Cattle and Cheatgrass

I spoke with Natural Resources Specialist Kent McAdoo at University of Nevada Cooperative Extension, about a subject that I have heard two sides on. I have heard pros and cons about whether or not cattle will feed on cheat grass. Cattle can certainly be used as a control mechanism for cheap grass. In fact our featured speaker is Dr. Barry Perryman who recently completed a study where we were using cattle, in this case, to control cheat grass during the fall. The advantage is that you know how much cheat grass there is, you can plan for it, and you are not having to worry so much about cattle as opposed to grazing cheat grass in the spring. You are not worried about their impact on the native vegetation because the native vegetation is dormant. So unless you have a fall green up period, it can be very very friendly to be more desirable vegetation. One of the things that Dr. Perryman discovered is that even though he supplemented the livestock out there on the range, thinking that the cheat grass was not going to be a very high source of protein, it turns out that the tests showed that it has a lot more protein than what we had originally thought. Study resulted in finding that there was a significant reduction both in cheat grass density and in cheat grass cover out there in the landscape as well as in the residual seeds in the soil. So if they are used as a tool, they can be very effective in reducing cheat grass.