will sheep eat dried knapweed in hay?

[Chasingmytail]

Cut a neighbours field and she let us take the hay - full of wild flower seeds/pollinators. Im wondering if the sheep will be interested in these in the hay or will they be last on the palatable scale? Is there anything good in this hay mix. Got quite a few bales off it for free anyway. Also will the seeds eaten be beneficial to the pastures?

 

[neilo]

Cut a neighbours field and she let us take the hay - full of wild flower seeds/pollinators. Im wondering if the sheep will be interested in these in the hay or will they be last on the palatable scale? Is there anything good in this hay mix. Got quite a few bales off it for free anyway. Also will the seeds eaten be beneficial to the pastures?

I would think think the answer lies in what weeds (sorry, wild flowers/pollinators) were present.

 

[Agrivator]

We have some fields where second-cuts contain very large dandelion leaves. I reckon the sheep find them very palatable and no doubt they have a high nutritional status.

The only time we made wrapped square-bale haylage, we stacked them in the corner of a field.
The top bales had so much bird damage, and were so difficult to handle without collapsing, we had no option but to abandon them near the stack at the side of the field. Most of them were complete shyte.

When we turned ewes and lambs into the field at lambing time, the ewes scoffed the lot - apart from the string and plastic. So goodness knows what ewes like, and what ewes don't like.

 

[Northeastfarmer]

Sheep will eat anything if they are hungry enough

 

[Agrivator]

Sheep will eat anything if they are hungry enough

In the Western Isles in Scotland, it was quite normal to feed whole dried fish to ewes.

Do they still do that?. And since the fish-meal ban, would it still be legal?

And are there still any cases of them taking the washing off the line? Or was that goats? Or Exlanas!!!!!!!

 

[egbert]

Unless there's known poisonous plants - which we hear about and know of for good reason- the sheep will be fine. I cut various 'hay meadows' - read, unfertilised unimproved- including lots of knapweed.
Stock LOVE the output, eating pretty much every stick.
(Mind, my beasts are usually pretty hungry come February)

 

[ollie989898]

Livestock will eat anything that is different from the usual. Mouldy silage or hay often near on fire and smelling of caramel? No worries, they scoff the lot. Whether it's any good for them is another matter.

 

[egbert]

Livestock will eat anything that is different from the usual. Mouldy silage or hay often near on fire and smelling of caramel? No worries, they scoff the lot. Whether it's any good for them is another matter.

The specific Op mentioned knapweed.
I've got cattle who bloom on round bales, outdoors in the p1$$1ng rain all winter, including masses of knapweed.
Perhaps their nutrients come down in the rain.

Almost every stick of fodder here is off ground that hasn't been ploughed or seeded since the last war, and most nowadays would laugh at.
It sees very little fert, might get lime every other decade, and is about as far as an ag college would teach as being the right way to make fodder.

This doesn't bother me -or the cows- one jot. They eat the output quite happily, and I sit evenings and look at the absence of bills on the table.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

More sheep in the world browse trees than eat green grass.
I don't think a bit of knapweed will slow your sheep down much, if it does then change the sheep out for better sheep "that can"

as @egbert alludes, there are some very flash looking outfits making SFA, and some very "average pastures" which leave the operating profit for operating with