.

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Krishona L Martinson: Yeah, I mean, it's not an issue. And a lot of the weeds that we are concerned about in horse pasture emerge at the same time as the grasses. So our opportunity for a pre-emergent just isn't really practical. Or there, now, if you're doing, maybe a brand new seeding.

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Krishona L Martinson: maybe that's a different. But I'd have to look at the labels. Because again, I'm I'm just not really familiar with a lot of pre-emergence because they're not commonly used in pasture settings. We almost exclusively use post-emergence where we are controlling broadleaf weeds in a predominantly grass pasture.

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Kris Hiney: Okay. So I need to expunge that word from my brain. Then, like.

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Krishona L Martinson: No, it's a good word to have, but it's just not as commonly used in a pasture setting.

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Kris Hiney: Okay, okay, that's good to know. Okay? So we got our soil test. And that is what tells us what fertilizer to use so time of year, then, if I'm thinking.

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Kris Hiney: fertilizer, right? So. And we're gonna shift months here between my months and your months, we're generally what a month, month and a half ahead of you.

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Krishona L Martinson: Probably. But you know, really, you can just

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Krishona L Martinson: so look at the pasture in front of you. So do you see that? Do you see a couple inches of green grass or legume. If you have clovers in your pasture, and is it dry? The biggest thing in the spring is, you just don't want ruts in your pasture

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Krishona L Martinson: right like fertilizer is heavy. And even if you have a smaller scale lawn tractor with a little, you know buggy, that you're pulling behind you, or a little fertilizer spreader. There's still weight there, so it just it just has to be dry, you know, a couple inches of growth, but is really as early as you can get in.

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Krishona L Martinson: When you start to see that tinge of growth and you and it is dry. You can fertilize. Now, you know, Kris, you are more risk adverse than I am.

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Krishona L Martinson: but with fertilizer

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Krishona L Martinson: our best management practice, let's say you just need a hundred pounds of fertilizer per acre per year.

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Krishona L Martinson: Ideally, we would do about 50 pounds in early spring as soon as it's dry enough to get in, and things are starting to grow, and then we would wait until maybe that 1st week of June or for you I mean, the summers can be drier, but maybe right before. There's a couple of predictions of some rainfall to help wash that fertilizer in, and that is because

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Krishona L Martinson: if for some reason, and maybe it's more of an issue in the northern part versus the southern part of the Us. But if you apply all of your fertilizer and you get, you're supposed to get maybe a half inch of rain, and something happens, and you get 2 to 3 inches of rain. That fertilizer, especially the nitrogen, which is very mobile in the soil gets completely washed out, and isn't not completely gets washed out, and isn't as readily available. But if we hedge our bets and do it twice a year.

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Krishona L Martinson: Then we have more of that availability for a longer part of the growing season. Of course, that means we're going across a pasture twice. We may be having to get out equipment or rent equipment twice. So I realize there's a cost for that, an opportunity cost and a real cost. But

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Krishona L Martinson: just know that ideally you would do it twice, but practically once a year, early in the spring is also very acceptable.

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Kris Hiney: So we're gonna have to rely on the weather people. Is that what you're telling me.

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Krishona L Martinson: I know that's the biggest risk of it. All right, Kris.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah, it never works out. Trust me, like it was supposed to be 100% rain last Saturday. No, no rain, no.

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Krishona L Martinson: Not at all.

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Kris Hiney: And so like the type of rain from what I'm hearing so like our storm season, where it comes like

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Kris Hiney: that's not good, right? Because that washing out like literally can be like oh, there it goes.

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Krishona L Martinson: I mean, there's surface runoff. And then, just, you know, leaching through the soil horizon which you want. But nitrogen is just really mobile. And it's yeah. You want to be aware of just of just runoff.

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Krishona L Martinson: So what we what we you know you could fertilize on a Monday morning. And if you do have a half inch of gentle rain, you know, on Tuesday morning, if you go out to your pasture and see you don't see those little fertilizer pellets. I'm thinking of the man-made kind of whitish, pinkish, reddish, you know, little fertilizer pellets.

