At present there are three techniques that are feasible for weed control: spraying, clipping pasture that isn't too grown up, and and basal spray. You'd as well plant more brush as to brush hog. The objective is to keep the grass and legumes from being displaced by brushy weeds and forest, and to maintain the grass in the vegetative state as much as possible, rather than in the reproductive (going to seed) stage. Seeds and seed stems are low in digestible nutrients and have poor palatability. Proper rotation is the most important way to keep grass vegetative.
Spray You have to use herbicide to really kill brushy weeds. Spray works best if the brush is shoulder high or less, and use it when the brush is growing , not a dry time. I once used Crossbow, and they say you can use it at any time the snow is not on, but I have always used it as a foliar (leaf) spray. For two years now I have used Remedy Ultra and Forefront, which contain much the same ingredients plus a small amount of a similar herbicide. Remedy contains nearly twice as much triclopyr as Crossbow, and Forefront has a large amount of 2,4-D and a smaller amount of a similar compound. The combination was ecomended by my local Southern States dealer. I found using 80% of the recommended minimum of Remedy and 25% of the minimum of Forefront is very effective for susceptible weeds all season, no increase needed as the season advances. I have yet to find anything that will control raspberries, redbud and a very few other species, but these are a minor problem due to slow growth and limited propagation. They can be controlled manually. I use spot application, so application rates are far below the amount allowed per acre.
The instructions say to wet leaves and stems. Folks, you can't do more, because the excess runs off. Be through, but avoid a tendency to over do it!
It is hard not to get yourself wet with spray, and it is often hard to tell whether you are wet with spray or sweat, because putting it on is work. I haven't had an adverse effect from Crossbow, and I have been used it and it's predecessor for forty years, except twice I have had an effect from inhaling it. The effect was to make me feel a little weak for two or three weeks. Occasionally it would cause a runny nose or phlegm. I have never felt ill effect from the combination I use now.
I did some occupational health work for a few years, and worked in biological warfare two and a half years in the 50's, and from these learned a little about the body's defenses that apply here. The lungs consist or many small sacs the size of a grape, each enclosing an airspace which is connected to the trachea, the pipes air passes through to get to the lungs. These sacs are two cells thick, with air on one side and blood on the other, to facilitate movement of oxygen to the blood and and carbon dioxide in the other direction. They are very tender. "Smoke inhalation" in a fire is usually inhalation of hot air, which sears these cells. Sear enoug of them and you can not exchange oxygen. Goodby! Likewise if droplets of spray solution get down to them, they would allow ready absorption.
The passages which lead to these sacs are lined with fine hairs, and a think fluid catches foreign materials, solid particles and liquid drops, and they are slowly moved back up toward the entrance by the hairs. Your phlegm is this fluid. It comes up on its own, and comes up when you "hork it up." It also includes drainage from your sinuses. If you have worked in dusty conditions you may have noticed the thick part of what you spit up has dust caught in it. Same thing occurs with inhaled droplets. If you swallow phlegm with germs in it (when you have a cold) the acid of the stomach kills most all of them. If you have dust in your phlegm, it will pass through your digestive system with little effect. I really don' know abut he effect of the materials in spray, but I would think it is a good idea to spit the phlegm out - I always do.
In the biological warfare of the 50's (fifty years ago) they made a great deal of getting very fine droplets in the dispersing spray, because very small ones would be carried into the lungs, and not deposited in the airways, as larger drops would, which are cleared out. I don' think much of the volume of herbicide would be converted to very fine droplets in the low pressure sprays in ag use. In other words, most of it would come back up in phlegm.
Another consideration is that sprays are a complex mixture. The "active ingredient" is a plant hormone. Being a hormone does not mean it has an effect in human biochemistry, because human (and other animal) biochemistry is so different from plants. In effect, the hormone is a plant growth regulator.
