S9 E3 - Pasture Weed Management

in different types of forages. You know, we don't if you go south of here, you start getting into Bermuda grass and stuff. And go to Florida, for example, and there's all kinds of weird C4 things that we don't really have a problem with. So I just want to set that stage. But having said all of that, we've done a survey years ago, and I don't really think it's any different now, to be honest. But when we did that, we just surveyed a bunch of Missouri pastures, and our top weeds

were, you know, horse nettle. I remember that being number one. You know, just as far as you walk into a Missouri pasture, there's a 90, 98% chance you're going to find a horse nettle, ragweed, cocklebur musk and bull thistle. Those are all very, very common. And then you know, you could start breaking down and getting into some more brush type, species, multiple rows and blackberries and things like that. And then you know whether

a person categorizes it as a weed or not. Then you can start thinking about like later in the season, we start seeing grasses, and a lot of forage producers and a lot of Missouri cattlemen don't even consider a foxtail a weed or whatever. But, you know, yellow foxtail and crabgrass, those are all so I'd say all those together, some of the ones that kind of came up to be some of the highest, and I think that would be pretty common, or in most of tall fescue situations,

white clover. And, you know, and unfortunately, you know, a lot of that is not even necessarily, they there wasn't actually, you know, necessarily established there. There just kind of be some wild type. And I know that's something that I know Kevin and I, we've talked about over the years, is that, you know, they, they're so, you know, so possessive of that white clover, even though they never even seeded it. But, but anyway, that that's, that's, you know, we can discuss that later.

But as far as we leads the weeds that we're dealing with, yeah, a lot of those ones that Kevin mentioned, you know, another one I get asked a lot about it is milkweed, you know, very, you know. Common milk weeds, a very controversial weed, you know, especially with the monarch butterfly and so forth. But, you know, it has some toxic properties and and so forth that can, you know, cause some issues in pastures and in livestock.

Livestock production. Another one that we probably have, especially in our area and in more than the northern kind of cooler temps, is a smooth bed straw. I get a lot of questions about smooth bed straws and a very aggressive perennial weed that can easily take over different types of butter cups. Or another one that we get a lot of questions about, yeah, the the annual grasses, as Kevin mentioned, you know, large crab grass and and Fox tails. Another one that we really deal with in

our area is Japanese stilt grass. It's one that we have a lot of issues with it because it's so prevalent in our wooded areas, and it starts to creep out into the pastures right there, along the wood wooded areas, and it comes out into the pasture setting. And then another one that I get a lot of questions about is a perennial called rough stock bluegrass, typically in turf settings. But that is, is a serious problem. And and, you know, our forage systems, but also our small

grain systems as well. So that's that was just kind of, you know, kind of a quick and dirty overview. I mean, there's obviously others, but those are the main ones that I get questions about.

already mentioned one of these things. So I, when I go talk to producers, you know, because they do all view weeds differently, and so like poisonous weeds, that that's a category most people say, Well, yeah, I'm going to control those. And then there's another category that put things into, like weeds that are spiny or very unpalatable, and the cattle are way less likely to eat them. And again, that's that's a category where some people would start to differ and disagree on

what's what there. But I think most people would recognize that, you know, when you see a thistle rosette or something, the reason that the the grass is all still in there, is not touched is because, if they have a choice, they're they're going to try to stay away from that. But then everything else is what you're asking about. You know, you know, we've shown on paper, ragweed from a forage perspective, at the vegetative stage, is got some good characteristics. So do so do

some of the foxtails and but that's kind of all on paper. And whether you can get the animal to eat it or not, if they have other choices, is a whole nother thing. And that starts to talk about whether you have management intensive grazing or, you know, most mostly, we have some of that, but mostly in Missouri, you know, it's just kind of free graze across broad acreages, and we're not pushing the animals into a small,

confined area to make them eat everything. I mean, there's exceptions to that, but so that last category of you know, what is a weed is highly debated. Some people are very passionate about that, like, like Dwight just said, milkweed. You want to get some people passionate, start talking about that. So, yeah, we, I'm not aware of anybody. Dwight might have a better answer, but you know this, this thing about thresholds, it doesn't exist, as far as I know, and it's just

what. Are your weed problems? How much are they taking over your acreage? What are you willing to do about it? The forage are they? Excuse me, the legume thing that Dwight mentioned is 100% true. You know, they don't want to kill their clovers, and that often is a decision maker. So there's just it's a complex environment, for sure.

