Why Weed-Free Horse Pastures Make Horses Sick

0:00 Hey everybody, welcome to the Green Cover podcast where we have really interesting conversations with some of the top regenerative practitioners and experts in the soil health industry. Join us as we learn together how we can regenerate, steward, and share God's creation for future generations.

0:18 You know, what do you do when you have a problem with the feed supply that you're getting for your animals and it's not what it used to be and it's making your animals sick? Well, you just go out and start your own company making your own feed. And that's what our guest today did. And I love that type of attitude where if you can't find the right product, then let's just go out and make it. Allison is the owner and the operator of Adarc Nutrition and she's also a Green Cover customer that we've worked with for a number of years. And she is designing custom cover crop blends for horses, which is kind of a unique niche. So Allison, welcome to the podcast.

0:59 Thank you, Keith. I'm very happy to be here. From years ago when I first started with your company, I was so excited to be part of the regenerative journey and to be able to pull this into the equine world because we really don't have a lot of it and it is so needed.

1:20 I did start in the horse feed. I am still in the horse feed. There was definitely a need. The horse feed was getting gobbled up by some big conglomerates and I had a company I was very happy with and they got bought up. And I was tired of trying to supplement and pay top dollar for feed that I still needed to supplement. And I said, I think I can do better. And my horses did so good that everyone was like, you've got to make this public. And I was like, that's not really what I thought I was going to do with my life. And Adarc was born.

1:58 That led into I wanted to educate owners on nutrition, not just sell a product. I wanted to teach them whether they bought my product or not. What are they looking at when they go to buy feed? What do their horses actually need? Do the numbers on the tag actually matter? And that led to thousands of consults. I touched thousands of animals. I went to hundreds of farms. And it was a blessing and a privilege. And I started to notice more and more horses were having metabolic symptoms situations.

2:40 Metabolic conditions of all sorts. And it was alarming because some of these originally were meant for older horses and now we were seeing them in horses as young as seven. And the pharmaceutical products aren't working. And I'm looking at my little role in this with the feed and I'm saying this is outside of what I touch right now. And along those lines, I got introduced to soil health and I got introduced to you guys at Green Cover and I tested it on my horses first. The idea of diversity and I knew that that was applicable. I knew that's how horses were designed to evolve and that's how health was restored for horses. And the results were incredible.

3:28 And I wanted to shout it from the rooftop. Of course, other people were less enthusiastic when I told them I wanted to put turnips and radishes in their horse pasture. So over the years I've definitely experimented and discovered that there is a way to bring the diversity safely into the horse's pastures and to restore the soil and to get the nutrient cycling back to take care of the erosion and also to free horses that currently owners are being told the horses have to live on a dry lot because they can no longer eat grass and I'm like there has to be a better way. We're going in the wrong direction. This is not the direction of life.

4:20 And I remember one day this memory sticks out in my mind. I was at a farm. It was a very large farm. I was there. I was assessing three metabolic horses. And I stepped outside. I was putting my final notes together. And over the years of consults, I have been gathering data. And so my data points would grow. Originally, it was mostly just to do with food. Then it started to go in more of the forage, then the pasture. Were they in a herd? Were they in a dry lot? I wanted to know, were you spraying chemicals? Does your hay...

4:54 Have weeds in it? And I was standing out and I was finishing the notes and I was looking around and one of the barn hands was spraying 24D on the fence lines. Another barn hand had just come in and had sprayed Grazon inside the pasture. The local feed store was delivering hay weed-free and the barn itself had been spraying, it was summer and the barn had been spraying the pesticides for fly control and so they were taking the horses out and spraying them with some more fly control. And I stood there and I looked around and I was like, we are not in Kansas anymore Toto.

5:44 Because I'm looking at this and I'm like, there's no there's no blossoms. One of the things I noticed that was a commonality in almost every horse farm I stepped on, there's no flowers, there, other than maybe like a hanging pot from Lowe's, the kind that kill bees when they try to drink from them, but there's no flowers. And so we have no pollinators. We have nothing to balance the scales. And so we're basically year after year diving into this void of like more chemicals and less life. And horses are very big creatures and they live on adapting and movement and diversity. And when we take that away for convenience, they suffer and they will hold for a while. But when that hold runs out, they fall off a cliff and it's usually pretty fast.

