You own a horse, you own or rent your land, but how do you test horse pasture soil using scientific analysis, and why would improving the soil actually matter for your horse?
Why do you need to test horse pasture soil?
A delicate balance exists between the minerals in the soil, the micro-organisms and other life that live in it, and the roots of the grass your horse eats.
When soil isn’t fed what it needs, the environment your horse grazes on becomes unhealthy. When the soil is unhealthy, the microbes and organisms living in it become unhealthy too.
Once this balance is disrupted, plant roots can no longer take up what they need. That shortfall passes directly into the nutrient balance of the grass your horse eats.
What is healthy soil and how does it affect horses?
A single handful of soil contains more living organisms than there are humans on the planet. Millions of life forms live in that handful, many of which don’t even have names yet.
So rather than seeing the soil your horse walks on as just a medium for anchoring plants, it’s worth seeing it as the foundation of your horse’s health.
Soil needs looking after. It needs tending, and the way to do this is to feed it, and the huge community of organisms living in it, what they need.
Each field’s soil will be different. This is partly down to geography, but mostly down to how the land has been used and cared for over time. Testing your specific soil is the only way to know what it actually needs.
How does healthy soil create healthy horses?
Healthy soil supports the right micro-organisms, which support the right growth of healthy grass.
Healthy grass means healthy horses, who get the right amount of minerals, the right amount of protein, and the right amount of sugar and starch. Healthy grass also produces better phytonutrients, and these support glowing, resilient health.
How does unhealthy soil affect horse health?
Unhealthy soil supports the wrong micro-organisms, which affects the health of the grass growing on it.
Unhealthy grass means unhealthy horses. They miss out on the right amount of minerals and quality protein, and are instead exposed to stressed grass that’s high in sugar and starch.
Stressed, unhealthy grass also fails to produce the range of phytonutrients needed to support and maintain a healthy animal.
Most horse pasture is compacted and unhealthy. This is usually due to the removal of droppings and a lack of applications to balance the soil’s mineral profile.
Expert Perspective
Feed the soil, and let the soil feed the plant.
Neal Kinsey
Founder, Kinsey Agricultural Services, and author of Hands-On Agronomy
Only healthy soil grows healthy grass.
A complex relationship exists between soil micro-organisms and the plants grown on that soil, and disrupting it affects every animal grazing there.
Land management techniques such as tracks and strip grazing can contribute to soil compaction. Poaching in winter affects drainage and the soil’s ability to support life.
Where land is compacted in summer and poached in winter, the grass that grows on it is likely to be higher in sugar, starch, iron and manganese.
When to test horse pasture soil
If you own your land or you will be renting a horse field for several years then this is when you can change the health of the soil and change the health of the grass.
A soil test will tell you what your soil needs to be healthy and grow healthy grass for your horse to eat. You should carry out a soil analysis if you want to know what to apply to your land to improve the health of your grass.
A soil test cannot tell you what to feed your horse, what vitamins and minerals your horse needs or the levels of other nutrients like sugar, starch or protein. A soil test looks at the health of your soil.
Expert Perspective
The quality of our food determines, in large part, the quality of our lives.
Dr Weston A. Price
Author of Nutrition and Physical Degeneration (1939)
Correctly fueling your horse is essential for resilient health, soundness and longevity. A car, when it breaks, needs new parts which are easy to replace. A horse constantly needs to repair, replace and in the case of performance horses and young horses, build their bodies. A car uses petrol or diesel as fuel your horse uses the nutrition in healthy grass. Healthy grass can only be grown on healthy soil.
If you keep your horse on a livery yard then a test of horse pasture soil will not be something to choose as you need to be able to put applications on the land to balance the mineral content of the soil.
You can test horse pasture soil at any time of the year. Testing in late winter or early spring will enable you to order the applications of minerals for spreading in spring. Testing soil in late spring, early summer will allow you to order the applications of minerals for spreading in late summer, early autumn.
Usually spreading mineral applications to improve soil is difficult once the late autumn and winter rains arrive as machinery will get stuck or churn up the land.
When do I need a forage test of horse hay and grass rather than a soil test?
A forage test will tell you what your horse needs to maintain and support good health. You should carry out forage analysis of grass, hay or haylage if you want to know what to feed your horse to achieve optimum health starting with the forage your horse eats.
A test of hay, haylage or grass can tell you what to feed your horse. These tests can tell you exactly what vitamins and minerals your horse needs or whether the levels of other nutrients like sugar, starch or protein are suitable for your horse. Forage testing will allow you to optimise your horse’s diet and specifically supplement only the nutrients your horse needs to complement the grass, hay or haylage eaten.