So, yeah, I think, I think it just a lot of it just boils down to, you know, you can tell who the good managers are and who they aren't, you know, especially, you know, the biggest thing you know, when we think about, you know, pasture systems is just how they graze it. And the biggest thing is, is, you know, overgrazing is probably one of the number one problems. Why we have weed weed issues in pastures is because of

just over grazing. And, and, you know, and, I guess, you know, you know, we're talking about, you know, beef systems, or cattle systems, versus, versus horses. You know, obviously a horse is going to, you know, chew, chew it down right to the, you know, right to the ground level with her teeth, you know, whereas, where's a, you know, a cattle, and cows are not going to do that. And then you, of course, you have, then goats and sheep and so all those are all different. You know, way, way

things are managed. So, so it kind of depends on what, what you know, who you're talking to, and what their system is, and whether they're doing intensive grazing or rotational grazing or just kind of free, free for all. Sarah,

do with cutting height. And so when you talked about the differences in grazing heights between cattle and horses, it just made me think about, I don't know if you guys see that or have done any work on on mowing height or cutting height for Hey, meadows. Have any thoughts on that?

lot of weed. And the same is true for whether it's alfalfa cutting height, or smooth broom or whatever, that that that kind of relationship is out there in the in the scientific literature, for sure,

have declining stands as well, you know, over the years. So, so it's, you know, not only the just the, you know, rotational management or the grazing management, but just other, other, you know, management factors as well, you know, agronomics and so forth. And infertility is a big thing too. I think a lot of, lot of times, just fertility is always a big just the agronomics, you know, is not, is always overlooked.

You know, you think, you know, pastures are great, great source of feed, but yet they seem to be the one that's most, you know, kind of, kind of abused in terms of, you know, just management issues in general.

just say my state. I won't blame anybody else's state. But I'm not trying to get on you Missouri farmers, if you're listening. But you all know this already, pasture fertility is where we just say, kind of, oh, well, I'm going to do the best I can. I can't afford to do that, or whatever it's it's abused. I mean, we're not going to. Treat our corn and soybean fields the

way we treat our pastures. And you know, some of that's economics and all that, but the result of that general abuse of fertility in pastures is, I think, weedier environment and and like I said, we've shown that when our that survey was talking about when we went back and correlate, we took soil samples, and, you know, this was like 70 some pastures all around the state over two years, and we took soil samples, and we were able to go back and correlate, you know, the lower fertility

level pastures with the higher weed density pastures. So it's not a rocket science, but it did correlate and, and that's just kind of the way it works. So, yeah,

species. Maybe, you know a, you know, seed, seed company has that, you know, they're pushing it, but that a lot of times, that may be something that can be grown in the south, you know, but yet you try to bring it here the Northeast or upper Midwest or something, and it's not going to grow so, so you have to be aware of what you know, what's, what's competitive species, and then the mixtures, you know, if you're mixing with the legume,

you know how that's going to work as well. So So again, that just kind of falls right in there, just with agronomics and then, and then time of year planting, you know, is, you know, just, you know, understanding your weed spectrum that you know whether you're trying to establish in the fall, where you're dealing with a bunch of winter, potentially winter annual weeds, or you're trying to establish it in the spring, you know, where then you're dealing with summer

