How do you teach a cow?
How long does it take to teach a cow?
Don't spines and prickles on the plant hurt the cow?
Why don't you just use goats?
Can I just spray my fields with molasses?
If the plants have toxins won't the cows be poisoned?
Can cows eradicate weeds?
What are the long term effects on the animals?
Is Kathy a Kook?
How do you teach a cow?
1. Make sure that there are no harmful toxins in your target weed. This is the most important step!
2.
Choose your trainees. I like to work with young heifers because young animals are more likely to try new things.
3.
Get trainees used to trying new things by giving them new foods morning and afternoon for 4 days. On the 5th day you can give them weeds and they'll think it's no different than the other strange, but nutritious foods you've give them to try.
4.
Practice in pasture. New weeds can require new grazing techniques so small pastures encourage animals to try and learn.
How long does it take to teach a cow?
Using my training process it can take as little as 5 days to get a cow to try a new weed and after 7 days she will eat it plain. Cows need to practice in trial pastures to learn how to bite off different kinds of weeds. It seems that thinner weeds, like spotted knapweed or diffuse knapweed are easier for them to learn how to eat. They usually graze them successfully the first day in pasture. Bushier weeds or plants with spines, like thistles, take a bit longer. Trainees begin by biting off stem ends and larger leaves at the bottom. Over time, they can get good at eating the entire plant.
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 Tucson cow eating Prickly Pear Cactus. She doesn't seem to mind the spines! |
Don't spines and prickles on the plant hurt the cow?
Apparently not. It seems that their noses, tongues and bodies are not as sensitive as ours to these kinds of things, or they are better protected than ours. Cows seem to not be bothered by the spines and prickles when they put their heads down into a patch of weeds to get at the grass, though I would have avoided the same patch because I could feel the spines through my heavy jeans. They also seem very relaxed when biting off and chewing a spiny stem.
We have checked the cows' bodies and mouths and have found no sores or cuts. Trainees have had no illnesses or health problems associated with eating spines or prickles.
Why don't you just use goats?
Using cows instead of goats is good because:
1.
Unlike goats, they are not escape artists, so they require less fencing and less human attention. This makes them less expensive to manage.
2.
Cows can eat almost anything a goat can eat.
3.
There is a stronger market for beef than for goat meat so more people raise them. Though the number of people eating goat meat in the U.S. is increasing, the marketing and distribution structures are not as developed.
4.
It's easier to train a cow to eat a weed than it is to get a rancher to convert to goats.
Can I just spray my fields with molasses?
Before you turn your fields into a sticky mess spraying molasses on them to get the cows to eat weeds, consider this: Our experiment called "Is Molasses the Silver Bullet?" found that cows who did not have the four days of training to get them over their fear of trying new things ate very few weeds. In fact, the control group ate only 2 oz. of distaff sprayed with molasses, while trained cows ate 81 oz. I don't recommend spraying molasses. In fact, I have begun doing the training without molasses because it doesn't seem to be necessary. Cows have learned to eat weeds just as well without using molasses.
If the plants have toxins won't the cows be poisoned?
It's highly unlikely that a cow will be poisoned. All plants have toxins, but very few have such high levels of toxins that they are poisonous. Since animals have no food safety labels, they use their internal feedback mechanisms to decide how much of a food to eat. They start by eating small amounts of something new and depending on what they experience they increase or decrease the amount they eat. BUT: You can poison a cow by starving it on to plants, or putting it in a field where it has nothing but one plant to eat. But, if you let the animal slowly increase and decrease what it eats and mix a variety of plants, your animals will be safe.
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Can cows eradicate weeds?
There are several different answers to this question depending on how you manage your animals and on how you define a weed. Choose from the following:
1. If you continue to graze in your usual manner, cows may not be able to do any more than simply prevent further spread of the plant.
2.
If you modify how and when you graze, and if you repeatedly graze the weed during the same grazing season, you can eradicate it over time.
3.
The need for eradication depends on your management goals. Questions you might ask yourself include:
- If a "weed" becomes a forage, how would you then choose to manage it? Would you want to take advantage of it as a forage during seasons or drought when it is the only green, growing thing?
- How does this plant fit within my other goals for my property such as water quality and wildlife habitat protection, productivity and sustainability?
What are the long term effects on the animals?
To date we are not aware of any negative effects on the animals who have eaten the target weeds. Animals have gained weight at expected rates, or better, they have bred back, and have had healthy calves. Since all plants contain toxins, and since animals have evolved to deal with a wide variety of toxins, it seems unlikely that any long term effects will be found. There are plants that have toxins that could cause long-term effects on livestock. We do not recommend including those kinds of plants in a training and grazing program.
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Is Kathy a Kook?
A fellow called me one day because he wanted to know more about my work and the training process. He seemed to like what he heard, and then he asked me, "But what about the kook factor? Do people think you're a kook?"
I do some kookie things, but this isn't one of them. I asked him "Who's kookier? The person who keeps on spraying weeds year after year after year without making progress, or the person who decides to think outside the box and create a new tool that turns weeds into something useful?"
You tell me.
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