Increased forage in prime-condition pastures can mean different things to different producers, but there is a common thread: flexibility.
Letting a pound of weeds run wild in the pasture causes you to lose a pound or more of grass and profit potential. Controlling a pound of weeds, however, provides the opportunity to grow a pound — or more — of usable forage.
Increased pounds of forage means more flexibility — flexibility to add to your herd, diversify with different livestock species, take on a custom raising opportunity or make it through a frigid winter or a dry summer.
And while there’s not much you can do to control the weather, an effective weed control program with well-timed herbicide applications as the centerpiece can provide cost-efficient control of weeds that can impact forage quality and, ultimately, beef production.
It’s estimated that grazing cattle costs around $0.45 per head per day, whereas harvested hay or other stored feed can cost as much as $1.75 per head per day.1 If those savings are spread across your herd, it’s easy to understand how maximizing pasture productivity can help you maximize return on investment.
For example, implementing weed control to remove low-value, undesirable plants and giving high-quality forage a better chance to thrive can provide an additional 30 days of grazing in a continuous grazing system or 45 additional days of grazing in a rotational grazing system. In a 100-cow herd, that’s the potential to save nearly $135 per day, simply by kicking undesirable broadleaf weeds and brush out of your pastures.
Besides being unsightly, undesirable broadleaf weeds, woody plants and brush are often more aggressive than crucial forage plants — competing for light, water and nutrients. Herbicide applications can help speed the reset and return a pasture to prime productivity.
Increased forage in prime-condition pastures can mean different things to different producers, but there is a common thread: flexibility.
See how you can boost ROI, extend your grazing season and give your operation more flexibility with our ROI calculator.
1Burdine, K. The Cost of Pasture versus Hay, 2013.
