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Cows in the wood revisited.

Started by Jeff, October 19, 2002, 12:15:33 PM

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Jeff

In the early days of this forum we had a thread of the same name.

Last fall or this spring, cant remember other then there were no leaves I noticed some guys setting fence posts up the middle of a woodlot along the highway. Nice looking little woods adjacent to a large pasture with holsteins in it. I guess I never dreamed they were going to let the cows into the woods. The following picture shows dramaticly how cows in the woods effects them in less then a year.

I have linked to the picture instead of posting it because I left it very wide so you could see what was going on. The little light spots in the left hand side are cows. Not hard to see where the fence line is.

https://forestryforum.com/cows_in_woods.jpg

Just call me the midget doctor.
Forestry Forum Founder and Chief Cook and Bottle Washer.

Commercial circle sawmill sawyer in a past life for 25yrs.
Ezekiel 22:30

Steve

Now this is a thread that is/has been an issue here is Hawaii for well over 100 years!
Cattle along with Sugar Cane were the backbone of the Big Island economy for years. Native forests were cleared to make 1,000 of acres of pasture.
Cattle have been pastured in mixed native forests ever since. Acacia Koa is a legume and cattle will walk a mile for a sprout so consequently there has been essentially no natural propagation of Koa in the past 100 years.
The stands of Koa are getting older and older and falling down upon themselves with no little ones coming up.
The are 1,000's of acres of state and private lands like this. For the first time in the 11 years I've been here the state has opened for bid one 100 acre parcel for salvage of the dead and dying Koa.
I hope to get my mill up there in the near future and will post pictures if I do.
Steve
Hawaiian Hardwoods Direct
www.curlykoa.com

Bro. Noble

In our area and probably a lot of others,  the value of timber management isn't realized.  People ignore their woodlots and feel like they are getting a bonus when someone will pay them for anything that grows there.
 
Our cattle still have access to some timberland, but we are changing that all the time.  We used to have old-timers in the neighborhood that cut brush for their cattle in drought years (cattle love sassafrass leaves and will leave good pasture to eat white oak acorns and persimmons).  Another local rite was to burn the woods late in the winter to kill the snakes and ticks and make the grass grow better.  I got news for them, they missed a few.  The same people wonder why the deep holes in the creeks are full of gravel now instead of fish.

When we started logging our place about 10 years ago, I was really disapointed to find a lot of big red and expecially black oaks that looked like they would make a whack of FAS lumber only to end up being doty or shaky.  The dote mainly being a result of fire and the shake from a virus as I understand that is at least sometimes the result of cattle damaging the tree roots.

This fall we started in a new place.  We bought it about 30 years ago.  It is hard to get to and had been managed by the fellow who had owned it since about 1900.  He was a real odd-ball for the time and place-----kept his cattle out of the woods and didn't burn off.  I was really disgusted when I came across the trees Dad had marked to cut-----full of great big black oaks.  From past experience this meant finding the tree to be hollow and often getting soaked with 'stumpwater' while cutting the notch.  Then trying to decide if there was likely to be enough good wood to cut the tree or just girdle it.

The first tree I cut produced a clean, sound notch so I went ahead and made the back cut.  Couldn't believe it was good.  So was the next and the one after.  These trees are making 4 - 6 eight ft. grade logs each, probably avraging 600 bdft.per tree.

Wish Mr Driskill had been the previous owner of all our place.

Noble
milking and logging and sawing and milking

Texas Ranger

Here in Texas cows and timber mix, but with proper controls.  Some plantations are kept open by grazing, lightly, once or twice a year.  The key is not turning them into the woods and leaving them till all good things are gone.
The Ranger, home of Texas Forestry

Corley5

Our woodlots were all pastured with no detrimental effects.  I had people tell me that our maple wouldn't be any good for veneer because of the cattle being in the woods.  We got lots of veneer logs.  The only ill effect that I see in our case is lack of regeneration.  We are missing small trees in the 2"-4"dbh class in our stands.  Since the cattle have been gone things have changed.  The woods no longer have a "park like" appearance.  Now they have an undergrowth component of regenerating northern hardwoods especially since they were thinned of the large maple in the winter and spring of 98.  It's actually hard to walk through some areas now.  Our woods weren't pastured real hard like some wood lots.  I've seen some that make me cringe when I drive by.  One in particular is off Levering Rd west of Levering.  It is adjacent to the barnyard and is in pretty rough shape.  Both my Grtandfathers used to cut trees for the cattle to munch especially in a dry summer when pasture was running out and the hay crop wasn't what it could have been.  Later they'd go back and cut the trees into firewood if they were hardwood or sawlogs if they were aspen or basswood.
Burnt Gunpowder is the Smell Of Freedom

Jeff

Well, I gotta say that those cows have to be having a negative effect on the health of this woodlot. Those leaves didn't all fall off because they were over fertilized. The half that isn't pastures has not hardly started turning fall colors yet. There isn't just a few cows in there. there are probably 50 to 100
Just call me the midget doctor.
Forestry Forum Founder and Chief Cook and Bottle Washer.

Commercial circle sawmill sawyer in a past life for 25yrs.
Ezekiel 22:30

Bro. Noble

The trees obviously provide shade for cattle.  In the winter, in our area, some brush is all the protection cattle need. On the negative side,  there's not enough forage in timbered areas to much more than replace the energy cattle use in looking for something to eat.  When dairy cattle start eating acorns and persimmons, their production suffers considerably.  The same is true of beef but isn't as noticable as lower milk weight.  Cattle lose condition rapidly and can have serious health problems.  Timbered pasture isn't a good thing for cattle or timber.