6:39 The metabolic symptoms, you know you get laminitis, you get metabolic syndrome, you get insulin resistance and they and then usually you'll have Cushings. And I looked at this and I'm walking into feed rooms and I'm seeing that the supplement shelves are overflowing. So they usually have one or two different types of feed and then they usually have eight or more shelves of supplements.

7:11 And as a nutritionist, I'm standing there and I'm looking at this and I'm saying, you know, you can't supplement life back into a broken living system.

7:23 Now, remind me again, are we talking about horses or people? Because it sounds like I mean, this is exactly what we see in society, isn't it? It's the same thing.

7:33 Yes.

7:34 Yeah. That's so many similarities. Well, there's so much there that I want to dive into and unpack here, but let's back up just a little bit. Give people just a little bit of the context about where you're based out of where you're working. How long ago was this where you had this issue with the feed and you developed your own and started Adoract? Just give us a little bit of that context and then I want to dive into a lot of the things that you've already brought up here.

8:02 I started Adterac 9 years ago and shortly before then, the feed company I've been using had gotten bought out. I already was certified for several levels of nutrition and was getting things from a local feed mill. So 9 years ago is when I decided I can do better and I wanted to make sure that I created a product that everything was inside so that people weren't having to witch doctor. And then I would say maybe three years after I encountered, I had a health crisis myself with herbicides. So this is personal on my level as well because I understand how the body stores these poisons. They go into your fatty tissue and your brain things like that. So Adterac was born in North Carolina and we have expanded. I have customers in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina.

9:11 And then I would say the soil health aspect really came in about 6 years ago and it coincided very closely with my health journey as well. So I was definitely seeing the connections not just in the animals, not just in the soil, but also through my own health.

9:36 Yeah. And that's so often the case, you know, when we talk to people that are really going down this regenerative path, it often starts either with their own health or the health of a loved one, family member. And you're right, there's so many parallels between what's going on with our bodies and the

9:53 Way we eat and the toxins we're exposed to, right alongside with our animals. And so, how did you overcome, you know, your health crisis? Did you do that, you know, through nutrition? Did you do that through supplement? What was how did you get better?

10:13 So it was multi-year journey. I found a functional health doctor which was huge. She was an OD, and now I work with someone local who's an MD and who's also functional. We did a multi-layered approach. There's binders that help take it out. There's medicines that help your body restore the nourishment and the nutrients back in. I underwent a bunch of chelation to get a lot of the toxins out. That was hard. The chelation process is not, they don't just take the good or the bad stuff out. It takes out some of the good stuff too. And that experience made me really passionate about like you have to be really intentional about what you're putting in your body so that you have reserves and so you can replenish the things that life in general will end up taking out.

11:16 Yeah, that's a great point. And I remember reading Nicole Masters's book, you know, For the Love of the Soil, and she talks about, you know, herbicide toxicity that she had and that whole process of having to get that out of her body, but just how much different she felt when that actually happened. And I'm assuming that's kind of how it happened for you, too, once you kind of got purged.

11:39 Yes, absolutely. The herbicides ended up hitting, my heart was affected. So, the reason that I knew that something was wrong, I went to get up from the couch and normally your blood pressure is supposed to increase when you go to stand up from sitting or laying down and mine dropped and so I passed out and that kept happening and they were like, 'Oh, that's not normal.' So that started the journey of like, hey why at that time I was in my 20s, why is a 20-year-old having basically their heart is malfunctioning? You know, my blood pressure was not maintaining and you know your body does an amazing job and this is for animals or people also, you know, these toxins get stored. Your body says well we can't process this so we're going to put it somewhere to keep you safe. Well, fat is the great store. But the biggest organ in your body that has fat is your brain. And so, one of the things that affects is like brain fog. And you start feeling ill and you can't put thoughts together and you start feeling like you're moving through cold molasses. So it affects things. You know, that's what I went through on a personal level, but I was not having my mucous membranes down in these chemicals like the animals are. And that's one of the reasons I am so passionate about like we can do better because their nose and their eyes and their lips and their tongue is down there constantly and they don't have an alternative, you know? They don't get the option to like put their hand up and say, 'Hey, I don't feel well today. Can you take me to the doctor?' Not until it's really much too late.