annual so, so again, you just understanding your your your systems, and you know, knowing what the rotations are, and you know the types of weeds that you're dealing with. You know, especially if you're trying to have have a lot of perennial weeds, and you're trying to establish a perennial crop into it, that's that's going to be a setup, setting yourself up for failure. So just, you know, making sure you start with a good clean, clean seed beds to begin with. And

fertilizing the weeds. In most cases, I'm just going to say, most time, I'm going to say, get rid of the weeds first and try to go with fertility later. But there's people that disagree with me on that, and I'm not going to dispute that, but that's a tough one. Secondly, for us with fescue. What I try to remind people is metsulfuron containing herbicides. I want to get too much into the details here, but those, those can stunt and significantly impact your forage yield if they're sprayed

in the spring. And in some ways it we've everybody's looked at this that are fescue people, and you know, if you do it just right, you can reduce fescue seed heads and therefore reduce fescue toxicosis. But on the other hand, you're going to get some stunting and yield loss. So just want to you know that's been kind of marketed and advertised, and it can be used, but it also can. I've also gotten calls from farmers that

are like, what looks like I sprayed roundup like I didn't. I didn't know this was going to happen, and so they're kind of upset about it. So that's another consideration. Think the third consideration is, what we've already mentioned is, how many, or what percentage is legumes, and you are going to kill your legumes. And in most cases, although I'm sure we'll talk about this today, there is, there are some new options that maybe, maybe you won't kill white clover. And that's, that's

kind of brand new. And then, of course, cost, you know, like of the herbicide you're choosing is these are very tight financial systems to make it all work out. And so those are just some things I think of off top my head, but, and I. And then, of course, okay, so now, what is your weed you're targeting? What

is, you know, we never have just one weed out there. So, you know, what's your worst weed you're trying to get rid of in and, you know, trying to target that timing, and that, you know, because that that's a big deal too, is, you know, timing for one thing might be this, and a timing for an annual weed might be this, and, you know, so all those things are stuff I think about before you ever spray,

know? So you have to, you know, have have a good, you know, weed ID book, and we can talk about those later, as far as resources, but, you know, or if you don't know it, then, you know, send, send me a picture, or send, send a picture to, you know, one of the county agents or whatnot, so that we can get a positive ID, if I to determine what, what the life cycle is, you know, we dealing with an annual, are we dealing with perennials or something in between, and and they just had,

just understanding that first of all, and then, and then, yeah, is, once you figure that out, then there's situations where, you know, we may need to start early, you know, in terms of, you know, some of these grasses, These annual grasses. You know, they start to germinate already in March, you know, or late March, and depending on where you're in the country, but

making sure they're herbicide. If you're putting a residual like something like a prowl H2O or a satellite hydrocap on the on there, it needs to be on there before the weeds even

germinate, otherwise you're going to miss it. So, so that's, that's just, just trying to get that, you know, that concept, you know, figured out to know what, what goes on first, and then from there, then, yeah, deciding, you know how it's going to, you know, mesh up with your, your mowing regimes, if you do mow a couple times or so. And then also, you know, just the way the paddock is, is managed, in terms of, you know, root grazing and so forth. So all those things have to come

into play. And it's, it's, it's easier said than done. A lot of cases.

any of that. But for us, the white clover is, is the big common thing that that we would have out there. And you know, so there's been a lot of weed scientists looking at it for several years, and it has some some good things. And they get just, I just try to caution my growers, there's, there's no, we talk about this all the times, no silver bullet or say this 100% is nothing that ever comes out of my mouth, usually. And so there's some weaknesses too, you know, like horse nettle, for

example, is, is a weakness of it. But you know, if we would go down through all kinds of different pasture herbicides, we would, we would say weaknesses of other things and strengths and but for example, you know, ragweed and things like that,

it's very good. So I just, you know, don't want the marketers to get ahead of us too much, but it is, it is a new product that there's a lot of attention and a lot of, I guess, excitement about among some people, just because, hey, I can actually go spray something without killing my, my white clover.

