OklahomaHorses Magazine September 2020

18 OklahomaHorses • September/October 2020 worse, a lack of any management technique at all. It is important that the horse owner identifies which foraging patterns and, thus, management system are most applicable to his or her scenario. Grazing patterns of free-ranging horses versus pastured or restricted grazing horses differ greatly. For example, information gathered on feeding behavior in feral horses which routinely travel multiple miles per day will differ compared to horses which are confined to either large pastures or small paddocks. Horses which are confined to traditional pastures prefer to graze in a pattern that is typically referred to as roughs and lawns, or “patch grazing.” When looking at a typical pasture that is not intensely managed, you will see some areas where the foliage is closely cropped to the ground, “the lawns,” and other areas which appear to be much longer in growth, “the roughs.” To a casual observer, it may appear the pasture contains adequate forage, yet the horses confined therein may actually be losing body condition due to an inadequate intake of nutrients. This is all too common in pastures with little to no management. Horses will continue to graze these lawn areas to the point the vegetation has lost the ability to recover and regrow. So while an owner may think a pasture has plenty of grass available, from the horse’s perspective, it may not. This behavior, while it may not seem rational to a human, does match with the overall physiology of the horse. Shorter grasses are less mature; thus, they have a higher nutritive value. They have a higher digestibility, more protein and may even be higher in some vitamins and minerals. Despite the fact that more overall feed may be available to the horse in areas with taller, more mature plants, a horse will seek out these shorter, more nutritious plants. The selective grazing pattern may be an evolutionary advantage for this hind gut fermenting species, which needs a higher protein quality than do ruminants. This is not all that dissimilar to the foraging patterns of other large herbivores, but horses seem to take it to an extreme. Horses, with their incisors, are much more capable of grazing grasses closer to the ground and can intensify this selection pressure on short grasses. Confined horses will typically graze in a pattern called “patch grazing.” “The roughs”