We have a large plot that connects to our property that I am considering fencing in with electric. There is a vacant mobile home and several apple trees. This yard is full of the most lush, thick, green grass we have anywhere on the property. We have been spending hours every time we mow it for years, and we are ready to fence it in. Our cows are known to eat tree leaves. Do any of you have apple trees anywhere in your pasture and do cows eat the leaves? Could it be harmful? Thanks.
Apple trees in pasture
- Thread starter bigsteve
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Nesikep
Well-known member
I have 3 ANCIENT trees in one of my fields.. cows eat leaves they can reach, rub on them, etc... no harm to the cows but if the trees are valuable then they'll be hard on them
Dave
Well-known member
Over on the coast I had 7 or 8 apple trees in the pasture or over hanging the fence. Nothing about apple leaf that will hurt a cow. I hear people complain about cows choking on the apples but I never had a problem with that. And my cows ate a ton of apples every year. people talk about leading their cows with a bucket of grain. I have done that with apples a number of times. Here I have a couple apple trees in the yard. The deer eat any leaf they can reach. They appear pretty darn healthy.
lithuanian farmer
Well-known member
Have a couple apple trees in one pasture. Cows love coming to that one in fall when there are plenty of apples on the ground and on the tree itself. They eat everything they can reach- apples, leaves. No harm except of a choking possibility. Never happened here, but it does happen for other people sometimes.
Jeanne - Simme Valley
Well-known member
As mentioned, choking is always a potential - but, my cattle have lots of apple trees in their pastures. Did have one get 'drunk" on over-ripe apples.
I lost a weaned steer last year that choked on a hedge apple, little larger than an apple. It does happen. Cows, not as often simply because of their size, it's easier for them to break it apart with a couple good bites.
Jeanne - Simme Valley said:
Did you get a video? :lol:
snoopdog
Well-known member
I wish I had a video of an ole mallard that ate a bunch of mash, I'd like to know if he was really that funny acting, or if it was me and my cohorts!TCRanch said:
Redgully
Well-known member
I've been a fruit grower my whole life although now we only have five acres of production left. We used to pack around 60 000 boxes of fruit a year and all the reject fruit went to the cows. You have to be careful, any more than a box of fruit a cow who hasn't had fruit for a month or so can bloat them or even worse cause acidosis. Pears are the worst. But we slowly increased what they ate over two weeks and then we used to dump truck loads in there and they would eat as much as they wanted without a worry, even pears. Over thirty years of doing this we never lost one but we did have a few cysts that the vet reckons may have been caused by the fruit. When eating stonefruit they eat the whole thing and then when they sit and chew cud they leave a big pile of seeds. I had two over the years choke on apples. You see them frothing at the mouth and distressing. Now this will sound stupid but to fix it you chase them around and it makes them cough it out and they can fly a long way when they come out. If cows get access to your apple trees they will remove everything they can reach and if they get hungry or are lacking minerals they will start stripping the bark and kill the tree. If the tree is tall if you put mesh around the trunk and let the cows trim all they can reach they actually look fantastic. But many apple trees aren't tall enough to do that.
greybeard
Well-known member
TCRanch said:
The taste of those things alone is enough to kill anything...
wbvs58
Well-known member
Like most things with livestock, the risk is always higher with hungry animals like if a bin of apples is put out to them they will be fighting to get as much as possible and risk of choke higher. I would think that by just browsing the fruit the risk would be much lower.
Ken
Ken
Jeanne - Simme Valley
Well-known member
No - it was back when we didn't have our fancy cell phones.
I had one cow, in the fall, would walk up to a fence, observe the height, jump it and proceed to eat all the apples on other side of fence. Drove the rest of the herd nuts. We had an OLD metal yoke, had a maybe 2' bar that came up with a "hook" on end and one that went down. Nasty me - we put it on her, I held out a pan of grain and enticed her to reach over the fence. LOL - she quit fence jumping! Good thing, if she jumped with that on, she might have wiped out all our temp fencing in one jump.
I had one cow, in the fall, would walk up to a fence, observe the height, jump it and proceed to eat all the apples on other side of fence. Drove the rest of the herd nuts. We had an OLD metal yoke, had a maybe 2' bar that came up with a "hook" on end and one that went down. Nasty me - we put it on her, I held out a pan of grain and enticed her to reach over the fence. LOL - she quit fence jumping! Good thing, if she jumped with that on, she might have wiped out all our temp fencing in one jump.
greybeard
Well-known member
Jeanne, when I was a kid, a neighbor of ours made a fence yoke out of wood...heavy wood. The things that old cow would do and positions it would get into to eat was amazing. She did most of her grazing down on knees and head twisted to one side, but she never tried to go thru a fence with it on.
I haven't seen a fence yoke used in decades...
I haven't seen a fence yoke used in decades...
Nesikep
Well-known member
We lost a cow to choking on potatoes.. had to be a beautiful cow too... Yeah, they just get greedy, I think it's especially when they hog them and put 4 in their mouth at the same time.
Redgully, we used to grow veggies... Ever been around a cow that's had her fill of onions?? The stench is something else, you can smell her burps from 100 yards away, upwind of her!.. what's the term, knock a buzzard off a corpse or something?
We had some fence yokes for sheep.. was easier to just get rid of the sheep though.
Redgully, we used to grow veggies... Ever been around a cow that's had her fill of onions?? The stench is something else, you can smell her burps from 100 yards away, upwind of her!.. what's the term, knock a buzzard off a corpse or something?
We had some fence yokes for sheep.. was easier to just get rid of the sheep though.
Jeanne - Simme Valley
Well-known member
YES!!! this was decades ago!! We found the yoke in our barn after moving here to NY in 1978.
Redgully
Well-known member
Nesikep said:
When i was a kid we used to grow a lot of veges, 40 000 cauliflowers mainly, and an array of other stuff. My parents sold our old jersey when she developed a taste for runner beans, broke my heart. But no never onions, i am amazed to hear a cow would eat onions. If it smelled anything like rotten onions then that would have been bad!
Nesikep
Well-known member
It smelled far worse than rotten onions!
I'm going to make myself sound like we had a really big operation, we grew about 500,000 carrots a year (ok, that's just 1 acre).. couple acres of squash, some potatoes.
Cows ate all the culls, did the weaned calves a lot of good in their first winter.
I'm going to make myself sound like we had a really big operation, we grew about 500,000 carrots a year (ok, that's just 1 acre).. couple acres of squash, some potatoes.
Cows ate all the culls, did the weaned calves a lot of good in their first winter.
sim.-ang.king
Well-known member
Nesikep said:
Every fall when I turn cows out on bean stubble, the first thing they go for is the wild garlic.
Need a gas mask just driving by when there is 20 cows all loaded up on garlic.
Nesikep
Well-known member
I can imagine!
Redgully
Well-known member
That would be a smell you wouldn't forget. You could probably bottle it and sell it, market it as revenge gas....