In addition to the active ingredient (there are actually two of them working in tandem in in all three herbicides mentioned) there are other chemicals. The active ingredients are not water soluble, which necessitates an emulsifier, because you dilute with water, which is cheap. There is also a detergent to help the spray stick to leaves and get into holes and cracks. I suspect the problem I have had from inhalation was from the detergent, because there is a surfactant that controls the surface tension of the liquid in you lungs and the rest of the breathing apparatus, and I think that was "messed up." Best not to breathe the stuff!
At one time I used a full-face gas mask (I'd researched the appropriate canister for the spray), but it was hot and clumsy, so I quit using it. The kind of paper or fiber mask a painter uses may help, at least with the larger droplets, but this is questionable.
One problem with our West Virginia fields is that they are so irregular, and have many edges. At one time the woody growth was cut out of all the little valleys , and off all the places now too steep to get to with a tractor, including knobs. You could see all over the field. Doubtless these places were not smooth, they would have had tracks cut into the steep slopes so animals could walk around them. We could return to such practices with proper husbandry, if the (market) conditions encouraged it. This would mean elimination of cover for deer and coyotes, too, which would be an advantage.
Originally I used a tractor with a 150 gallon sprayer and got over all the farm every second or third year. Now we use a four-wheeler with a forty gallon tank on a low trailer behind. Using a tank mounted on the four-wheeler itself is a tip-over hazard when the liquid splashes from side to side. With our arrangement (see article below) you can get all over the farm, and can get it every year. Our arrangement eliminates getting on and off the tractor frequently, you can remain seated. It is far less labor, less exposure to the operator, and requires less material.
Basal spraying The use of basal spraying has been known for some time, but hasn't been widely used in this area. The solution is made up in diesel fuel or kerosine and is more concentrated than foliar spray. A hand sprayer is usually used. Spray is applied to the bottom fifteen to eighteen of the plant, all the way around. It is better than foliar spray for woody plants more than shoulder high (one application will frequently kill plants up to a foot or more in diameter for many species), and it can be done at any time of year, even if it will soon rain. However the February and March season suggests itself, when the ground is dry enough, and leaves are off. Inhalation of spray should be less of a problem, since the operator is always spraying downward.
Clipping pasture The advantage of using a mowing machine is that it is relatively fast. It gets the weeds that are not killed by spray, too. When you cut with a brush hog you cut six feet wide the first time around. After this is this considerably less because the brush hog is free to swing from side to side and you can't directly see where the edge between the cut and uncut grass is located. You do well to get a five foot width of cut after with a six foot cutter. With a mower you have the full width of the machine with perhaps four inches off for ovrlap. The problem is that the mower is much more easily broken. This means you have to pick up rocks, especially, and also fallen branches, etc. Trees must be cleaned up regularly, in any case, becausethey harbor new growth of woody weeds and make new edges to the pasture.
Never hit the same rock twice I usually have he loader bucket on when I do a piece or the first three times, so all I have to do is to stop and throw the rocks in. After that you don't need the bucket all the time, but can leave it in the field, and attach it when needed.
If brush gets larger than shoulder high, by neglect, no other word applies, you may want to brush hog it, then spray the shoots the next year (or likely for two or three years). The must be a delay of a year or two after the brush dies before you use the mower again because of the stumps. I recommend brush hog only on very steep ground, rough ground (where there are little washes, old cattle tracks, hidden stumps, etc), and there only because a brush hog is harder to break.
One disadvantage of the brush hog is the clutch. they all have a clutch to prevent injury to the tractor drive shaft (an expensie repair). But it requires some care to get it adjusted right. It should turn when something solid is hit, but should not be so loose it will get hot by slipping. It would be best to have it slip a little in ordinary use, to keep the clutch plates free of rust, but it will "polish" if they slip too much. The clutch must not get wet, because it will rust, and freeze up. Then it must be loosened so it will turn and you have to go through an extensive process of tightening until it is the right tension.
You can cut anything you can ride down with the tractor, by going slow and backing up a few times. However, many tractors have hydraulic hoses and other bendable parts under them. This riding down characteristic is how the brush hog gets its name. Hogs are sometimes put in standing corn, and they straddle the stalks and ride them down to the ground where they can get the ears. No tractor tha I know of that is now being manufactured has a truly hardened underside. Older ones are better in this respect.