13:34 Yeah. And then you're in a serious situation. So do you feel like when you are consulting with your customers and you see horses that are exhibiting these signs of metabolic disorder and stress, you know what's your protocol? Is it similar to some of the things that you went through to kind of try to reverse that? And then so let's talk about how do you take a sick animal and get them healthy? And then once they're healthy, let's talk about some of the things, you know, whether it be the feed or the regenerative grazing, you know, to keep them healthy and really not just survive, but to thrive. So how do you fix them when you find a sick one?

14:17 So there's a couple vets that I'm working with. We right now, so charcoal was used for me personally. We don't have a charcoal product available for horses. We do have a liquid charcoal available for dogs if they encounter some kind of toxin, but we don't have it

14:33 For horses. They do have bentonite clay, which is great, but clays and charcoal bind the good nutrition, too. So we use them, but we have to be mindful that they're going to grab the nutrition. So we need to make sure to put that back.

14:48 But the very very first step is always going to be stop the exposure. We've got to find a way. You know, weeds in hay is not bad. Are there toxic weeds? Absolutely. But the majority of the time if you have a weed, you have a decent growing environment and usually you're going to have more nutrient-dense forage anyway. So I try to tell people like, hey, I know that that lush green monoculture hay that you spent a small mortgage payment on, you know, is it's pretty. It's not healthy. You know, I tell people all the time and they laugh. They're like, 'Aren't you supposed to tell us to buy more expensive stuff?' and I'll tell them, you know, go try to find some cow hay. Like a farmer who has a buddy who has a field that does nothing with it. And all he does is twice a year he goes over and he cuts it and he bales it. I said, 'That's what you want to get.'

15:47 Just want to make sure I understand what you're saying here. You're saying that that hay with weeds in it that wasn't chemically treated and sprayed is going to be quite a bit healthier than this really nice pure weed-free hay that took a bunch of chemicals to get it that way.

16:04 Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. And I know that that sounds crazy, but it is so true. And you know when I have horses that are super metabolic whether it be for chemical reasons or they're past the exposure but their body has not come out of the inflammation, we will tell them the same thing. Go get the late-stage mature hay that has variety in it. Like I want you to go on like Craigslist if anyone still uses that, you know, the $35 round bale, haul it in my backyard, like peel off the outer layer and like and feed that. And they're like, 'Well, I have to soak their hay.' And I said, 'You don't, you don't have to soak this hay because it's late stage. So you've got the seed heads, so it's in reproduction. So the sugar levels are super low. You've got the highest fiber. You've got a little bit of protein. But most of all, the horse is going to be full. Not just space-wise, but nutrient-wise.

17:06 And that's what we've tend to get away is like we look at things and we're like, 'Okay, well that looks good to us, but the animal needs the nutrients and the and what we've what we've done is kind of created a bit of crack addiction by the pastures. They're all super monoculture, super low. We've planted rye grass that was used to fatten beef and then we just we stress the hell out of it. I'm sure you've heard about when you eat animals that were slaughtered under duress, the meat has a different impact on who's eating it. Well, the grass under constant stress, the sugars aren't going down into the soil. The sugars are staying in the plant. And so we have animals that are having massive metabolic reactions to the grass. Well, the grass is stressed and then the animal is eating it and then the animal's immune system and metabolic system gets stressed. And we look at that and we're like, well, we can do better. We can we can absolutely create a different environment and provide better nutrients.

18:21 And you, you know, I have the owners that will say, 'Oh, well, you know, I can't pick her head up when she goes to the pasture. She's just like a hoover.' It's like, yes, because all those sugars is like a Snickers all you can eat buffet out there for the horses, but there's no nutrients. It's just a sugar high and there's no green. There's no, there's they're not even really in the vegetative state. The plant is literally trying to survive for dear life. And when you put that horse out in a pasture where the grass is a variety and also 8 to 10 inches tall, they might inhale for about 5 minutes, but if you stick your head out in about an hour, they're just going to be standing there.

19:12 And it's amazing because they're full there. There's a part of them that starts going, 'I'm getting what I need. Thank you.'

19:26 Interesting. And again, I just think of all the comparisons to people here as well. So it reminds me how with humans, it's kind of the same way. You know, when we eat low nutritional quality food, we get lots of calories, but not much nutrition. So our bodies don't say, 'Hey, you're full. You don't need to eat anymore.' Then we overeat and you know, you just stack up the calories without stacking up the nutrition.