because, it just because the residues right there in the manure, or they're, they're especially in the hay and, and whereas, with a product like this Nova graze, it's not in there, you know, those residues are not, not a factor. And then the rotational restrictions, in terms of, or, I should say, the, you know, the the Restrict. Of having the animals out of the field. You know, if they're lactating dairy, for example, you only need to be out for three days, whereas other other,

if they're non lactating, there's no, no restriction. So things like that are, are very beneficial with this, but, but unfortunately, as Kevin mentioned, there are some, some, you know, weaknesses to this. And it's those problems we talked about, things like horse nettle and Canada thistle and and milkweed and dog Bane and, you know, in smooth bit smooth bed straw. These are all, you know, weeds that we're hoping that this would would, you know, have a little bit better

activity on it. Unfortunately, it doesn't. So then we're kind of stuck with kind of the old, old school ones, you know, going back with high rates of 2,4-DDicamba or or use of crossbow or Triclopyr based products, or kind of what we typically use, you know, to control those, or at least get them, at least suppressed enough to, you know, get a get a crop for that season.

cases, the backbone of our weed management systems. But you also have to supplement them with other other aspects, whether it be the cultural, things we talked about, the agronomics, but then also things like the mechanical like mowing and and I never recommend, you know, just spraying alone, because, you know, you think about especially perennials, understanding the

life cycle. You know, a lot of times the best time to spray a perennial is in the late season, you know, late, late summer, early fall, as that is that plant is getting ready to go dormant. Lot of those sugars are being shuttled down into the root system. So if you can spray it to that point, then the herbicides are taken down with with the sugars into the roots for a much better kill the root system, because it's all about controlling the root with a perennial. Now with an annual.

Yes, you can definitely, you know, help, help from a seed, seed, you know, seed set standpoint to, yeah, if you can clip those off, off, you know, during the season a couple times to stop seed production, that would be the target with that, but, but especially with with annual or perennials, you always want to have at least a, you know, Two or three faceted approach,

that the bar touches gets electrocuted. And so if you, if you think about like the old weed wipers, it's kind of the same thing, except you're not using chemical. And so anytime you have a height differential between the weed and the crop, you know it should work. And in July and August, in most fescue type environments, the fescue is in what we call the summer slump, and we often start to get a height differential between

weeds and and the fescue. So the long story short is we, we've done the student is supposed to graduate in May, and we've done

two years of work. And so electrocution, you know, I know it's not for everybody, nobody, not everybody has these implements, but if you want to think about something different, so we have found that, like, you know, ragweeds and certainly Cocklebur, believe it or not, iron weed things that get, you know, have a good, strong central stem and and that you can contact with the device, bull thistle, just trying to think through some of the ones that we saw, a little bit

stronger activity on those, those that I mentioned would definitely fall into that category. I'm probably missing some, but they all did really well, like electrocution was as good as the chemical treatment that we sprayed. On the other hand, we've we've also learned that things like brush and multiple rows or honey locust is not going to be killed by electrocution. And you're probably going to break your

boon trying to do it so, so it's just something to look at. The limitation, of course, is if you do not have a height differential and you're not getting, I mean, let me just go back to some of the annual weeds. Like, you know, as long as all the ragweeds are ramping pretty high, and you got a good height differential between that and the fescue. It will work.

But that doesn't always occur. There's sometimes where ragweeds Two or three inches and 12 or 14 inches, and you're not going to get those little ones, at least when you go through there and say you'd have to go back and all of that. But so on annual broadleaf weeds, it's really good. It's probably never going to be a solution for annual grass weeds. It's, unfortunately not a solution for Johnson grass. We've tried so, you know,

everything's got its fit. But with the, maybe the I hear more interest about organic beef production and things like that. So, so maybe it has a fit there. So it is another thing to think about.