Noble
milking and logging and sawing and milking

Bibbyman

The farm we own is about 1/4 tillable, 1/4 pasture and 1/2 timber.  The timber ground had always been pastured except for about 10 years in the 60's when dad was out of the cattle business.  We sold off the last of our cattle a couple of years ago but you can still see that the woods is brows off about head high and very few new growth smaller than 4".  No doubt the cow foraged a lot in the woods but they always had plenty of pasture too.

It's always been the belief in our area that cleared land was more valuable than wooded.  A bigger threat to our woodland is the breaking up of old farms into mini-farms.  People can buy a 3-10 acre lot and put up a mobile home and a satellite dish.  Then comes the little shed and two horses.  

Horses are far worse on trees as they will crib them to death and can reach higher limbs.  As rugged forested land can be had for less than open area,  these people are more attracted to it.  Then they start on a program of clearing it.  They feel like they are "improving" it.

One case history;  A young couple - both school teachers - approached us to cut those trees off their land that was shading their horse pasture.  The woman's grandfather had given them seven acres on the corner of his large farm.  We don't do logging but went with a neighbor logger to look.  The total acreage was covered buy huge white oak trees and a few red oak and walnut.  The land set in a drainage area at the edge of the prairie. The farm had been in the same family since homestead days and they probably took care of this woodlot like a park.  

They were totally indifferent to the trees.  They wanted them gone. They had built a small barn and needed stall and fence lumber and wanted to know if they'd have enough trees to make that.  I tried to explain they could market a few each year and pay for the feed for their dumb horses.  Besides,  grandpa had over 500 acres of open ground only 100 yards away,  surely something could be worked out.  

We ended up cutting four damaged trees that made two truckloads on a single axle truck. (One tree had a lightning blaze down it's length made 3 10' logs until the first limb. Top log was better than 20" dia little end.)  They had way more than enough lumber to build their stalls and exercise pen they all have to have.  We ended up taking half to a brother-in-law.

I pointed out a number of trees that had dead limbs in them and looked like they were about ready to die of wilt.  Told them to watch the trees and have the logger come back each year and take out the ones that were damaged,  looked sick or in the way for some reason.  They could market the veneer logs and have the top logs sawn into lumber and cut the tops up for firewood.  

Seen them at the county fair the next summer and had a good visit.  Said they had been approached by a logging company and had all those trees cut and gotten rid of.

I'm sure I could have helped them out and gotten rid of all those trees for sawing a few hundred feet of lumber but I'd have a hard time sleeping at night.
Wood-Mizer LT40HDE25 Super 25hp 3ph with Command Control and Accuset.
Sawing since '94

Frank_Pender

You are a good man,  Bib.   I often run into the same kinds of issues out here in the West.   Some people just do not learn the value of sleep until it is way late in their lives.  I reflected a bit on that yesterday as I hauled off the logs for the wife of a fellow retired teacher, who had fallen out of one of them a week earlier.  Forty feet to the ground.   He sleeps now :'(  
Frank Pender

L. Wakefield

   That's a hard post to follow, Frank. I'm sorry to hear about that.

   But back to the cows. I have 6 now (and another due any day...) About 20 acres of pasture more/less. They spend some time in the woods- but it's just not their grazing place. It's a lie down, at certain times of day- and they go in some times after particular plants. I was astonished to smell pennyroyal one day- April had been grazing it- just plucking a bite. I hadn't even realized it was there!

   What did happen as it got dry this summer is that the border area- swamp/pasture/woodland- as a transitional zone provided a lot of graze in that it wasn't being blasted by the sun. Interestingly, they leave the young white pines right alone- in fact, the only thing I have seen them hit is young hardwoods. They will browse at times. But I really suspect that the deer and moose herd size is larger than that of the cattle. I know on the 'side' of the property that has deer and moose (and not cows) the grazing damage is extreme. And you can tell who hit what. The moose graze much higher up. They love red maple!              lw
L. Wakefield, owner and operator of the beastly truck Heretik, that refuses to stay between the lines when parking

Ron Wenrich

My grazing damage arises from goats.  If you have any type of vegetation, they will get rid of it.  The only exception is cherry.  

I put a couple of head in a multiflora rose patch, and they wiped it out within a couple of years.  The down side is that you need about 4-5 goats/acre to make a good "clearcut".

They've all gone on to greener pastures, but I sure do miss their efficiency.  I believe they would kill for pine.  They would rub the bark off of a red maple, just to get to the inner bark, and strip it.  That would end up killing the tree.

I have watched as a guy has turned a wet area into a pasture.  He has run beef cattle onto it.  The stately ash trees have died due to soil compaction from the cows.  Most of the willow are on their last legs.  But, the multiflora rose continues, since he has no goats.   ;)
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

Brian_Bailey

Ron,  

           Your post on goats brought back some memories of my homesteading days back in the 70's & early 80's.  We got into raising goats and made the mistake of letting them roam freely.  It didn't take them long to find my wife's rose bushes! They had eaten them right down to the ground before we realized what they were up to. Fencing suddenly became a priority.
WMLT40HDG35, Nyle L-150 DH Kiln, now all I need is some logs and someone to do the work :)

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