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Krishona L Martinson: You could in theory start grazing if your pasture was ready right? We just don't want accidental ingestion. It's not like we have to fertilize. Wait a number of days and then re-graze right? It is just we don't want to physically see the fertilizer. So once that happens, once it gets, once it gets absorbed into the soil, we can start grazing. If our pasture is ready.

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Kris Hiney: Awesome.

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Kris Hiney: Okay? And so I think that provides a lot of guidance. And remember, I think that's always an important one on the herbicides and fertilizers. You really have to know application rates, and, like.

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Kris Hiney: understand the directions, correct.

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Krishona L Martinson: Yes, and with the herbicide

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Krishona L Martinson: I you have to read the label you have ideally, you would read it before you buy it to make sure that it is going to control the weeds that are in your pasture, and that it works for your system that you have, and then

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Krishona L Martinson: hopefully, everyone does it before they apply it, reads the label, you know, herbicides are labeled for a site, a pasture, a cornfield, an apple orchard, a lawn. So if your site is not a pasture on that label, you cannot apply it. That is also why there isn't grazing restrictions on herbicides you use for your lawn because your lawn is not grazed

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Krishona L Martinson: right? So

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Krishona L Martinson: the instructions, and then those safety procedures that involve livestock are included on products that are labeled for pastures and hay fields. So those harvest restrictions and those grazing restrictions that we always look for are only going to be included on herbicides labeled for a pasture and a hay field.

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Kris Hiney: Okay, very, very good advice. And that's also why you need to make your fences are good, right? Because otherwise they like come busting in and be like.

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Kris Hiney: Hey, here I am.

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Krishona L Martinson: Yes, Kris, the grass is always greener.

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Kris Hiney: Trust me. It has happened where I'm like. Oh, apparently you like tulips. Huh! You dirty little bugger!

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Krishona L Martinson: Like, why would they eat that? But anyways they do.

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Kris Hiney: Okay.

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Kris Hiney: So I know we, we've talked about all the things that people should be doing to get the pasture ready. And then we briefly mentioned that the horses are eagerly awaiting the return to Green right? So right now, my horses in the dry lot, there's a few little sprigs that even though it's a dry lot like it'll still grow tiny, tiny grasses, and that's all they want to do right now is like, let's eat a quarter inch of grass like

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Kris Hiney: really dude. But, anyhow, so let's talk about it. And I want to kind of do this in 2 fold right? Because there's a group of people that

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Kris Hiney: like I do, but because I want to make sure that we don't overgraze the pasture in the winter and destroy it. I lock them up right? So when the pastures dormant, they're locked up, we let the pasture kind of get going before we let them back out. But there's some people that that is just freestyle all the time. So let's talk about maybe those 2 groups, and how we approach introducing grass back into their lives.

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Krishona L Martinson: You know. That's a great question, Kris, and

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Krishona L Martinson: it really is about managing risk, because I hear the same. You know arguments. We have people that keep their horses in a dry lot and do the slow acclimation to spring grazing. And then we have people that says, for 50 years I've just had one big open field, and the horses acclimate themselves as the grass emerges.

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Krishona L Martinson: Now, the letting the horses acclimate themselves is really a much riskier proposition to both the horse, but also the pasture.

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Krishona L Martinson: So

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Krishona L Martinson: Some of the downsides of letting a horse acclimate themselves is just like you mentioned. Horses naturally like to eat things that are less mature. So those little sprigs of grass that are coming up, they are going to repeatedly go to those areas and eat that in a pasture the problem is coming out of a dormant season. Winter is a dormant season.

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Krishona L Martinson: The plants are relying on their root, their carbohydrate root reserves to emerge. They don't have a leaf area to capture the sunlight. So we really want to allow those grasses to get up, though this is cool season. Grass, Kris. I know you have warm season grasses. That is a different ball of wax.

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Krishona L Martinson: I'm going to talk just about cool season grasses, because that is where my expertise lie. So cool. Season grasses, orchard grass, brome grass, Kentucky bluegrass, timothy.

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Krishona L Martinson: so on.

