If you’re rotationally grazing, maybe moving the cows every week or perhaps even the extreme of twice a day, you might get discouraged when you see all your hard work is turning into weeds.
Of course we are not going to consider things that kill the soil: herbicides, fertilizer, and tilling. These are things that got us into the problem we are in to begin with. Likely, your pasture has been soaked in chemicals and torn up with tilling for a generation or two, and that’s why it’s growing weeds to begin with.
One of the temptations is to push your cows and force them to eat and trample the weeds. This doesn’t work as well as you’d think, mostly because the cows will overgraze the grass before they start munching on the weeds in quantity. When you come back after allowing the area to rest for a while, you don’t have the grass you expected, but maybe, at least, you’ll have new weeds. If you are absolutely sure that there is no grass in between the weeds, maybe you can try this technique — but I warn you I haven’t heard anyone say “overgrazing saved my farm!”
Another technique that I see, and that may work with you, is to shred or mow the weeds. The idea here is that by cutting the weeds down, you are stunting their growth, returning their nutrients to the soil, and giving the grass a chance to get some sunlight and such. This also works more or less, sometimes, but then you might find yourself mowing every year, or twice a year, or more often. Add to this category of action things like rolling the weeds down, or running over them with chains. If it works, it works, but I didn’t see much success for myself with it.
The advice I have to give is this: Just let it go. Let the weeds do their thing. Let the grass compete. Eventually, the grass will win, because that is grass’s secret weapon in the environment. Grass always wins, eventually. Keep the cows off the area when the grass is young or weak. Only put them on when there is plenty of grass, and take them off before the cows graze it too low.
The weeds themselves aren’t really “weeds” in the sense that you don’t want them in your pasture. They are doing valuable work, work that you probably can’t fully comprehend or even observe. Weeds are nature’s bandages, and appear where the ground is most injured. They correct imbalances in the soil and when their work is done — they die.
My recommendation is to just keep the cows off those areas where the grass is weakest. Give the ground plenty of rest — 30 days, 60 days, maybe even a whole year. Don’t put your cows on the land unless you are confident that they will not overgraze the grass!
Once there is enough grass, and the cows are let into the pasture, they are going to nibble at the weeds, which honestly won’t do much to them. Maybe sheep or goats will do more damage to the weeds than the cows, maybe. Importantly, and this is the key, the animals will drop down valuable manure and urine, trample everything, and give the grass exactly what it wants, and give the weeds exactly what they don’t want. Repeat this a few times, allowing the grass to recover, and I can almost guarantee that you won’t even remember you had weeds to begin with!
The key to this concept is understocking your pasture. That is, only running fewer cows than there is available forage.
When times are good, you might regret not keeping a few heifers of steer, or maybe wish you had bought a couple more cows the previous year, and certainly, you are going to miss out on some profits that could’ve been had. If times were always good, your neighbors would be rolling in cash while you would have a meager income. We wouldn’t be talking about regenerating the soil or bathing our fields in chemicals if times were always good, right?
The key is that times are not always good. You are going to have a bad year from time to time. Sometimes the rain comes late, or not at all, or maybe it stays hot or cold earlier or later or shorter or longer than expected. When these times happen, you’re going to have to run out and sell your cattle if you were at capacity. You better hope that you’re the first in line at the sale barn, or you’re going to see all your investments lose money! Maybe you think you are smarter than everyone else and you keep your cows. Well, what are you going to feed them? Hay prices will be through the roof, and feed prices will soon follow. Not to mention, your cattle will ruin your pasture by overgrazing, so you’re going to have to sacrifice a portion of your pastures and hope that maybe in a few years it will come back.
Of course, if you were understocked, you might not need to change anything at all. Small issues aren’t even speed bumps. If it doesn’t rain for a while, you won’t even know, and by the time you start to run out of forage, the rains are coming back. Or if there is a big issue and you do end up having to sell your cows, you won’t have to sell so many. Certainly, you won’t be lining up to buy cows when the rains come back!
So the key is this: Give the ground its rest. Let the weeds grow. If there is not enough grass, keep the cows off. When there is enough grass, don’t take too much. Let the animals do their thing, and over time, the weeds will disappear.