If weeds have taken over your pasture, your best bet is to use a weedkiller.
Dr. John Jennings, University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service animal science professor and forage specialist, encouraged a “holiday weed control program” – Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s. “If people would spray right around those times in the winter for a lot of these thistles, chickweed, henbit, buttercup, those types of weeds, they would be far ahead of waiting until March and April when the weeds are out of control,” Jennings said.
“I think herbicides are actually one of the better ways of controlling weeds in pastures today,” Tim Schnakenberg, agronomy specialist and co-Southwest District program leader for University of Missouri Extension, told Ozarks Farm & Neighbor. “In the bushy species such as blackberries and sumac, when you run a brush hog over them you’re actually making them thicker. And also, the problem with a brush hog is you’re dropping seed on the deck that’s going to shake off and be in other areas of the field, and you’re actually spreading weed seeds.”
Among other options for controlling an abundance of problem weeds is prescribed burning. Schnakenberg said the timing of this method depends on the type of forage in the field. “If it’s a cool-season like fescue, you could do some prescribed burning sometime in March before the grass has really taken off,” he said. “If it’s a warm-season grass such as switchgrass, bluestem or bermudagrass, right around the first part of April is a good time to burn them off.” While fire is an effective way to control problem growths like cedar, he said not many people employ it because of the risks.
Jennings agreed that most producers don’t use fire. “There are a lot of things that have to line up just right to be able to burn a field, and especially to be able to do it safely,” Jennings told OFN.
But if conditions are right, Jennings said, there are benefits to prescribed fire. “If they get a hot enough fire that can move across the field quickly, they can control some of the winter annual weeds like winter barley and cheat, and some henbit,” he said. “And it leaves that black ash layer, so the field warms up a little quicker and the bermudagrass seems to come out a little bit earlier.”
Jennings said one of the more popular methods of weed control – letting the cows do it – has limited success. “That works to a degree on some of the weedy grasses and a few of the early broadleaves, but they don’t eat them normally to the level that they’ll control all of the seed production,” he said. Other weeds aren’t attractive to the cattle and will proliferate. “People aren’t using herbicide to control them because either they don’t have the equipment or don’t know how to properly calibrate their equipment, or they’re spraying at the wrong time of the year,” he said.
But weed control, however it’s practiced, is important for economic purposes. Schnakenberg said, “The more land that you can keep in production, the better and many times if we have an invasive species out there such as sericea lespedeza or saplings, or blackberries or poison hemlock, thistles, the list goes on and on – some of those just get thicker and thicker if we do nothing with them.”
