Yewwww! Spring time! Weather is warming up, which means - beach 🏖️, Barbies, beers and buddies. Some of my best memories are from the warmer months of the year.
But this ain't what I am writing about today. No fun shit. Unless you, like me, find cruising on a tractor slashing, seeding, spraying and fertilising a form of fucking mediation. I mean really, I am a parent, anything that gets me on my own is legitimately cherished, and savagely protected. So me and Ol' Yella get some quality time this time of year.
Now, I know that my blog is "Utterly Unqualified", but for once, I actually have formal qualifications in something I am going to blather on about. Nothing huge, but I did actually receive an education in this. Did a school based traineeship in Agriculture - Specialising in Horse Breeding. And I started a Bachelor in Agricultural Science at the University of Queensland, but life fucking happened, so I never finished my degree.
So here we are, something I actually fucking know about. Or have read on and let the weird brain do the crunching of numbers and realisation of correlation and causal factors. Science shit basically.
Anyway, back on track.
It's that time of year y'all need to take off the trackies and put your fucking phone down, pull on your boots, sunscreen and long sleeve shirts (melanoma will kill you, folks) and service the tractor/mower/save up to pay a guy to do it for ya, cause I want you to go do some pasture maintenance.
Many of you, like me, have Horses on small acreage. Horses are pains in the ass to manage. They like short grass and leave long rank areas that are no good to nobody. Unless you are a cow or goat.
But, if like me, you exclusively run equine quadrupeds (horses), you will have a constant battle with weeds and keeping the grass happy, growing and saving you money. Cause let's get real - pasture is the cheapest fucking feed you can get. Invest in it, with time and money, and you will reap the rewards in future seasons.
You want to capitalise on this year's rains, and save yourself the fucking headache of having to hand feed horses, and make the fuckers just that tiny bit more affordable to keep? Let's see - the right way is also the cheap way. Sure it's a greater outlay initially, for fencing, equipment, fertiliser, and herbicide. But you add it up. Go on. I'll wait. Add up how much it would cost you to change to this method of pasture management against your current hand in pocket for hard feed method of keeping horses at the end of the article. You will find it's not an expense to manage your pasture right. It's a fucking investment. And a billion million times cheaper than hand feeding, any and every damn day of the week.
Righto Purds, I am down, I see the rationale, but how the fuck do I do this?
Okay, prepared for you whilst sitting on the bucket of my tractor in a paddock having a break from slashing is the: Tight-Arses Guide to Maintains Horse Pasture.
1. Rotational Graze. Seriously. Break your acreage up into paddocks. Put all the damn horses in one herd. Move them off pasture once it's at beer can height. Otherwise, let it grow and go to seed during warmer months.
2. Slash in Spring. As soon as it gets hot, shit starts growing. The best way to make grass grow is to graze it (yep! Grazing encourages growth, but only if it's done properly, overgraze a pasture and you'll fuck it. Stick to the beer can height rule. If it's shorter than that, put the hungry fucks someplace else) or cut it. Slashing in Spring also helps get a handle on the fucking weeds. If you have had some frost in winter, odds are, right now, it's either dormant or dead. But that doesn't mean that if we get rain or warm days the shit won't come back (there is loads more of the plant underground you honkys) so cut it. Slash it. Fuck you weeds, die. Cutting the tops off grass also takes it out of its reproductive stage and back into growth phase. This is what we want when it's hot and wet. It grows like buggery and outcompetes the weeds in your paddock. But, don't Slash every second minute lol. We want it to set seed for next year's pasture. So, this is why we Slash in Spring. Cut the grass low, but not too much lower than beer can height. If you cut it below this, it takes way more energy and time (which is limited in our grass growing season ending in April or thereabouts, so maximize the actual growing time bit by not cutting it too fucking short. Shoot yourself in the foot doing that) to come back and spread. Cut low enough so you can set yourself up for the next step. Also - fuck snakes. It's been proven (atleast by me) that keeping shorter grass and less shit for the fucking slimy bastards to hide in, you get less of them. Less vet bills, less paranoia with the kids playing outside and you actually get to sit down and read your fave blog with a cuppa or a rum without hand holding the little shites for every second of their lives. So yeah. Less snakes. C*nts.