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Krishona L Martinson: So in the spring, when these are emerging, they're relying on the root, reserves to emerge up through, there to start growing again. If we have a horse that is constantly removing that green material, what happens is over time those root reserves become depleted, and then without root, reserves that plant will actually die. And then what grows in its place?

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Krishona L Martinson: We need seeds absolutely so. If we allow those grasses to grow up to about 6 inches, we allow them the leaves to take over producing photosynthesis. We allow some of those root reserves to be what is the word not repleted.

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Kris Hiney: Replenished?

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Krishona L Martinson: Thank you, Kris. We allow those roots to be replenished, and we have a healthy root system, which means we have a healthy pasture plant, so that waiting is equally important for the pasture as it is for the horse.

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Krishona L Martinson: So, Kris, you and I both know that whenever we change a horse's diet, whether it is even grass hay from 1st cutting to our next cutting of grass hay. We want to ideally do that slowly over a 10 to 14 day time period.

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Krishona L Martinson: The same thing is true with the pasture. Now some people will say, Well, the horses just naturally eat a little bit every day in the pasture. You and I both know that horses love pasture over hay.

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Krishona L Martinson: so if you are feeding hay, even though there might be hay in the feeder, and they are just left to their own devices on a large pasture. They are not going to go after that hay. They are going to just go after that grass which is going to deplete those reserves, but also lead to probably more grass ingestion than we are anticipating.

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Krishona L Martinson: and that could lead to digestive upset.

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Krishona L Martinson: So it's about managing risk. It is less risky to have them in a dry lot and slowly acclimate them

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Krishona L Martinson: to then versus just opening the gate, and having it be a free for all. Whatever happens, happens.

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Kris Hiney: I think you know, when I'm thinking about why I do it in in minimizing risk for  my purposes. I don't have horses that fall into the huge risk category other than I have a silly little pony right now, and he does.

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Kris Hiney: But you're right. It's trying to protect the grass right? So I literally it's locked. They're locked up for the grass's sake, and not necessarily the horse's sake, but that's because I intend to in the summer. I intend to not feed them.

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Krishona L Martinson: Oh!

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Kris Hiney: So I approach it as if I'm going to use my pasture for their nutrition. Then, yeah, they're going to get hay for part of the year, and hay the other part or grass the other part of the year, whereas for some people they're just going to intend to feed hay year round right? And let the horse kind of do what they do. But a lot of those pastures, in my experience

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Kris Hiney: have a lot of really tight close to the ground, and then the latrine areas and things like that, and you can't count them as pasture right.

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Krishona L Martinson: Yeah, absolutely. You know, pastures are managed. So what you are doing, Kris, you are managing that pasture for optimum grass growth, and somebody that just lets the gate open. You essentially, just have a really, really large exercise lot.

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Krishona L Martinson: And and that's.

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Kris Hiney: Fine, right? Right, I mean, and that's fine. But.

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Krishona L Martinson: If it depends on what your goal. If you just want your horses out and about and seeing them out in the pasture, and you don't really care about the grass, and you plan to feed hay year round. Then you can maybe take that risk with the grass. But you're still being more risky with your horse just acclimating to that spring pasture, whereas, if your goal is the least amount of risk and the least amount of bad things happening to your horse, and having the most productive pasture, you would acclimate them slowly.

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Kris Hiney: Gotcha.

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Kris Hiney: and that's, you know, part of that whole, you know. Why we recommend rotational grazing again is also like, that's so you can increase press for productivity. The easiest thing to do is have one pasture, one gate. There you go, but then you've got to accept. I guess the consequences.

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Krishona L Martinson: And and you know I I do want. I mean.

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Krishona L Martinson: I do want to put it out there. Pasture management is work, but baling hay is also work, but in the calculations we have done, pasture is still about a 3rd of the cost of buying hay. So even if you're fertilizing and mowing and controlling weeds and just putting up fence. And you know that

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Krishona L Martinson: just all of the things that are inherent to pasture management, the cost is still about the 3, rd you know still about a 3rd compared to buying and feeding hay.