sponge applications. And I know I haven't done anything recently, but I know I think you've done some, and I know JD green at Kentucky has done some, and you know, in most cases, and correct me if I'm wrong, but still, you know, just using a, you know, spraying, it tends to be a little bit better than than the wiping. I don't know, Kevin, do you ever want to, want to say some additional comments about that? Yeah,

Outrider and things that hardly anybody in my world uses. And the problem, you know, when you get to a rate that actually broadcast affects Johnson grass, you pretty much have almost killed the fescue to the same degree. So I say all of that just to say the best treatment for us on Johnson grass was wiping glyphosate compared to anything else that we could come up with. And that's still not 100% or anything like that, but, but on broadleaf weeds, yeah, better to broadcast spray by far.

So that just kind of a warning, just like Kevin says, yeah, a lot of times you go out there and you're kind of too late, you know, you should have been doing this, you know, five years ago or more, when there's just a clump here and there, not, not when it's, you know, over three quarters of your, your, you know, fields, your pastures. So, So timing is everything with these, these different options.

resistance in pastures. Personally, I. Think that's probably just because we tend to spray mixes and not just one thing, and we don't spray every year by far, but that's just my opinion. But having said all of that, any of the anything in the amaranthus genius genus is always going to be a concern for me, and we do have some water, hemp occasionally in pastures, not very common. Some Palmers, probably a little bit more common. And, of course, spiny pigweed. And so there, you know,

have a tendency to get resistance. I've often thought I never did it, but I often thought of doing some kind of project where just we would collect pig weeds out of pastures and their seed and determine if resistance had been transferred to them in a setting where they didn't even have the

selection pressure. For example, glyphosate resistance can be transferred through the pollen and all kinds of other resistance to group two, resistance and things like that, which are so common in our cropping worlds, I would, I wouldn't be surprised at all if we were to do that survey and and find resistance in our pastures when the herbicides never been sprayed before. But I just never have done it, and don't have the resources and time. But so that's that's for

me. Dwight might have some more herbicide resistance concerns, but I don't get a lot of concerns.

help. You know, in some cases, with with some of these species, I realized that, you know, you know, they can still grow below the, you know, the mowing, mower deck heights, and so forth, and that that's always a situation that you have to be concerned about. But for the most part, yeah, I'm not getting getting, you know, too much concerns yet with with resistant species.

It's just, you know, trying to control the species that are there on these perennials and so forth that are the most, most, uh, asked about questions.

don't eat it. Do I feed it? So how do you kind of work through some of these questions when the stakes seem to be a little different, you know, when we're dealing with animals or human health or things like that?

it's in a pasture or it's actually in hay. So, so, I mean, if the pasture is so polluted with, with, you know, horse nettle or other other, potentially, you know, poisonous types of weeds, then then, more than likely, especially if under, under drought conditions and so forth, the animal is going to get so hungry, or they're going to just start to nibble and graze on those things, or browse on those weeds, you know, either out of necessity, because they need

something in their in their system to feed upon, or they just out of boredom, because they need, they need, you know, just to buy their time now, now, if there's, if you just have a, you know, a, you know, errant, you know, poisonous plant here or there in the pasture, they're going to leave that alone. They're not going to go and mess around with that, you know. And then same thing with hay. I mean, if your hay is just this full of poisonous plants, then you know, they're going to have

no, choice but to eat that. But if there's some other desirable feed or forage around, then, then they'll, they'll, you know, usually, you know, spend their time, you know, going after the desirable stuff and only eat, you know, the poisonous, and consume the poisonous, you know, leaves and stalks and so forth, kind of out of desperation. So I think it kind of goes back to what we said before management and and, you know, you know good

agronomics and so forth. So you don't let it get to the point where you know the weeds are, you know more, more, you know there's more of them than than is the is the desirable forage,

learned is I'm not doing very good at education. I knew that, but that, I guess what I've learned is that our our horticultural audience, our our our homeowners, our greenhouse growers, are just any of that kind of clientele are not as familiar with this issue, and don't really know this, and that was an assumption that I made that was faulty, and it still