How to test horse pasture soil
The Forageplus soil test looks at the balance of minerals in the soil, and is particularly suited to improving pasture for horses. It isn’t carried out by conventional agronomists, but is highly effective at optimising individual pastures for the healthy growth of horse-suitable grass.
There are different ways to test soil. Choosing the right method matters, because it determines whether your soil ends up supporting low sugar, good protein grass with a balanced mineral profile.
Using an RB209 soil testing method
Case Study
What happened when we used conventional testing
The conventional way to test horse pasture soil uses testing values from RB209, a document produced by DEFRA. At Forageplus, we haven’t found conventional soil sampling, or the one-size-fits-all approach to fertiliser application, to be effective for horse pasture.
When we used conventional methods on our own land, they failed to reduce the very high levels of manganese present in our soil. Protein quality in the forage we made was so affected that our horses developed poor muscling and hoof cracks.
This happens because conventional methods assign each mineral an index rating based on the quantity found in a sample.
The index numbers are based on a weak plant root, rather than a healthy one, and its needs from soil water. From the outset, this approach takes its figures from an unhealthy baseline, and it ignores the impact of the soil’s micro-biome on plant health entirely. This unhealthy baseline is used simply because it’s the norm under conventional systems.
The index is simplified further by linking it to a wide range of readings for each mineral, shown in the table below.
Soil Index System
| Index | Phosphorous (P) Grassland |
Phosphorous (P) Tillage Crop |
Potassium (K) All Crops |
Magnesium (Mg) All Crops |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0 – 3.0 | 0 – 3.0 | 0 – 50 | 0 – 25 |
| 2 | 3.1 – 5.0 | 3.1 – 6.0 | 51 – 100 | 26 – 50 |
| 3 | 5.1 – 8.0 | 6.1 – 10.0 | 101 – 150 | 51 – 100 |
| 4 | > 8.0 | > 10.0 | > 150 | > 100 |
Index 3 is the target index for soil P, K and Mg (Morgan’s soil test)
The RB209 system then works out how much of the three major minerals to apply, in a calculation based on winter rainfall, residual soil nitrogen, farmyard manure spread, and the crop being grown.
It was never designed with horse pasture in mind. Horse pasture is typically highly compacted and heavily compromised by overgrazing, conditions RB209 doesn’t account for. Nor does it consider the gap between what’s currently in the soil and what would produce the healthiest possible soil micro-organisms.
The conventional system starts and finishes with the commercial interests of fertiliser producers. The goal is a fast-growing, lush crop, but speed of growth makes that crop weak, and a weak crop is vulnerable to fungus, pests and bacteria. This is why modern farming relies so heavily on spraying. In this system, soil is treated as little more than a physical rooting facility.
Our Method
The Forageplus Soil Testing Method
Our approach to soil testing is built on the work of Dr William Albrecht, Neal Kinsey, and, by extension, Dr Weston A. Price, three figures whose combined research forms the foundation of how we test and improve horse pasture today.
The Minds Behind the Method
Dr William Albrecht
Neal Kinsey
Dr Weston A. Price
Dr William Albrecht
Dr William Albrecht was chairman of the Department of Soils at the University of Missouri from the late 1930s until 1959, and one of the most respected soil scientists of the twentieth century.
In a 1947 study, Albrecht examined the dental records of 70,000 US sailors and found that the health of their teeth was linked to the health of the soil in their home regions.
Over four decades of research, his central finding was that soil health depends on a full balance of minerals, not just nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, but also calcium, magnesium, sulfur, boron, zinc, copper, iron and manganese. Getting this balance right, rather than simply adding more fertiliser, is what produces genuinely nutritious crops.
Neal Kinsey
Neal Kinsey trained directly under Albrecht and became, in the words of one industry publication, “the last and most devoted student of Dr Albrecht.” He carried the method forward, teaching and refining it directly after Albrecht’s death.
Since the 1970s, Kinsey has advised growers in more than 70 countries, and his book Hands-On Agronomy remains the standard practical reference for the method.
Price asked why some populations were healthier than others. Albrecht’s answer, in large part, traced back to the soil their food was grown in.
The Weston A. Price connection
Albrecht’s work is often discussed alongside that of Dr Weston A. Price, the dentist and researcher best known for Nutrition and Physical Degeneration (1939). Price’s book examined why traditional diets produced far better dental and physical health than modern, industrially processed ones.
The two men were contemporaries and collaborators. Albrecht wrote the foreword to the 1970 edition of Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, served on the board of the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation, and contributed a chapter titled “Food is Fabricated Soil Fertility” to the book’s second edition.
One nutrition foundation has put the parallel simply: Albrecht’s contribution to soil fertility mirrors Price’s contribution to nutrition.
