Determining Pasture Quality

Entering ‘Pasture Quality’ for Accurate Diets

We all know that forage should be a key component of your horse’s diet, but not all pasture is created equally. With pasture sometimes forming the majority, if not all, of our horse’s diets, it’s important to enter pasture quality as accurately as you can in FeedXL.

Pasture quality corresponds with the amount of digestible energy, crude protein, macro minerals and vitamins your pasture is providing. Therefore, pasture quality determines what else you may (or may not) need to supply in your horse’s diet to meet their nutritional requirements.

We like to keep it simple when it comes to deciding pasture quality – by looking at colour and presence or absence of seed heads (this is basically the stage of maturity of your grass). Be sure to note that when pasture is overgrazed (less than 1 inch in height), it’s unlikely you’ll see any seed heads, therefore colour is your major guide.

So, next time you’re entering your pasture use the definitions and images below to help you determine quality.

Pasture Quality		Overgrazed
Excellent Green Actively growing Very leafy Virtually no flowers or seed heads visible
Good Green May or may not be actively growing Flowers and/or seed heads are present Plants are beginning to mature and become stemmy
Average Green to yellow or brown Most plants are stemmy and/or have visible flowers and/or seed heads present
Poor Completely brown Plants are stemmy and/or have visible seed heads present

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