3. Seed and feed after you have slashed. Yep. I am Gunna plug Tyrepower Gin Gin here, they have Reclaimer Rhodes Grass seed for $13/kg at the moment. Get in there. Get some CK88 (or do a soil test to find out what fertiliser you need) and some seed. Put it in a bucket. Drive around on your motorbike or car or walk if your place is small enough. Look for dead weed patches post frost. Or weedy patches. Or bare earth patches. Feed the chooks style throw seed and fertilizer over these patches and set yourself up for success. Reclaimer is aptly named. It's a savage grass. Weeds can't compete with it. So instead of spraying, use biological controls and fuck the weeds right in the ass. Fuck you weeds. Get a bit of Reclaimer up ya. Pitching the CK88 in with it just feeds your pasture. Throw that shit everywhere. Talk to your local ag store like Landmark or Norco about spread rates. It's not hard. Just budget x bags per xm2 or hectare. Do a wee bit of maths. Or get someone else to. Don't over fertilise cause you fuck the fish up.
4. Spot or boom spray what weeds survive the slasher. Bundaberg Regional Council has 15m boom spray trailers that are really accurate. Talk to the Land Management Officers about how much chemical to use per tank. They literally hold your hand. Hook it up behind your ute or car and boom spray your paddock for $37/day plus chemical. Or spot spray with a Selecta tank or something or even a $30 buck knap sack and go for a walk. But fuck, get on top of the little bastards now. Especially if you have just had some rain. Get em while they are actively growing and the shits will die. This is uber important. Get them now. Before they get away from you. Or you will need twice the chemical and have a billion times the headache getting rid of the shit. Spray. Now. While. It's. Actively. Growing. Not after it gets its legs under it and fucks off and takes over your paddock. But you will need to spray less if you manage your pasture right by doing the other shit too. Win/win.
5. Rotate, rotate, rotate. Move the horses often. Don't overgraze. Let the grass go to seed to help thicken your shit up for next season. Then knock the tops off - only, for the love of God, only, if it's gone rank and is obviously not growing fucking vigorously. Otherwise, leave it the fuck alone. And NOT TOO LATE IN THE SEASON. If it's March, don't fucking Slash. Who knows when it will rain next. Keep it there as insurance over winter. To protect against weed spread when the grass isn't actively growing, to protect against frost etc etc etc (I will do a winter post when it's time. Just chill) important note - definitely drag a Harrow like a few tyres chained together behind your car around the paddock once you pull the horses off the paddock you are rotating them off, to fuck up the reproductive cycle of horses parasitic worms, bonuses of this - fertiliser in horse poop form. Also bonus - take a spray tank and spray some shit.
6. Seed, spray and fertilise actively for the entire grazing season. Until April. Stay on top of it. Weeds fucking get away from you while you are scrolling Facebook. Save your money on hard feed and stay on top of the shit. Don't fucking Slash again unless it's gone rank. Or the asshole horses have left mad big lawn areas and huge jungle rank areas and you have enough growing season left to cut the tops off the rank shit to get some more growth out of it. Otherwise. Leave. It. Alone. Water it if you can irrigate. But be careful and make sure you don't drown it.
7. At the end of the growing season, leave the grass the fuck alone. Leave the tops on. You don't know when the next lot of rain is coming. So save some dry matter in the form of the long grass in case you don't get rain until fucking April. And then you got a shit growing season It's wet but the heat is going out of the air and the soil. Shit won't get much leg about it by the time the biological clock on the grass says "nap time!" And goes dormant for winter. Set yourself up to reduce the impacts of drought by maintaining your pasture better. So you aren't caught short. And have a feed bill in the hundreds of millions feeding the bastards. Or starving them and ending up on the news.
Everyone says I am lucky with my place. Fuck no. It's all been hard work. Slashing. Spraying. Seeding. Fertilising. Rotating. Fencing.
But man, now I am reaping the rewards of it. And you can too.
Go, get off the damn phone and do some fencing and slashing.
Em, X.
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