Can Cows Really Maintain an Orchard or Food Forest?

Scott Obar wrote:Can you successfully mow the weeds like grass and other underbrush by running cows through a food forest? Wouldn't the cows damage the tree roots just by the weight of their steps?

I understand silvopasture is a pretty common practice, but the trees in those systems are spaced pretty widely with very wide alleyways. What if  you have a more intensive food forest with nurse trees and fruit trees planted every (3.2m) 10ft? That's my situation. We're reforesting an old cattle pasture, so we'd like to find some animals that could mow the grass once all the trees are at least (2m) 6.5ft tall.  I'm kind of skeptical that running cattle would work. The idea would be to run cattle for a few years until the trees are so large that they shade out any good fodder for the cattle.

L. Johnson wrote:I have no experience with livestock at all.

Just from the old imagination I would think that you could scale the operation to work. As in maybe one cow could graze a narrow area, or two in a small alley, but probably not a whole herd of cattle.

Mike Barkley wrote:You mentioned trees under 6 feet tall. Good chance the cows will destroy them without even trying. Especially if they like the taste of the leaves.

Alex Moffitt wrote:

Scott Obar wrote:Can you successfully mow the weeds like grass and other underbrush by running cows through a food forest? Wouldn't the cows damage the tree roots just by the weight of their steps?

I understand silvopasture is a pretty common practice, but the trees in those systems are spaced pretty widely with very wide alleyways. What if  you have a more intensive food forest with nurse trees and fruit trees planted every (3.2m) 10ft? That's my situation. We're reforesting an old cattle pasture, so we'd like to find some animals that could mow the grass once all the trees are at least (2m) 6.5ft tall.  I'm kind of skeptical that running cattle would work. The idea would be to run cattle for a few years until the trees are so large that they shade out any good fodder for the cattle.

Yes, but really depends on soil type and climate conditions, and species, some species of cattle are just to big and disruptive.

One should aim to have the herbaceous layer grazing at 50 percent and use smaller rotational grazing, of a few acres at a time,

meat sheep are preferred animals used for this practice.

Some use goats and geese,


Question what if any succession methods are you thinking of using?

I don't understand what you're asking. Succession methods? For example?

I thought about using sheep, but also heard that they are more likely to chew the bark off the trees than are cattle.

I'm going to try to find the smallest cattle I can find. They'll be cheaper too, and therefore less money wasted if things don't work out.

My goal is to use animals that will be the most self-suffcient. I've raised geese and muscovies, and unfortunately, they always seem to need supplemental feed. I found this out the hard way with the Muscovies when we witheld feed.

Alex Moffitt wrote:

L. Johnson wrote:I have no experience with livestock at all.

Just from the old imagination I would think that you could scale the operation to work. As in maybe one cow could graze a narrow area, or two in a small alley, but probably not a whole herd of cattle.

Its really bad to scale an orchard like that, for people who choose to use cows its done on older trees orchards, with trees that are 15 years or more.

the trees are grown into a canopy over the animals. the spacing is not in laneways but more of a dots if a grid, tree amounts are much less.

Ben Zumeta wrote:I haven’t managed large livestock, but I recommend looking up Allan Savory and his work on holistic management, which is often applied to silvopasture and other forms of grazing livestock. It seems the essential idea is mimicking how every wild herd of grazers would naturally have a pack predator following it (lions, wolves, hyenas, or wild dogs), forcing the herd to constantly move and never overgraze any one spot. This rapid movement would be key with cattle in even a mature food forest with trees big enough to handle a bit of rubbing and stomping but not too much for too long.

I’d also look up the work of Sepp Holzer, Mark Shepherd, Gabe Brown, Joel Salatin, and the Basque silvopasture techniques that sustainably raised pigs, chestnuts and cork oaks together for millenia. When the Romans arrived, they said a squirrel could go from the Pyrenees to the Strait of Gibraltar without touching the ground, and the Basques had been there for 10,000yrs.

elle sagenev wrote:Shepherd did use cows and he has some videos on the results. He had issues with them eating the trees and had to protect them all until they were of size. He then had issues with one particular cow eating the protectors.