posted 2 years ago
We have a pretty big cheatgrass issue here, and I'm wondering if there's a great way to manage that with grazing. I know that if you hit it early and super hard with regenerative grazing for a few years than it will eventually die off, but the issue spots are so spread out that we can't hit everything in time. By the time we manage to graze over a spot, then the grass is old enough that it's dry and the sheep, goats, cows, and alpacas don't like it anymore. It's like as soon as they put up seed heads, even if it's still green, they suddenly loose interest. Our chickens will graze the seeds down if their pen is set on top of it, and the geese will eat it (but it isn't their favorite), but I'm wondering if there's a species that really likes eating the seeds specifically? We would run them rotationally over the areas we could reach, so it'd be nice if we could move them easily. Do turkeys like the seeds? I haven't tried our ducks, but maybe they would? Or maybe peacocks or pheasants? I'd rather not try everything without foreknowledge of what they'd do, and the internet has such widespread answers and nothing that really helps that I can find. There are sprays out there, but I'd really like to find a natural method of getting rid of the grass, and finding an animal (or bird) that will eat it would be best. We could also mow it down, but that would be hours and hours of really spread out work on our 500 acre property.
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