What are the best times to allow grazing?
What we know about grass laminitis is that there is a sugar called fructans in pasture grasses. Excessive ingestion of fructans is thought to cause laminitis in some horses. The level of fructans is excessively high levels in the spring and fall of the year, when we have cold nights and warm days with bright sunshine. In early spring, when we have very cold nights, level of fructans are probably high in the plants all day long because they haven’t been utilized during the night. This is due to the plants being in a very low metabolic state due to the cold temperatures. In the latter part of spring, when we start to have warmer nights, the safest time of day to allow grazing would be in the afternoon and the early morning hours. In mid-summer after the plants have stopped flowering, in this stage of its growth the plant is the safest for the horse to eat. In the fall when the colder nights return and the days are still warm and sunny, even after a light frost the fructan levels can be v
