Protecting trees from the horses

In the NE pasture I have around ten small pine trees I planted over the last half dozen years.  The fruit tree and garden area has the fruit trees.  Last year I got kicked by a horse when I shooed her away from eating the leaves from one of my cherry trees.

I decided I need a better protection for my trees.  And the trees in the NE pasture are starting to outgrow the small wire cages around them.  Last year I removed the protection in the NE pasture from all but a few trees.  Now I have had a year to build better protection.  Did I?  What do you think?

The past few weeks were hot and dry and the grass was drying up.  Better late than never so I started protecting the trees in the NE pasture before the horses "discovered" them.  I worked in the evening when it was cooler so it took me a number of days to protect all the trees.

Part of my actions was to dig the dirt around the trees to remove the grass and its roots and make a large basin in which to hold a good amount of water to follow the method of "water deep, not often".

One evening when I was chatting with my neighbor with the four small dogs the horses came over to graze near me.  I had built a cage around a small pine tree but had not added a top to it yet.  Suddenly Lily went from eating grass to biting the top of the tree off.  She did it so fast I could not react.

Tree Lily bit

The next evening I had completed digging the dirt around another small pine tree when it got dark.  I leaned some odds and ends of wire fencing around the tree (as seen below) until I could fasten it into a cage the next day.  The next day I found a few wire pieces moved and the tree bitten in two places: on top and on one of the side branches.

The unprotected trees left to be dug around and protected were untouched.  The horses only went after the trees after I dug around them.

One of the two bigger pine trees.  Before and after.

By the time I completed the NE pasture protection the horses had eaten most of the grass and it was time to let them int the fruit tree and garden area.  I didn't have time to build a nice permanent protection around the fruit trees so I added odds and ends of short wire fencing to the top of the existing fence around the fruit trees.  This way the horses couldn't get their head and neck over the fence and bend it down to reach the trees.  It was not an elegant or pretty but it did protect the trees.

I put wire fences around the rhubarb plants to protect them from getting stepped on as livestock don't eat the leaves.  Not these horses.  One of the horses developed a taste for rhubarb leaves, put her head over the top and ate them all.

I put a top wire fence over my raspberry plants so those survived.

Otherwise my protections worked.  Now to see if I find time to build a prettier more elegant fruit tree protection before next year.


The link is to Daisy's blog with photos of her helping with the trees.  In the photos you can also see the grass was higher than in the photos above.  That's how much the horses ate in the week it took me to protect the trees.  Several horses are getting fat from their endless eating.

http://tallpinescat.blogspot.com/2013/08/helping-protect-trees.html