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Herbicidal Advantage

As a horse owner, you keep a close eye on your pasture to ensure that your horses will forage for high quality, nutritious, and also healthy feed. Obviously you will have the occasional unwanted plants and weeds that grow up among the grasses and red clover that you might have specifically sown for your horses.
Yet did you know that weeds have little if any nutritional value for your horses? Some of them may even be poisonous and cause severe problems for your animals if they are ingested, especially in larger quantities. In addition to the foregoing, weeds will also eventually choke out the desired grasses and legumes that you have planted by competing for soil nutrients, moisture and even sunlight.

It has long been held that a healthy stand will provide the single best defense against weeds that you could have, and any horse owner will be wise to adequately
fertilize pastures with the key ingredients they need to keep the grass healthy and thriving. Yet there is the chance that even the best looked after pasture suddenly finds itself overrun by weeds, and when this happens to you, only back-breaking labor or wisely applied herbicides will restore your pastures to their original status.

Unless you want to go ahead and pull every single weed you can find, you will find that there is a wide variety of herbicides that are specifically formulated for the use in pastures. Many of them are created with the environment in mind, and will not add any poisons to your lakes, rivers, and other bodies of water during a run off. Read the back of the bags to ensure that you are purchasing the correct herbicide for the job. Some work better on one kind of weed, while others are specifically manufactured to tackle a different one. Thus, you may not be able to battle musk thistle with just any herbicide. The same also holds true for chickweed and wild carrot.

Some herbicides will have stringent grazing restrictions that will require you to keep your horses off the pasture for about one to two weeks. Other compounds specifically state you may allow your animals back out onto the pasture after application of the compounds; this is especially important to know for lactating animals and their foals. Consider if you wish to apply your herbicide in a broad pattern or if you just need to treat some problem spots that might have come up during the last rains. Once again, the manufacturers’ labels will hold most valuable information for you.



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