This is the same principle behind the Forageplus method: testing and correcting soil for horse pasture, rather than only testing the resulting hay or grass. Your horse’s nutrition is only ever as good as the ground it started from.
How the Forageplus method works
Our soil test, built on this Albrecht-Kinsey foundation, is far more precise and better suited to horse pasture than conventional testing. It starts from the optimum soil health, so the plants grown in it can express their full potential.
Balancing the major minerals is the first and most important consideration, calculated from Professor Albrecht’s original work. This looks at the holding capacity of each individual soil, a figure entirely missing from the RB209 indexing system.
Without holding capacity information, you don’t know your soil’s true potential. Think of your soil as a battery. Different sized batteries need different amounts of charging to reach full power.
Holding capacity tells you how big a battery your soil is. Soils with a small holding capacity need small amounts of minerals to reach their potential. Soils with a large holding capacity need larger amounts to reach the same balance.
Fertile soils have a greater mineral holding capacity than infertile ones, which is where the conventional RB209 approach falls down immediately. Where soil is poorer, the correct strategy is to apply certain minerals little and often, to maximise both yield and the nutritional value of the crop.
Three decades of dedicated research and practical application, from soil to plant to animal, underpin every Forageplus soil analysis. It’s a foundation the conventional, one-size-fits-all approach was never built to match.
Getting the correct ratio of minerals in the soil in horse pasture
Conventional soil testing also places no real importance on the correct ratios between minerals, and these ratios differ depending on soil type.
Getting the ratio right for your specific soil affects its workability and texture, which in turn affects whether your land drains well or becomes waterlogged. Incorrect mineral ratios, combined with compaction, are a major problem for horse owners.
Compacted land typically produces grass that’s high in iron and manganese. These two antagonist minerals block the uptake of other minerals that are already commonly deficient in a horse’s diet, creating both frank and relative deficiencies.
Getting the pH of horse pasture soil correct
Conventional soil reports place heavy emphasis on correcting pH with lime, often to the exclusion of everything else.
Magnesium has 1.6 times the influence of calcium and pH combined, yet it’s generally ignored when balancing soil nutrients.
If you get the balance of the major minerals right, using Albrecht’s proportions, pH automatically corrects itself to the optimum 6.5. Calcium and magnesium, the two primary minerals to balance, drive this correction, with potassium and sodium also playing a role.
What are the benefits of the correct soil test?
Very few agronomists or laboratories in the world practise this type of soil reporting, and even fewer apply it specifically to horse pasture.
Getting the mineral balance in your soil correct, and improving the health of your grass, has a direct effect on your horse’s health.
The Core Difference
Two approaches, two starting points
RB209
- Starts from a weak plant’s minimum needs
- Standardised fertiliser application
- Ignores individual soil holding capacity
- Treats soil as a growing medium to top up
Albrecht-Kinsey
- Starts from a healthy plant’s full potential
- Precise, soil-specific mineral balance
- Measures each soil’s individual holding capacity
- Treats soil as a living system to bring into balance
For horse pasture specifically, where compaction, overgrazing and antagonist minerals like iron and manganese are already common problems, that distinction has a direct, measurable effect on the protein quality and mineral balance of the grass your horse eats.
For horse pasture specifically, where compaction, overgrazing and antagonist minerals like iron and manganese are already common problems, that distinction has a direct, measurable effect on the protein quality and mineral balance of the grass your horse eats.
Get the applications to your soil right, based on plant root health rather than starting from a position of weakness, and you’ll get optimum, nutritious grass growth that transfers directly to your horse. In our view, this can’t be achieved through the conventional soil report approach.
Get Started
How do I use the Forageplus Soil Testing Method?
Testing your horse pasture soil with Forageplus is straightforward. Here’s how it works:
Order a Forageplus Albrecht/Kinsey soil analysis
Wait for us to send you the kit, with full instructions on taking a representative sample
Take your sample following those instructions
Send the sample back to Forageplus in the post
Receive your report, either by email or in your account area under downloads (you’ll need to create an account on the website to access this)
Apply the results. Follow our application suggestions and rates, order what you need from your local agricultural supplier, and apply it to your land
Recommended Analysis
Soil Analysis for Horse Pasture
A full soil report built on the Albrecht method, covering 16 key elements including CEC, base exchange percentages, major minerals and trace elements. Get clear, actionable guidance on exactly what to apply, and when.
- ✓ Full report based on the William Albrecht Method
- ✓ Clear guidance on what to apply and when
- ✓ Improve soil, grass and horse health together
Not sure how to take an accurate sample? Getting a representative sample is essential for reliable results. Read our full guide to taking effective soil samples →
