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 Elite Veteran
Posts: 1117
 
Location: MI | I apologize this is long but I really appreciate any input. Other type-A planners out there will understand 
We're planning our horse layout on our new house/property we just bought (yay!). Would like to have two pasture areas to rotate grazing, but of course, there's pros/cons with everything. We're building a 12' x 24' building for hay storage in one half and horse run-in the other side. The fence will split it in half so hay storage is on outside of fence & more accessible.
My whole life we've just had one pasture so I don't have personal experience with having multiple grazing areas. Is it really the cat's pajamas? or nice, but not really worth the extra trouble?
Planning on about 2 acres total for pasture. Right now just have one horse - but probably another within a couple years.
1) split the pasture in half with fence and put sliding doors on the east & west sides of run-in so I could shut a door & confine horse to one half of pasture. (ex: shut door on west side and horse grazes on east half of pasture while we let west side grass grow, then occassionally switch).
PROS: flexibility, more efficient grazing rotation / management.
CONS: more things to potentially break/have issues with (sliding doors always are pesky); wind tyipcally comes from west so depending on weather, a little leary about how often I'd actually open the west door (although PRO is I could open both doors to get a nice breeze .. but - defeats the purpose of rotating grazing. unless i can rig up something to stop her from going through but maintain breeze..UGH!)
2) Leave the barn a simple run-in with no sliding doors and have a section of pasture on the south end that is accessible via a gate. Occassionally open gate and let her graze out there.
PROS: the ole "KISS: keep it stimple stupid" LOL .. less things to break/cause headache; less cost/construction time on barn
CONS: Won't be able to ever give the primary pasture a true break b/c water & shelter will be up there and I don't want to leave her without shelter.
3) Fence a couple acres, build run-in barn, water, and call it good. Keep weeds brush-hogged and don't worry about rotating pastures.
Probably over thinking it but it's our first place of our own and we want to do things right the first time and not want to change a bunch of things 3 years from now. 
PS -- Please don't judge my rudamentary sketch as being biased .. was on a time crunch HAHA!
Edited by KDS 2017-06-14 2:01 PM
 (rsz_sliding_doors_run-in.jpg)
 (rotate grazing simpler.jpg)
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 rsz_sliding_doors_run-in.jpg (44KB - 242 downloads)
rotate grazing simpler.jpg (26KB - 198 downloads)
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 Some Kind of Trouble
Posts: 4430
 
| I have dry lots with shelter that have access to 2 seperate pastures... what about making one dry lot attached to your barn with two access gates off the dry lot and just open whichever you want them to graze? Also gives you the sometimes needed option of keeping one penned up. |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 629
| I would personally go with your first option. Both look to allow access to the barn (shelter/water) and provide equal space.
With 2 acres, and potentially 2 horses, you will benefit from being able to rotate. Also, if I were thinking down the line of another horse, what if they don't get along? It looks like it'd be much easier to allow them the comfort of being able to see each other, without kill each other, in the first scenario as well.
Also, just my two cents. Not sure where your horse is kept now. Before I had my 3 horses at my own place, they were boarded with 40 other horses (not all in one pasture, but the point is, lots of other horses around.) I only hauled them together to horse shows and had no problems whatsoever. Within a month of putting them all together at our new place, they were all stuck to each other like glue. I take one out of the pasture gate and they are hollering and carrying on until they are returned. Hauled to shows together, and they scream their heads off when one rides away the whole time until it comes back. (Thankfully they behave under saddle and don't holler, but the whoever is at the trailer just carries on and on. All this to say. Maybe theres some way I could have prevented this, but just didnt know it at the time. Either way. Whenever we move from where we are now, EVERYTHING will be in their OWN pasture/lot and they will have to learn to DEAL. |
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Married to a Louie Lover
Posts: 3303
| Agree with building a dry lot around the barn and controlling pasture access with gates.
Having a smaller pen will be beneficial in the winter when you just want to feed hay and don't want them out on snow and ice (didn't see where you're from so maybe I'm assuming the crappy winter weather). And also if in the event of drought you need to pull them off dying pasture altogether.
Yes, rotational grazing is the bees knees. When we were running about 30 cow/calf pairs we rotated pastures every 3-4 days. |
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Duct Tape Bikini Girl
Posts: 2554
| Just a reminder to think about shade for your horses. My stalls and runs are on the east side of my barn. This way, the building itself shades the runs in the heat of the day and stalls do not get hot.
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 Money Eating Baggage Owner
Posts: 9586
Location: Phoenix | luckyjo - 2017-06-15 5:31 AM Just a reminder to think about shade for your horses. My stalls and runs are on the east side of my barn. This way, the building itself shades the runs in the heat of the day and stalls do not get hot.
This! |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1117
Location: MI | Thanks everyone, I appreciate the input! |
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 Cotton Balls are the Devil
Posts: 1271
Location: My own little world! | Hard to tell from your drawing, but you might want to consider making you hay storage area with an open side or with a larger gate to make getting hay stacked easier.
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 Expert
Posts: 3815
Location: The best kept secret in TX | Cashbaby - 2017-06-16 9:57 AM Hard to tell from your drawing, but you might want to consider making you hay storage area with an open side or with a larger gate to make getting hay stacked easier.
This also allows the barn to have a breeze blow through without the hay getting soaked when it rains.
Moldy hay is terrible!  |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1117
Location: MI | Things have unfrotunately changed a bit because cost of materials for the 12x24' identical to a friend's I was going to build have went up from $1,800 to $2,488, so I actually found a new 12x16' already built run-in that was sitting along side the road (that I drive by everyday... fate haha). Picking it up 9am tomorrow whoo hooo! They had it listed for $2,200 but wanted it gone so they accepted $1,500. Anyway, that slightly changes my options of building one with doors on the east & west sides, BUT i could possibly adapt it and add them.
It's a bit smaller than I'd wanted, but I'm now thinking I could build a lean-to on the end of it to store hay. And I agree with having it be rain-proof but accessible - need to draw something up. We're in Michigan so need to have it snow proof as well .. wind/snow usually comes from the west/north but I'd hate to leave the east side open then get a bizarre storm and have snow drift into it. Since we did save money on the shelter maybe I can justify spending a bit more on the hay storage add-on 
I'm also going to sketch up an option with having a smaller lot around the run-in with two pastures to rotate.. I hadn't thought of that but it sounds promising!
Edited by KDS 2017-06-16 12:03 PM
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 1117
Location: MI | Hopefully this pic shows up okay but the dry lot idea is genius!  And the wonderful thing is I can put up the outside fence to get her home, and then put up the additional fences inside to separate them out- doesn't have to happen immediately. Gosh it feels good to plan and figure things out. Open to any input still obviously, and I'll try to update this once we get some things done in case any in the future are in the same situation.
Waiting for the neighbor to get the hay field cut where all this is going, so I have a few days before I can start installing fence.
 (rsz_dry_lot_w_2_pastures_westgate.jpg)
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rsz_dry_lot_w_2_pastures_westgate.jpg (23KB - 202 downloads)
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