Cattle and slugs

[Will7]

I have never had success direct drilling wheat after osr. I have tried doing it on the green multiple times and failed, and I have tried into bare land and failed. Slug grazing has never been an issue as they have hollowed the seed before then.

Now I have some cattle I was thinking of adding some spring oats to the osr volunteers and then get the cattle to graze it pre wheat drilling. Could I reasonably expect the cattle’s hooves to disturb the slugs sufficiently to remove the slug pressure from the following wheat crop?

 

[EddAke]

We did that this year, spread pig muck and then drilled oats and buckwheat into OSR stubble which came up well with the volunteers. Grazed it with suckler cows and calves to remove around half of the above ground biomass. Drilled wheat behind it with a Claydon. The wheat looks good (apart from a small area around the water tank which got a bit hard). I’m not sure it had any effect on the slugs though. We don’t have a huge slug problem, would normally only pellet after OSR and I did apply 5kg/ha of ferric phosphate pellets pre drilling wheat because I could see quite a lot!