19:49 So I know that in working with you, as green cover and you have worked together, and first of all, we've really appreciated what you have brought because we know lots of great cattle grazers and sheep guys and even pigs and chickens, but horses, there are not a lot of people out there that understand how to use a lot of these things, different plant species for horses. And we're all scared to death about killing somebody's horse. So it's great to have someone who not only understands it but has done it.

20:23 So tell us a little bit about how you work with your clients to take that monoculture pasture that you know has probably been overgrazed for years and years and years. How do you go about remediating that? How do you bring some of that diversity? How do you restore that soil and that grazing ecosystem back to life?

20:43 Give you one example. If any horse people are listening to this, they will absolutely appreciate this example. Horse pastures are notorious in this state for having buttercups. And everybody sprays for buttercups. They grow, pastures are just yellow in the summer with buttercups. And I get often, 'Well, I'd use your seed, but I have to spray for buttercups.' And I'm like, no.

21:11 So I had a farm up in Samora and they had buttercups everywhere. It was sand. They were starting to have some serious erosion issues. And I was talking to the property manager and I said, 'Do you trust me?' And he's like, 'I think so. What are you going to do?' And I said, 'Okay, it's going to look really weird, but if you trust me, you'll have a pasture on the other side of this and you won't have to spray.' And he's like, 'Well, we've been spraying.' And he goes, 'I have less and less grass.' He goes, 'I've got sand now.' And he goes, 'The weeds are just coming back stronger than ever.' And I said, 'Yes.'

21:51 So we know those results. I said, 'Here's what we're going to do.' And I took pictures. I laugh about this because I posted it on Facebook and in my mind everybody is going to be like, 'Wow, that's amazing.' And it was quite the opposite. So what I did was I posted a picture of the buttercup in the pasture and I had them plant. It was a variety. I think it had six different varieties. It had some grasses, but it had mustard. Everyone's like, 'Oh my god, you can't do mustard in a horse pasture.' Well, mustard has a long tubular root that goes down, breaks through, pulls nutrients up, but it's also aggressive growing wise, and it looks like buttercup.

22:35 So I was so excited. I'm nerding out. I'm like, 'Look, here's the buttercup pasture. Here's the mustard pasture. Isn't it amazing? Look at the difference.' And everyone's like, 'That's just a bunch of weeds.' I go out there and I am so happy because I actually peeled back, you know, the mustard grew and it blocked everything out. And so I went in and I dove through all of the mustard and the buttercups are withering. And that's, you know, the mustard's like a year.

23:06 It's an annual. It receded. There was a little bit the next year, but the horses really won't mess with it. And the next year there was maybe five buttercups in the whole pasture. But more importantly, because we had started nutrient cycling with a desirable—and I say desirable meaning we planted it on purpose. Mother nature didn't put the band-aid on it.

23:34 Then we can then go back and plant more desirables and we haven't sacrificed anything. We haven't gone into the void of death and destruction. And now we have nutrient cycling. We have bugs. We have pollinators that have come in. And when you put grass seed down into a variety of grass seed and a variety of legumes into that soil, you get success. Those are my most favorite farms to work with are the ones

24:05 That are like, I've tried everything. And I'm like, great, you're ready. You're ready for me now. So that's pretty cool. And you made that comment before and you mentioned it again here with the pollinators and the insects and the bugs. Did you also see a corresponding either lack of or a coming back of birds correlated with the insects?

24:30 So I am going to answer your question with a story and then I'll tie it to that particular farm. When I first started with green cover products and I tested it on my farm, I nerded out again and I was like, 'Oh, I'm going to do the pollinator blend. I'm going to do the grasses. I'm going to do a little bit of everything.' And I had a garden and I went out there and I sat and it was like air traffic control. Nothing touched me. There was no gnats. There was nothing stinging me, but you heard buzzing and there were dragonflies and butterflies and bees and it was just like you could close your eyes and it was just everywhere. But I had no flies. I didn't even buy fly spray that year. It was amazing.

25:18 So I told this farm about that experience and they ended up doing a pollinator blend in a couple different areas on the farm and they also noticed that I think they ended up using fly spray like one time that year. So one of the along with not having blossoms on the farm, when I go and I do the pasture consults and I take a sample, I'm looking for signs of life. Anything. An ant would be great. You know, and we don't like red ants, but I'll take a red ant over nothing. And most of the time I get nothing.