You may be able to find a special kind of brush hog that is designed for larger trees, which allow you to cut them off by back up into them. They have a large heavy wheel underneath, which serves as a flywheel, four short heavy blades and a protective device on the back which retracts through compression springs to allow the blades to come in contact with the tree. With this you can cut trees six inches or more in diameter. It is about 20% to 50% more expensive than the regular heavy brush hog.
Pasture rotation The best way to maintain te grass in a vegetative state is to use adequate lime and divide the pasture in several fields and rotate pasture. This s a relatively new technique, and you should consult experts. The basic idea is to force the cattle to cleanup grass in one "paddock" and then move on to the another. When to move depends on how many paddocks you have and the condition of the grass. You don't want to graze the grass too short, because this will delay recovery, but at the same time you want them to eat it all, including cleaning out the fence rows.
Many experts say the more paddocks the better. Some try to move to a new one every day. The problem with this is you have to have water for each paddock, which increases the expense considerably. Of course the additional fence requires additional maintenance. Another problem is the variable rate of growth of grass. It begins in April, reaches a maximum in May and June, declnes cosiderably in the heat and dryness of the late summer and then has a second growth spurt in September and October when the rains return. And some years are much more productive, basically due to the difference between a wet year and a dry one. Some years in West Virginia you can pasture three times as many cattle on a given acreage as in the driest years.
You should think about at least eight or ten paddocks. Some of these would be cut for hay in the May-June rotation, and used for pasture in the dryer season. The plan should provide pasture into December or later, and might provide some planted hot season supplement, such as Sudan Grass in paddocks for August and early September. Paddocks could be subdivided by temporary (electrified string) fence.
Rotation is said to considerably increase the stocking rate, and works well with highly developed (limed and fertilized) pasture. It should considerably reduce the amount of spraying and clipping needed. It does require much more careful attention to detail, however.
The future As you know, the world supply of oil will run out by degrees. By 2025 the pinch will be sharp. This means great uncertainty in many respects. The advent of the petroleum driven tractor revolutionized farming. You could keep four or five cows where you kept a team of horses. Horses need daily attention, long training periods, are capricious, get sick, must be acquired by birth and raising, all of which reduce efficiency. It is hard to think they might come back as a source of farm power after the age of petroleum, but they might. Level land could be used to utilize other, heavier sources of power than the internal combustion engine.
I think what will happen in pasture is more efficient grazing systems, particularly with the utilization of more than one species. Sheep or goats to clean up after cows, for example. There will always be some weeds that are not eaten by cows and these will need to be taken care of by alternate methods. Sheep or goats require more secure fencing and more protection against predators. Alternatively it may be the old "grubbing hoe" or some similar tool will supply the need for weed removal again, at great cost in labor. The land owning class and the farm labor class may again become distinct.
I expect labor to be used in place of petroleum, to some extent. The lonely business I have experienced may change back toward the gang labor farming of the past. Local markets will become more important, communication by wire more important. This is if the free market prevails. If the government takes over it is hard to predict what will happen, other than things will go to hades for sure. in any case the person who thinks about what is happening and plans ahead will have a significant advantage.
The main advantage the Western cattlemen have, aside for being closer to the packing plants, which are located in the West because the feed lots are there, is that they do not have as many problems maintaining pastures. The biggest problem they face in the long run is that they will have severe water problems in a few years. The Midwest, the South and the more southerly part of the Far West are expected to have the most severe loss of precipitation. The giant Ogallala Aquifer is being "mined" in the sense that more water is being taken out than is being replaced by nature. About 27% of the irrigated land in the United States overlies this aquifer system, which supplies about 30% of the nation's ground water used for irrigation. Many feeding operatons are in this area, due to the corn and soybeans grown there.
Summary It is my belief that a judicial mixture of spraying and clipping when needed is the best pasture maintenance at the present. Rotational grazing has much to recommend it, but it is more management intensive.
