Will Capricorn eat cogongrass ?
The short answer is no .
A dyad of years ago I post this television on cogongrass :
Yesterday my television meet this comment :
Goats are generally sleep with to “ rust everything . ” They ’ve been used to check invasive plantssuch as kudzuandJapanese knotweed .
But cogongrass is a sess too far !
There are acres and acres of invasive cogongrass across the South.
Goats And Cogongrass
According tothe Delta Farm Press :
“ Cogongrass has been in the United States for decades but only in the last few years was labeled a noxious weed in Mississippi . The aggressive , resilient and prolific grassy Mary Jane is regard by outside botanists as the 7th worst green goddess in the world . It is known to taint 35 craw in 73 countries and can be found on more than 1.2 billion acres worldwide .
In the Mid - South and Southeast , cogongrass has crept into eatage and pasture operations , along highway rights of ways and into pine and hardwood plantations where the weed smartly competes for the water supply and nutrients want by forage grasses , Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and wildlife .
There are acres and acres of invasive cogongrass across the South.
Randy Browning , a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Wildlife Service and the Mississippi Fish and Wildlife Foundation , read now that landowner , state agency and , in many casing , the general world have learned to recognize the flora and its peril to agriculture and wildlife , that Mississippi is beginning to make progress on suppression of the smoke in some area and possibly even obliteration in some of the lesser - infected areas .
Browning talk March 10 to an overflow crowd at a Cogongrass Seminar in Jackson shop by the Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce ’s Bureau of Plant Industry .
“ Cogongrass will displace entire aboriginal communities , ” says Browning . “ Cogongrass competes intensely for available light and nutrient . landowner have get hold instances where the roots of the cogongrass literally grew through the roots of the trees . This hooey is tough . ”
Cogongrass is also a physical roadblock to seedling establishment of native flora , says Browning . It keeps other plant from sprouting . An example is yaupon , which is being choked out by cogongrass . ”
Cogongrass might peradventure tender a short - term eatage value , but fledged leave are unpalatable to livestock because of high silica content and because the young shoots have sharp points .
“ Even butt wo n’t eat cogongrass , ” enounce Browning . ”
The sarcasm in this situation is that one of the reason cogongrass was first importedwas for fauna to eat :
“ It was intentionally introduce from the Philippines into Mississippi as a possible forage in 1921 . Cogongrass was introduced into Florida in the thirties and 1940s as a potential foraging and for land stabilization purposes .
However , it was revealed that cogongrass was of picayune economic ( forage ) benefit and could become a serious pest . ”
Reasons Why Goats Won’t Eat Cogongrass
If caprine animal do eat cogongrass , it can reduce their tongues . As theUSDA reports :
“ ( cogongrass ) leaf margin are rough to the touch due to bantam , saw - like serration , a uncouth trait of other grasses as well . This rough margin can abridge the knife of a grazing animal , and due to high silica content , cogongrass is a useless grass craw . ”
There are acres and acres of invasive cogongrass across the South .
And even if Capricorn manage to get past the serrated edge and feed cogongrass – perhaps because other forage is n’t available – they’llactually lose weight on it :
“ When cogongrass was introduced , family had to grow what they ate , ” Byrd said . “ Most rural families had a cow for Milk River and butter , and they need to bung that moo-cow during the winter . They also had hogs , which they raised in pastures where they would root up and eat up rhizomes of grasses like cogongrass . ”
With its vigorous development and tough root system , cogongrass looked like a good forage and was even used in some places for soil stabilization .
“ Although cogongrass looks like a superb pasture , we memorize fauna that ingest cogongrass as the sole foraging turn a loss weight rather than gain weight , ” Byrd say . ”
Just Kill It!
Cogongrass is a horrible sess . read to identify it here . If it ’s on your holding , get disembarrass of it . To hope that your Capricorn wipe out cogongrass or else of almost anything else is a conceited Leslie Townes Hope . Just drink down the hooey .
You wo n’t be miss out on anything but trouble .
