Keep Your Grasslands Producing

Don't wait. Early treaters get cost-effective weed control.

Prevention. We practice it in animal husbandry, equipment and facilities maintenance and in our own daily lives. It can save us pain, inconvenience and expense.

The same approach supports healthy pastures. While putting off pulling a soil sample, adding a cross fence, or treating that new patch of weeds you noticed last week may not seem like cause for concern, you're setting yourself up for some serious inconvenience and expense, and maybe even a little pain, in the not-so-distant future. Then, throw in rising feed and land costs and you need an even sharper pencil.

Much was written over the winter about how best to meet these challenges during 2007. Among the advice: rely more on grazing. To do that, you better make sure your grazing resource can stand up to the increased demands.

Don't delay

Low-value, undesirable plants not only reduce forage production, but cattle avoid these often unpalatable species, which increases grazing pressure nearby. Uneven forage utilization can lead to isolated overgrazing, which can snowball into a decrease in overall forage quality and open more of your pastures to weeds. Treating weeds before they establish can save you the stress and financial strain of reclaiming land lost to dense infestations. It's always best to tackle invasive species when they first show up on your valuable rangeland and pasture acres, and spring is the ideal time to do it. Small, tender, newly growing spring weeds are much easier to control with herbicide applications than late-season weeds that are nearing, or have reached, maturity.

In the early spring, weeds and grass grow quickly. They're putting on leaves, photosynthesizing and launching into a productive growing season. It's during this phase when an application of ForeFront^®  R&P or Milestone^® herbicide can efficiently wipe out start-up weeds, lay down a residual control barrier that prevents new weed sprouts, and leave desirable forage grasses in place and flourishing to feed your herd. 

ForeFront R&P is the most complete broadleaf weed solution available for rangeland and pasture and is a great option for improving pasture production and utilization where limited by mixed broadleaf weed species. A broadcast application of ForeFront R&P provides great broad-spectrum control of noxious and invasive species, including thistles and knapweeds, along with many other common pasture pests, such as buffalobur, absinth wormwood, fringed sagewort, curlycup gumweed, annual broomweed, horseweed (marestail), ragweed, pigweed and many others. ForeFront R&P controls more than 60 broadleaf pasture weeds without tank-mixing.

If you need targeted control of tough noxious and invasive species, Milestone is your best option. It offers excellent activity on knapweeds, thistles and other aggressive species at low use rates between 3 and 7 fluid ounces per acre, depending on target species. Research has shown that Milestone provides unparalleled activity on Canada thistle, with spring or fall applications yielding 90 percent control or better one year after treatment. It's an essentially nonvolatile, nonrestricted-use pesticide 1 that can be applied up to the water's edge, so you can target the toughest invaders in more places.

You can start treatment with ForeFront R&P or Milestone as soon as weeds are up and actively growing. Milestone herbicide and ForeFront™ R&P herbicide also provide excellent results on more mature weeds, including bolted thistles. However, the longer you wait to treat, the more herbicide you'll need to achieve the same results - and the more production those weeds will have cost you.

TLC for CRP

What's good for your pastures also is good for Conservation Reserve Program acres. All Dow AgroSciences Range & Pasture products are labeled for use on CRP acres, and spring is a great time to initiate a maintenance program on CRP ground to prepare those acres for re-enrollment or a return to productive cropland or pastureland.

Now is an especially good time to treat if you were allowed to graze or hay CRP acres last year through special drought exemptions. Grazing or haying opens the dense growth that can reduce herbicide uptake. In cases where your CRP maintenance may have lagged for a few years, it's important to understand that returning the land to productivity will require more than one application. A prescribed burn in the spring, where allowed and practical, is an excellent way to clear ground litter and old-growth forage and set up new weed sprouts for treatment. Be sure to work with your local FSA on an approved plan for burns.

In most cases, restoring and maintaining CRP land requires more than a short-term commitment. If the goal is to return the land to crop production, remember that many herbicides labeled for CRP carry a pre-plant interval for certain crops. Your Dow AgroSciences sales representative is available to assess and make recommendations for the mixed challenges you are likely to see on CRP acres.

¹Some states require an individual be licensed if involved in the recommendation, handling or application of any pesticide.  Consult your local extension office for information regarding licensing requirements.