25:55 Nothing. Like, no red ants, no worms, no beetles. Worms would be delightful, but you know, I almost never see anything. There's no oxygen. There's no life in the soil. And after we are able to put some diversity, put some blossoms, rest the pastures, educate the owners on how do we apply this to where the horses are benefit and safe, but also the soil is able to recover and give us back more next year. Then you go into the pasture and you get, you know, I'll pull up a little one inch piece and there'll be earthworms and the manure is gone, right? Like there's no manure left, right? You didn't drag it. It just, the bug life, the beneficial bugs took it and pulled it down into the soil and the plants are using it. So yeah, absolutely. There's a massive difference.

26:53 And I've told people in the past if they have manure piles, go get some earthworms from the bait store. And they're like, really? I'm like, yes, go get them and go put them in around your areas because the more that you have biological activity breaking that down, the better. And the sooner you can use that.

27:18 Yeah, that's so true. Whether it's a horse pasture or cattle pasture, any of these livestock pastures, when you start bringing that life back. Now, I know with cattle, you know, one of the big things is in order to bring back the dung beetles and some of that soil life is to stop using some of the systemic wormers because those go through the whole system and they come out with the manure and then it kills the bugs and stuff. Is that a thing with horses as well?

27:48 Yes, we had a period of time where daily dewormers were really popular. They're not as popular now. We've had a major education swing on the fact that we have not had any new dewormers coming out. No one's planning on it. So they're worried about there becoming a resistance to the dewormers that we currently have. So people have backed way off on that for the horses. What we do have is that horses by nature will not eat the grass where they've defecated. And that is mother nature making sure that they don't reinfect themselves. So in the rotation and the management aspect, we want to make sure that we can give those areas enough time to rest and recover so that the horse is not being put in a position where the only thing it has to eat is where it's defecated.

28:51 General a good policy. Move on to greener pastures. Right. So, are you able to get a lot of these horse owners to do good rotational grazing? Because, you know, it's a challenge. It takes additional fencing and additional planning and all that. How has that learning curve been for the people that you're working with that probably aren't used to doing it?

29:15 Yes. Well, the biggest feedback I get initially or I should say response when we start talking about the management education is well I don't have I don't have the acres I don't have the room I don't have the pastures. And I have basically taken a Google maps of people's farms and laid out like this is how you can do it this is how much it would cost for the temporary fencing. I have had customers that are super super budget tight and I'm like, 'Okay.' I said, 'You literally just need one fence line.' And I was like, 'Move that fence line and you could make this happen.'

29:58 The other thing that is effective is telling them to have a sacrifice area. Horses are terrible on the ground, between the way that their teeth rip things out. If you don't have enough growth that you're taking the top off of the plant, it's taking the roots up and their hooves. So, as the soil gets better, their hooves will actually dig more into the soil. So, you have to have a little bit longer of a wait. So, what I've told them is if you have a sacrifice area, whether it be a stall, a little paddock, and I try to tell them, you know, you can make a little area that when it's rainy, when it's frozen, when the weather is going to tear up that area, put them in there, and then when the weather is great, you rest that paddock while you're rotating the others, and you can restore the life and that has been very successful for horse owners because then they look out and they say, 'Okay, I know what to do.' It's not a recipe. It's not like a calendar by the book. This is exactly what I do on this day. But with the weather and with her horses and with the management, whoever is in charge of the facility, they have guidelines of like this is what we can do to have a cascading compounding positive effect.

31:31 Yeah. No, love Karen, too. So, I know that, you know, one of the big things now with our cattle guys is the virtual collars to, you know, do virtual grazing. Are any of those companies making those for horses? Because I know they do it for sheep and goats and cattle, but I I

31:47 Do you think they will? And do you think that would work?

31:51 That is a great question. Yes, I think so. I mean, I've seen horses that learn different areas and territories, you know, if the ground is not safe, if there's an electrical, it honestly just the sound, you know, they have with the dogs, you can train them off of the beeping on a collar. I totally believe we could train that with horses because they recognize the electrical impulse of a fence line and they know when it's off. They come up and they put their whiskers close to it and they're like, 'Oh, it's off.' and it's game on at that point.