continues every year. And so we've started trying to, I've tried to kind of bridge the gap with some of our horticultural people out in the state, and certainly within Extension, we're trying to do better. And I'm just, I'm just saying it is,

it is a huge issue that doesn't end well for a lot of people. It usually gets everybody all upset on both sides of it and and the fact that Aminopyralid or clopyralid or picloram but mostly it's Aminopyralid, can really hang around in that manure and straw and compost, or getting more and more of that and and then somebody goes to plant something or use uses that around their plants or whatever, and doesn't understand what's

going on or why that happened. So I think we need to do better as an industry at that whole thing, even, even though I will say that the first thing you see on most of those labels is this little infographic running right along the side. You know that very clearly, kind of gives you a little cartoon of all of this, but we're missing it somewhere. We're missing it, I don't know.

either. Can you just tell me something to spray? And I basically just say, No, I'm I'm not going to, you know, you have to send it to me or send me good photos. I need to know what it is. I'm not going to have you coming back here in two weeks saying it didn't die. So, you know, first step is work with your extension folks and everything, and try to get it

ID. And then certainly, we have numerous publications. Every state has its own version of weed management recommendations, and there's a lot of good ones out there, Alyssa and I, and Illinois and Indiana all kind of go together on one publication. It's five states. Alyssa or I don't know how many states it is, four, whatever. So in K State and Penn State both have better resources than us, so they have their own and they

have smarter people. And so I think there's a lot of good sources of of weed control recommendation out there in past years. Yeah, yeah.

recently updated publication. So it contains, oh, I don't know, 550, or 600 different species of weeds. That's a really good, really good publication. So that's one that i i recommend quite a bit, the weeds of the Northeast the second edition. And then, actually, believe it or not, you know, there's these publications like, like newcombs wildflower guide and Peterson's

wildflower guide, you know, publications like that. You know that since, since we're dealing with these pasture systems, and a lot of them are up against wooded areas, you know, a lot of times we get kind of this creepage of these, kind of these, you know, for lack of a better word, kind of these weirdo weeds, or weirdo species that come in, and a lot of times, you know, they aren't the typical, you know, species that we deal with, you know, in corn and soybeans and small grains

and so forth, but, but they, you know, we find them in pasture. So that's where some of these wildflower guides do a really good job of, you know, providing some, some additional, you know, insight into what the identification is. And then there's all kind of resources online, especially when it comes to to poison. This toxic, toxic, toxic plant issues. You know, there's a lot of lot of, you know, university in a veterinary, you know, schools that have some good, good

resources and like. And I think we can maybe put a listing of those somehow on the podcast. But maybe I can, I can send you the list that I have, and maybe Kevin has some ones that he uses. But whenever I give a presentation on pastures, I always have a listing of several resources and so forth that can be, that can be used, you know, especially if you know, for

toxic plant issues and so forth. And one thing that I have noticed over the years is, you know, you have to be careful where you get your information, and what is mean by that is, there are some, some books out there that are pretty alarmist when it comes to, you know, when you know, identification of species and understanding, you know, especially, I hate to say it, but a lot of the horse people in particular, you know,

they're very, very particular about things. And then it seems like in any, any type of species, they're, they'll call it toxic when, when really is probably not toxic. It may, it may just cause them, you know, maybe an upset stomach, or something like that, but, but, you know, I don't know if you can call that toxic. So anyway, all I'm saying is you need to be just, just be aware of the, you know, where you're getting your your sources for for some of this, you know, identification, and

There's a lot of different articles that I've written on there, and then also other other resources, you know, associated with those. So that's probably the easiest, you know, we do have a, we have do a Penn State, you know, Weed Science page. But it, you know, unfortunately, we don't keep it up as well as we should. So, so a lot of the more up to date articles would be on the Penn State Extension site. Well,

to catch you next week On the war against weeds Podcast. You