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Krishona L Martinson: So I don't know if you've ever explored costs, you know, in Oklahoma, Chris. Or if you think that's an appropriate kind of range for the cost of pasture compared to hay down South.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah, I would say, our forage tends to be a little bit more spendy than yours.

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Kris Hiney: So, to be quite honest. So our price per that 50 pound bale tends to be a little higher. So you Northerners get some sticker shock when you come down here.

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Krishona L Martinson: We sure do, or we just bring some hay with us? Right? Buffer the yeah, yeah.

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Kris Hiney: No, no, I get it. So. We always do this. And you're like the expert at this. So the the rule of thumb, or if there's a thumb, or a finger, or any general mitten rule that you want to apply on turning them out. No, after the grass is healthy, right? So we don't get like yay, baby grass. Here the horse comes. We're still talking horse pastures, ready to go now the horse gets to eat it? What do we do?

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Krishona L Martinson: Yep. So again, we want those cool season grasses to be about 6 inches tall. I think warm season grasses can be a little bit shorter, Chris, because they tend. You know they have a different growth parameters. But we want to start on day one like you said we're ready to graze 15 min.

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Krishona L Martinson: I understand they are going to run tail in the air, nose of flaring, you know, booking around the pasture. So again, let's have it be dry. So we have the least amount of hoof.

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Krishona L Martinson: you know, divots and destruction

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Krishona L Martinson: 15 min. We're gonna add 15 min each day until we hit 5 h. So that means day, 1 15 min. Then we chase them around for 15 min to get it back in

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Krishona L Martinson: day 2 is 30 min, day, 4 is 45 min day, 5 is an hour, and we do that until we hit 5 h. Then we can allow continuous grazing. If we have the pasture. And really all that does is an easy way to allow us to get that

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Krishona L Martinson: for that 10 ish 14 day acclimation phase, to let your horse's gut microbiome adjust to the new forage source.

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Kris Hiney: And in in your experience. Is there scientific data? At what inflection point will they allow you to bring them back in.

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Krishona L Martinson: I can tell you. It's not 15 min as long.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah, I think I found that it's like 45 min to an hour that they will come to the shake of the grain. But before then they're like, No, no.

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Krishona L Martinson: So there, there is some chasing involved and strategic feeding, and my horses just get ration balancer, you know, once a day, and they do really love that. But there is some strategic, you know, feeding of the ration balancer to get them to come back in on those 1st few days.

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Kris Hiney: Yes, I I do the same thing, but the nice thing is like they don't know that I was not intending to give them as much. I'm still

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Kris Hiney: how far it is.

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Kris Hiney: That may be a little mean, but hey.

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Krishona L Martinson: No.

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Kris Hiney: Okay any other final tips about your spring pasture preparedness that we need to think about.

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Krishona L Martinson: Nope, I just think that you know, being patient and waiting for the grass to grow is probably the hardest thing for the vast majority of people, so I would just, you know, encourage you to be patient and to be strong. Don't look into their little puppy dog eyes.

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Kris Hiney: I get it I get it, and I'll give a shout out to those of you that live down south here. This is also fire season. So eyes always pay attention to your fire. Trackers have an evacuation plan, perhaps have a place that horses can go where there's no grass whatsoever to minimize fire risk if it's getting close to you. So yeah, if you need to know more about that, talk to me and we'll hook you up getting ready for fire season.

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Krishona L Martinson: Yeah, I'm sorry to hear that, Kris.

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Kris Hiney: alright. Well, again I appreciate it, and I'm sure you're gonna be excited when you start to see a little green in your neck of the woods as well. Or, again, take that short drive down I. 35. I'll come, show you some.

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Krishona L Martinson: Well, you know, Chris, if you ever see a big horse trailer pull in with some living quarters, just give me a plugin, and I can, you know, just bum off your Wi-fi, and we can rule the world from Oklahoma.

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Kris Hiney: We got you covered so well. Thank you again, Dr. Martinson, as always, you are the big pool of knowledge on horse pastures, and appreciate your time with us today. So this has been another episode of our tech box talk horse stories with a purpose. Thanks.

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Kris Hiney: Okay.