Control Thistle in Pasture

[cakadu]

The best thistle control we ever had was with the goats - they would eat them quite short. As coppertop has point out however, the goats were far harder on fences and the lesser of the two evils was to see the goats go.

While not as quite efficient, the sheep do tend to eat the thistles. They also eat things like stinging nettle - at a certain stage anyway - and they absolutely love pigweed. Don't ask me why, but they will literally fight each other to get at it.

I do believe that your assessment about not being able to "starve" something to eat thistles is correct. How many pastures do you drive by where there isn't a blade of grass to be seen, yet the thistles are going to seed?

We have also spent many hours cutting them down with a sythe. I don't know if we would ever be to the point that we would use chemical control. We'll see how they fare after this last hail storm. I doubt we'll see much regrowth this year, but I suppose that depends on conditions over the next few weeks.

[grassfarmer]

Yeah, I spent many hours in my youth cutting thistles with a scythe - a soul destroying job except for on very small areas!
I could take some great pictures just now of our roadside ditches which are full of waist high thistles, yet they more or less stop at the fence line. This tells me we are at least close to managing the threat from thistle invasion with our existing management.
So much for the theory that if we didn't control "our" weeds the county weed inspector would be ordering me to use chemicals to destroy them!

[cakadu]

I find being out there cutting those thistles is good stress relief, not to mention it is one of those tasks that requires next to no thought, which is good sometimes. Either that or I find that I spend a lot of time thinking.

Either way, I end up feeling as though I have accomplished something - at least for the moment.

[coppertop]

Interesting to note that the fellow across the road pastured a large number of horses on one quarter of land for years, including 2002 during the drought. The pasture was eaten to the dirt, then he sold the horses and pastured cows on the same land. There is no sign of thistles anywhere except around the vacant buildings. In this area the county ditches are relatively free of thistles but I can't say the same for the primary highway ditches !!!

[cakadu]

It is sad to see the thistles coming back as strong as they have what with having them almost gone prior to the drought. It was also unfortunate that the fellow we rented to had agreed to not overgraze, yet the year before the drought and the year of the drought he seriously overgrazed both years. Both years we had asked if he would take them out, which of course he never did. Now he has moved on and we are left with the aftermath and trying to get it under control.

I suppose we might consider using some sort of chemical on them, but for two reasons. #1 we just don't agree with the whole notion of chemicals and #2 if we use it on the thistles it will also take out any other broad leaf species, including the clovers that were so laboriously planted. We want the effects of the clover moreso than that of the chemicals, so I guess we are caught between the proverbial rock and hard place.

[coppertop]

Just yesterday a friend and I were discussing the use of all types of chemicals, and we came to the conclusion that we would need to be in a glass bubble to avoid any contact with chemicals.

Laundry soaps, household cleaners,additives in the food we eat etc., are so prevalent that it's little wonder that there are so many people developing allergies to food, and their environment !!

I use roundup in areas of the house yard where I want to completely kill out vegetation, and I have had thistles sprayed with Grazon in past years but haven't done so this year.

The air we breathe, and the water that sustains us are two areas that all of us need to be more concerned about, particularly now when things are booming like they are here in AB.

[grassfarmer]

Cakadu, Are your thistles really getting noticably worse or are you just trying to control them because they look unsightly? If as you say you have reduced past overgrazing that alone should increase competition on the thistles and start to lead to their decline. Do you have gophers or moles? the fastest I have ever seen thistles spread is on fields that are overrun with gophers - I can think of a couple of fields I drive past occasionally that have gone from 2% thistle cover to 60% cover in a couple of years.

I'm with you on the spray killing broadleaves - legumes in particular. My place here had only a few tiny overgrazed white clover plants for legumes on it when I bought it but now has alfalfa, red clover, alsike clover, white clover, yellow sweet clover, Kura clover, cicer milk vetch, American vetch. Of these I only seeded the cicer milk vetch and kura clover. It truly is remarkable what can appear as a result of simple grass management - just cattle, electric fences, water, a grazing plan and time.

How bad would my thistles need to be before it justified spraying them and killing this amount of legumes and setting back this much progress?

[cakadu]

Grassfarmer, the gophers here have gotten relatively bad again - despite my spouse and dogs making a dent in them. About 10 years ago we had a resident badger here because of the gopher population. Then we got two years of absolute downpours - almost 300% of normal rainfall. The watertable was at ground level so the gophers were gone and consequently so did the badger move out. Since then, he gophers have slowly come back and the badger hasn't.

An interesting comment - how would the gophers spread more? I have no idea how that would happen.

Coppertop - I am not against chemicals entirely and I agree with you - there is no way we can get away from them. I wonder just how much this whole "anti-bacterial" phenomenon is good for us as we need some of these bugs around to help us keep immune. I sometimes joke with my urban friends that when it comes to an outbreak of something, those of us on the farm will be able to outlast them because we are in contact with many things in a day.

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that since this obsession with clean and anti-bacterial started, that more of us - particularly children - are continually getting sick? Seems to me that we weren't as sick when we were kids.

The best disinfectant around is still bleach. Not the kindest on the environment, but it works and it definitely isn't a high-falutin' type of cleaner.

[coppertop]

vinegar is an excellent disenfectant, I use it around the house, on cutting boards, counter tops etc.

I agree that it does seem that certain flu bugs really knock people off their feet. I am thinking that the farming community can't afford to be sick so maybe we just tough it out whenever we do feel out or sorts.

[Smithy]

Interesting that vinegar came up in this thread as my daughter uses it to kill thistle around her yard. It isn't as effective as roundup and seems to take several applications to really knock it down but she has little kids and pets and it is much safer.