32:30 Yeah. Well, I mean, think about how that would revolutionize, you know, rotational grazing because now you just do it from your phone. And so, yeah, I just think some of those technologies like that are going to make it quite a bit easier. So, I want to get back to the, you know, the improving the grazing. You talked about, you know, the example of how you interseeded the mustard to kind of overcome that buttercup issue. Once you kind of get that and then you talked about now we can plant a mixture of things into that and it takes off much better than it would have before because you've kind of biologically activated the soil. What are some of the things that are you're seeing that are working well to intercede into these perennial pastures whether they're fescue or ryegrass or I don't know if you have bea or what you have there but what are some of these annuals that you've had really good luck with interseeding into those and how have you seen that change the

38:08 Yes, exactly. And with the horses, I'll put in flax. Horses don't eat flax. They'll eat flax seed, but they won't eat flax.

38:20 I don't think anything eats flax. Maybe a goat, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be in there. Yeah, but it has a specific job and it does it spectacularly, and it needs to be included. It's not a ton of flax, but people are like, 'Oh, I have all these blue flowers,' and I'm like, 'Yeah, great. Wonderful.' And they're like, 'But the horses won't eat them.' I was like, 'Yep, they're not going to. That's okay.'

38:49 And there's always this worry with the horse owners that whatever they plant that is somehow going to keep coming back year after year, it's going to overtake their pasture. So I have to keep telling them, hey, it's an annual. Yes, it may recede and you may have a few next year, but it's a few and then it will be gone and it is okay because the horses will not eat them.

39:12 Um, and there are some species like buckwheat I don't mess with. That stays outside of the horse pasture. There's a couple species that I just won't take the risk because at certain times of that plant's growth the horse may find it tasty.

39:37 Yeah, so like sorghums maybe because toxic acid can really be toxic to the horses, right? Yeah, and that's more for the freezing, but you never know. At least in North Carolina, we get some crazy weather and it's too much of a risk for me. If we were in a warmer area and we had a defined growth period and I knew that the horses are going to be taken off and that was going to be either laid down and the horses weren't going to be exposed to it, I'd feel more comfortable. But for the general mixes that I have for my customers, I stay within the parameters.

40:19 Veetch is one that's a controversial inclusion. Everyone is aware veetch is toxic to horses, yes. And if the horse is starving to death and the only thing growing in that pasture is veetch and that horse can do nothing but stand there and eat veetch, it will take a while. It may taste it, but veetch is very bitter to them. I've seen horses take a beautiful mouthful of grass with veetch and you watch it and you're like, 'Oh no, he's eating veetch,' and then they spit it back up.

40:53 So I'm not concerned about veetch. Veetch has a spectacular effect on the pasture and on the soil, and I have not had any horses try to mess with it. Doesn't taste good. And when we put desirable grasses and annuals and clovers and legumes in there, they're like, 'Why would we mess with that bitter thing over there?'

41:16 Yeah, and you're putting it in at very low rates. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, I really like that approach. And so have people been relatively accepting of this once they've seen how it's worked and are they coming back and saying yeah, let's do more of that? What have you seen from your clients once they get them going down this regenerative path?

41:42 So I try to set realistic expectations. The first realistic expectation is generally we're looking at a two to three-year turnaround. The first year is heavy, heavy annuals and that is depicted by what we have growing or not growing in their pasture. If it's heavy weeds, then we take a look at what are the roots and we combat it with, it's like rock, paper, scissors for roots. So if we've got buttercups or fibrous, then we go in with like a tubular mustard, right, something that is going to grow more aggressive, take the nutrients, crowd it out. And then the second year we're looking at heavier grazing. And if we're addressing nutrient cycling, the first year is usually erosion and coverage. Second year is usually nutrient cycling and grazing. And then the third year I tend to bring in the perennials and we try to get it more established, and we're looking long-term at like what do you...

42:47 Want to be here year after year? And then do some of them eventually switch to a broader mix of perennials or do you ever try to do a complete reset where we're just going to try to get rid of this unproductive stuff and then we're going to do a new perennial seeding? Has that ever been kind of a thing that you've considered?

