Managing Larkspur

#bfrdpwy #aginternship #RightRisk

I can’t believe it has already been ten weeks. I have learned so much this summer and am so grateful I was able to have this opportunity. I have grown my knowledge and have made new connections. This week we checked the cows, learned about poisonous plants, and cut them down, and tore down a fence and rebuilt it. To keep your ranch productive and up to date, you have to do the odd jobs as you can.

We spent a couple days chopping larkspur, as this is a common poisonous plant in the forest. This plant can kill cattle if ingested; there is not a lot you can do if the cow eats this plant. Larkspur can cause up to 15% of deaths in cattle herds. My host explained that they used to be able to spray it, which would kill most of it, but some environmentalists spoke up and they are not able to now since it is on the forest land. Since Larkspur is a native species, they don’t want you to spray and kill it, even though it will kill cattle.

We also tore down a fence this week; we used a post puller for the T-posts and used the skid steer for the wooden posts. My host created a handy contraption to roll up the wire with the skid steer to make it a lot easier and faster. I was able to drive the skid steer to lay out the posts. We laid out three T-post to every wooden. We would lay out the posts first to make sure they are the correct distance away from another. The fence has to be up to government speculations, as my host uses grants from the NRCS for wildlife friendly fence. There is also an old corral right in the middle of the fence, so we tore down some of it and replaced wooden posts so that they could use it in the fall when weaning calves.

The one thing I would challenge from this week would be not being able to spray Larkspur. I think that they could at least regulate it and not just stop a rancher from doing it. There could be a regulation of only spraying half of the pasture or making sure you use a certain weed killer. It makes a lot of work for a rancher to chop all the weeds, and that is if they have time to. Ranchers are busy enough as it is, especially during this time of the year, with haying, checking calves for sickness, and moving cows to different pastures.

I have learned so much this summer and I will use the knowledge that I have gained in my last year of college and on my family farm. This week I learned about poisonous plants which was interesting to me because in Nebraska we don’t have a lot of poisonous plants, to cattle at least, where we live. It is interesting to see how different the country can be even if it is only one state away.

Submitted by: Danielle Wadsworth
Edits by: GrowinG Internship Team