What animals safely weed a new food forest? (Broadacre)

We planted our tropical food forest without regard to integrating animals in the early years. There are more than 11,000 small tree saplings.

We broadcast many cover crop seeds, but weeds still gain a foothold somehow. Probably because we didn’t use any viney species, for fear that they would strangulate the saplings. Also, it was pasture for many years, so there are many dormant grass seeds.

Most animals would indiscriminately trample and eat everything Our plan was to use human labor with machinery to do maintenance the first three years, or until the trees can outcompete most of the herbaceous weeds via shade. When the trees are mature it will become more of a pig forage system.

Until then I don’t see how to integrate animals safely unless maybe they are geese and muscovies or ducks. But these pose unique challenges as well. The trees will have to grow out of their reach first, but even then It’s not feasible to cell graze a 500-bird flock with net fencing. The repositioning of the net fence will be impractical with so many trees in the way. (There is one tree every 3.2m over 20+acres. The net would have to be carefully rolled up After first transferring all birds to the new cell. You can’t just pick up the fencing and walk it to a new position, because it will snag on all the small trees. Additionally, the birds could get up in the branches and jump/fly over whatever fencing there is.

We could just let the birds loose, because there is not much predator pressure. But...they would escape, and people would steal them too. Plus, you wouldn’t gain the advantages of cell grazing, because they would neglect many areas in favor of others, which they would turn to mud pits.

I’ve toyed with the idea of guinea pigs, but these are just too small to be practical on a large area.

Maybe sheep? But I assume they would eat the young trees in addition to the herbs.

I support sheeps and cow

Windy Huaman wrote:We planted our tropical food forest without regard to integrating animals in the early years. There are more than 11,000 small tree saplings.

Where is your tropical location that might help others assist you in finding a suitable animal. Do you have year around forage for the animals?  How established is your food forest? Do you want the animals for a purpose other than grazing weeds? Are any of your trees poisonous to animals?

Windy Huaman wrote:Maybe sheep? But I assume they would eat the young trees in addition to the herbs.

I find sheep graze the ground very closely and are also selective about what they eat, so you may find they don't eat the weeds you're wanting them to eat and that they end up eating your young trees and sheep should be rotated frequently for parasite control as well as to let the forage recover.  My experience with cows in tropical locations is they ate our one and only papaya tree, plus I think they might do damage with their hooves.  

You might want non animal weed control, like laying cardboard down and smothering the weeds? Not sure how feasible this would be for 20 acres.  

Windy,

How tall are your trees now?  If they are 3 ft tall I would be comfortable putting chickens in among them.  Maybe a bit smaller for banties.   Sounds to me like you need to have 2 fences, so you can have the critters (whatever type you choose) in 1, set up the 2nd, move the chicken over, and then roll up and relocate the first.

Goats are the best animals for clearing a property.