43:12 I have one property that the gentleman is kind of in limbo. The ground is very very compact and it had been tilled up about 5 years ago and they planted some seeds, some perennials, and it grew amazing the first year and then everything died off and nothing's really grown since. He's holding under the impression that he wants to till up and replant perennials. I'm hesitant because the one year success and then nothing does not seem worth doing again. I would say I think we need to do something different. Maybe similar but different. So I would say that is probably the only case that I've been looking at like, hey, let's dig everything up and try to plant something new.

44:14 Have you done much incorporation of any type of biological products? I mean, I know we're putting biological seed treatments on the seed that we're sending out, but in addition to that, have you seen or tried any foliar applications of biology or biological stimulants to try to wake up what's there or add beneficial biology? Have you kind of gone down that path at all with your grazing systems?

44:42 We have recommended some organic fertilizers, more humic acids. Just this year is probably the first one we're looking at expanding as you guys are. We've talked with Elevated A about a bunch of their products for before seeding and a way to recover for areas that have had like high salt fertilizers and all the nutrients are kind of locked up and nothing will grow. To get some life in the soil first before we put down expensive seed.

45:24 Yeah, and that's always a great way to do it. We talk about it as kind of priming that soil and before you spend a bunch of money on perennials, let's make sure that the biology is working, that the soil is aggregated, that the system has kind of recovered. It's kind of like when you have all this toxicity locked up into you, you need to get freed up from that before you can really take off and do what's really good and right for the long term.

45:56 So you've been teaching about equine nutrition and health for a long time. What would you say some of the biggest misconceptions that people have out there—horse owners or farmers—have about not just equine nutrition, but also how soil health fits into that? Well, most recent has been that owners are under the impression that grass is not safe for horses right now. And I would say that's the biggest misconception.

46:29 Grass is not safe. It's not safe. And that is coming from the medical side of things that are coming in on a triage basis. And there's no follow-up education on the grass cycle and why that is. And I feel like that's really really sad. So that ends up trickling into the feed and the soil because then they end up getting hay that they have to soak. Then they end up going down this thing called NSC. So it's nonstructural carbohydrates. And so when these horses are metabolic, they say you need under 10%. So we're looking at something that is minimal minimal sugar and usually it's pellets, wheat middling pellets. And so you've got minimal nutrients in there as well. And so basically these horses are starving. They're starving for great great nutrition. And I would say that's probably the biggest myth is that horses are turning metabolic because of the grass. It's really more because of the sugars, because of the lack of nutrition, and that's coming from the chemicals and the lack of diversity out there too.

48:00 Animals are really quite intelligent when it comes to what they need and what they need to eat. And if they have choices, they're probably way smarter than most people. They make much better eating choices when they have. But we just so often, as animal owners, we don't give them the choices that they need.

48:25 The other really amazing thing for horses is they generally don't like plants that have high tannins. But high tannins generally mean that there's a lot of nutrients in there. We've taken that as an option away from the horses because we think that they're weeds and horses really need that. I've seen a lot of animals and when I go into a consult and we're outside the barn, it's the one area that doesn't get sprayed because nobody pays attention to it. And so they'll be eating plantain, the horse is gobbling it up like dandelion, gobbling it up, and the horse owner is like no don't let him eat it, and I'm like there's a reason that he wants that.

49:11 So I look at it like if we can put that variety and the diversity back in front of the animals, they can start restoring the nutrients that they're depleted in.

49:26 And it's so much less effort on our part than filling our feed room with supplements and expensive feed.

49:35 Things with high tannins, plantain, chicory, some of these things, they tend to be kind of natural antihelmetics as well, helping with internal parasites. And they were often included in the sick pasture that people used to have. You get a sick animal, you put them out there. Well, it was just full of forbs and maybe probably looked like a weed patch, but the animals would go pick out what they needed.

50:05 This journey with soil health and regenerative agriculture, I have a feed company. It would be more beneficial for me not to talk about this stuff and just sell a product, but at the end of the day, I'm touching the animals and I'm seeing the owner and it's a full circle. The feed is really a stepping stone. The animals are meant to live on the land. And if I can create a feed product that's amazing and help with educating and restoring the soil and the pastures and the hay and getting on the right track, it's like we are restoring health in multiple different ways. And I don't know that that has a deeper purpose than just selling a product in a bag.

50:51 That's great. You're truly looking out for the well-being not just of your clients, but of the animals that you're managing as well.

