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can blackberry cane be stored for winter feed?

 
Posts: 700
Location: rainier OR
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the blackberry patch i pick is gonna need some trimming back this year and my goats love the stuff, but I think if I were to just toss it fresh into the pasture they'd eat themselves sick.

so I was wondering if the canes could be dried like hay or perhaps run through a chipper and made into silage
 
pollinator
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Location: Oakland, CA
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If feasible, I'd hang them up in the shade, with good ventilation, like dried flowers. Maybe sell some of the leaves at the farmer's market as herbal tea.
 
Brice Moss
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I was thinkig of piling them into the aluminum cages those "disposable" 250 gal liquid totes are held togeter with covering the top so it would dry out good then draggin them down into the pasture when the goats finnish all the green up and start meancing the trees in december
 
pollinator
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A farmer I worked for this year had patches of particularly weedy, blue raspberry/blackberry

didn't make a whole ton of berries, but it made them  over a very long season, like I think he said he had berries in thanksgiving or something silly, and I was eating them there starting in early june.

Never though blue raspberries existed until then, thought that was just a slushy flavor lol!

Funny stuff aside, this stuff was particularly vine like, didn't really seem to make you're typical cane. I'm kicking myself right now for not feeding some of it to my goats to see how much they would have enjoyed the stems. It also grew absolutely silly thick, like a short and very thick bush. Going to go back there to get some root samples now for sure!

Silage?
 
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