Question
My 30-year-old Connemara pony has had recurrent bouts of laminitis. With good hoof care and careful grazing management, she hasn’t had a flare-up in over a year. I’ve heard laminitis-prone horses should be removed from grass after the first frost. At what point after the first frost is it safe to resume her normal turnout schedule? Do I need to wait a couple weeks? Does the type of grass matter?
Answer
Taking laminitis-prone ponies and horses off of grass after the first frost is specifically important for those grazing fescue pastures, as fescue is a cool-season perennial that can dramatically increase sugar content after a frost, much like brussel sprouts. Management strategies include being especially cognizant of freezing nighttime temperatures coupled with warm days, well over 40o F (4o C), and keeping founder-prone horses off grass at these times.
Modern fescue varieties have been selected to maintain growth in cooler temperatures, thus improving the quality of pastures for cattle during winter months. While this can help ease hay-feeding costs in the winter for most horses, it is not the ideal pasture for laminitic horses.
Other grasses are pretty safe after frost, especially the warm-season grasses like Bermuda that go dormant with the onset of cold weather. Once grass goes dormant and stops growing, it no longer accumulates sugars. Particularly, if the grass turns brown, it is reasonably safe to turn out horses because the forage won’t be actively producing sugars.
