Low on Forage? Teach Your Cattle to Eat Weeds

Originally Published in Gulf Coast Cattleman

This year many producers are running out of forage due to drought and the subsequent high hay costs. Kathy Voth, publisher and editor of On Pasture magazine, said she has an option the average rancher probably hasn’t considered, “teach your cattle to eat weeds.”

Voth said weeds are nutritious. Cattle just don’t know they can eat them. Following Voth’s research, the training process takes just a few days.

“The idea is basically that animals choose to eat nutritious foods,” Voth said. “And it turns out that most weeds are at least as nutritious as grass and most are much more nutritious than grass. Plus, they maintain that nutrition a lot longer through the growing season than grasses do.”

Voth said cattle can be taught to eat weeds at any age, though heifers tend to be the most curious and willing to try something new. Voth said when teaching wet cows to eat weeds, their calves will often catch on too.

“I started out teaching heifers because we all know that young animals are more likely to try something new, but what I found along the way is that any animal can learn,” Voth said. “Their age doesn’t matter. In fact, teaching cow-calf pairs is actually really effective. The cows will come up to look in the tubs and even if they don’t eat it, their calves will. The calves come up and see that what they thought the cows were eating is left over for them. Being young calves, they will try it. Then the cows see the calves eating and they want to try it.”

Voth said you don’t have to teach your entire herd to eat weeds, just a few, and they will show the rest of the herd their new found forage.

“I usually teach 25 to 50 head at a time,” Voth said. “I like to teach more than a dozen at a time because I’ve found when you teach a smaller group, you tend to treat them like individuals and that can hinder the competitive part of the training. Once you’ve trained your initial group, you can turn them back out with the rest of the herd and they will teach all of them. One of the ranchers I worked on this project had 800 head all together and I would work with small groups of them at a time. Those small groups would then return to the herd and train the others. He said his entire herd would run to eat the weeds first when turned out on new pasture.”

Once you’ve selected the initial group to train, you’ll need to decide which weeds you want to train them to eat. You will want to take care to ensure the weeds you’d like to turn into forage for your herd are safe for consumption. Contacting your local Extension Agent, veterinarian or checking out Voth’s booklet on safe plants, Edible Weeds and Training Recipe, are great places to start. Local universities often provide lists of toxic plants within their state. Visit Texas A&M University’s list of common toxic plants complete with photos for easy identification at https://rangeplants.tamu.edu/collection/toxics.

“All plants contain toxins, including the grasses we plant for our livestock,” Voth said. “But, very few plants are so high in toxins that they will cause harm or kill livestock.”

You may be wondering about nutritional value, “Are weeds a nutritious forage or just a filler?” Voth said she’s tested enough weeds for nutritional value to develop a rule of thumb, “If it’s green and growing, it’s nutritious.”

“Most weeds are equal to or better than alfalfa in nutritional value,” Voth said. “As forbs, they are generally less fibrous than grasses, so they are more digestible. They also maintain their growing season longer than grasses do.”

Voth said scientists have learned that animals choose what to eat based on internal feedback from nutrients and toxins in their food. Therefore, the more nutritious a weed is, the more likely the animal is to eat it.

Now that you’ve decided which weed you’ll be teaching your cattle to eat, you need to choose a location to train in. Voth said, if possible, it’s best to train them in the pasture where the weeds are growing. She likes to train them using empty lick tubs, though feed bunks will work if you don’t have a pile of old lick tubs somewhere on your property. If using lick tubs, she recommends one tub to three head.

“First, you just want to establish a routine and teach them to eat something unfamiliar and nutritious,” Voth said. “Go to the feed store and pick eight different things, one 50-pound feed bag per 25 head and one extra bag to mix with the weeds. Choose a variety of textures, flavors, shapes and smells. For example, soy flake, wheat bran, rolled oats, alfalfa pellets, range cubes, etc.”

Voth said just like when bunk breaking calves or introducing cattle to cubes, using “come-and-get-it” signals like honking or calling your cattle will help to establish the feed routine.

“For the first four days, feed a new food stuff around the same time morning and evening. This establishes the routine and they have a positive experience trying a new food. The fifth through seventh days you’re going to skip the morning feeding to build some anticipation. On the fifth day you will feed chopped weeds with a familiar feed. On the sixth day you will feed chopped weeds alone. Then on the seventh day you will feed the weed plain.”

Voth said when feeding chopped weeds you will need to loosely fill two 50-pound feed sacks per 25 head of cattle. She also noted, she likes to place the tubs or bunks in a patch of the weeds.

“You don’t have to teach them to eat every weed in your pasture,” Voth said. “Teach them one and then see what else they start to eat. The training process teaches them that not all food looks the same. Often they will start experimenting with other similar weeds. If they don’t eat a weed you know is safe for them, bring a few lick tubs and place them in the weed patch. Clip some of the weed and put it in the tub. They will remember that the tub means ‘good food’ and begin to eat it in pasture.”

Voth’s project originated while she was working for the Bureau of Land Management and stationed at Utah State University as a liaison between the agency and the university. While there she considered studying how utilizing goats may help ranchers deal with weed problems. She quickly realized most ranchers are not interested in having goats, but do have a weed problem. So she decided to teach cows how to eat weeds. To learn more about training cattle to eat weeds, visit onpasture.com.