51:03 As we kind of come to a close here in a little bit, I have a couple more questions for you, but I want to step in just a little bit different direction. I know that you're an advocate for nutrient-dense food for the horses, but also for people as well. That's been part of your journey as well. How do you see regenerative agriculture fitting into the conversation about making America healthy again and helping people regain their health?

51:33 I am excited. I don't think I've ever been so excited about this making a comeback. And it's a little odd because now we have to call something organic, which used to just be the way it was. Carrots used to be carrots. Now regular carrots are organic carrots and poison carrots are regular carrots. So it's a little backwards. And I'm so excited about the standards changing to where we don't have to decipher layers of labels and meanings and all of this so that we can feed ourselves nutrient-dense food. We had Dan Kittredge out at the last annual meeting for the North Carolina Soil Health Coalition and it was very encouraging. He was talking about how soon we'll be able to measure the nutrient density in food. And I wanted to jump up from the back of the room and just shout in joy because I was like, that's what we need because that levels

52:41 The playing field on it doesn't matter what it looks like and it doesn't matter. It matters what are you putting in like nutrient-wise. Is it actually healing you or is it just making you think that you've eaten?

52:57 Yeah, that's great. And that will definitely be a game-changer when people can make their buying decisions based on what's inside that food. So, as this technology advances to where we can do that, that I agree that's very exciting, very hopeful. So, what advice would you give someone? You probably know, anytime you start with a new client, they're probably this way. What advice do you give to them if they're just starting their journey towards regenerative agriculture, regenerative grazing, regenerative equine health? What are some of the starting points that you just encourage them to start with?

53:34 Okay, three things. Nature abhors a vacuum. Nature does not have monocultures and mimic the seasons. And what I mean by mimicking the seasons is nature always rests. Anywhere that you go in the US, anywhere in the world, you have seasons that allow the plant life deposits organic matter and then there is a down period. And so if you're new to this, you want to mimic that whether it's the pasture, whether nutrition-wise, you want to look at it and say, okay, we want to provide, it needs to sustain, then we need to give back, and then we need to rest.

54:23 Nature abhors a vacuum is really, really important because anything that we do is either positive or negative, but it's not neutral. So when we're looking at decisions, if it's anything chemical that is going to take away life, then that is creating a vacuum and nature always fills it. If you take away life, nature's going to put life there. May not be what you want, but it's going to happen. So you want to make good decisions about if you try to create a void, it will be filled probably not with what you're looking for. So that tends to change people's minds. And then monocultures. You can walk anywhere out in the world and you're not going to see rows and rows and rows of the same thing. It's always synergistic and it's always a diversity and they're all helping each other with growing, with the soil, with the plants, with the bugs, everything. And when you're starting out and you're looking at, okay, what do I do? Those three things are probably where I would start. And there's tons of books available. There's tons of people you can contact, but those would be the principles that I would stick to and you won't go too far off path.

55:43 Yeah, I really like that. And in essence, what you're saying is go out, look at really good, healthy natural ecosystems and be an observer and then try to duplicate that in what you're doing. So, yeah, I think that's great advice. So, Allison, as we close here, if people want to get a hold of you, if they want to find out more about Adorc Nutrition, your feed or your consulting services, how do they get a hold of you?

56:10 We have a website, adoracnutrition.com. There's contact info there. We are on LinkedIn, we're on Instagram, we're on Facebook, and you're welcome to reach out to us in any of those fashions.

56:27 Yeah, that's great. So, if you're in that North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina type area, go ahead and give her a call. And I think some of the information that you've given here is just super helpful to anybody who owns a horse. So, Allison, thank you so much for joining us. Best of luck with you and your company as you move forward helping people regenerate their little piece of creation for their future generations.

56:56 Thanks for joining us everybody on this episode of the Green Cover podcast. My brother and I started Green Cover in 2009 because we understand what it's like to be a farmer starting out on the journey to improve soil health. We saw the power of plant and biological diversity on our own farm here in Nebraska. But we found that it was difficult to get the right cover crop seed mix. We also learned that there was a big learning curve in successfully implementing cover crops. That's why we built Green Cover so that farmers like you can access the highest quality cover crop seed put into the right diverse mixes along with the technical advice and the educational resources to help you successfully implement cover crops on your own operation. So contact us today and we'll help you with the right cover crop mix for your farm or ranch so you can regenerate your portion of God's creation for future generations.