Question about soapweed---the actual plant

[movin' on]

Has anybody in yucca country ever seen this? My vet's cows are pawing up soapweed and eating the roots! They are well fed and seem to be content, but they continue to do this. Any explanations?

[Soapweed]

[movin' on]

I agree that they oughta keep right on doing it! He said they are getting free choice Purina protein tubs, hay and dry grass. He also mentioned that the tubs they used to be on had urea in them and these new ones do not. Urea is kind of addictive to cows and he wondered if maybe something in those roots was similar to it?

[Shortgrass]

You bet I've seen em eat it. Ive seen them get frothy at the mouth like they're rabid. Neighbor here never fed hay, and his cows loved the stuff. His pasture was clean of them too. They were Herford. I had a couple of Char bulls that would root them out. I hated to see them go. Cattle will teach each other to do it. Have you ever eaten the petals of the Soapweed bloom? They are kinda sweet and taste like lettuce--try it.. Guess it was regular part of the indians diet.

[Jason]

Yucca is high in calcium. It is extracted and used as an organic soil ammendment. Some claim they have eliminated koshia weeds by spraying yucca extract on their fields.

Maybe the cows are just getting what they need?

[movin' on]

I'm sure the cows are doing it for a good reason. I guess I was trying to see if anyone knew "exactly" why. I'm not sure what kind of cows they are....I've never seen them, but I do know they come from New Mexico.

[Clarencen]

I would suspect, that sugars and starches are stored in the soapweed roots. Soapweed roots a rather soft and pourus, they may be more succlent than dry hay. When cattle get accustomed to eating certain plants they will seek them out. Somtimes they even will not do as well if these plants are not present. We sometimes see this when we move cattle from one area to another.

I do not have many soapweeds in my pastures, but ten or twelve years ago I leased a sandhill pasture. This pasture had big and tall sandhill in the middle that were about 1 1/2 miles across. There was low lying land on the east and west side. The only water was a few small ponds on the east and a creek that ran for a few hundred yards on the south. My plan was to put in two wells, one on the east and one on the west. I thought I could get by with the existing water until I had these wells in. This was BIA pasture, they wanted an archeological report before i could have the wells drilled. Their archeologist was working away somewhere so i didn't get these well in until August.

The ponds soon dried up and cattle tromped in them but they refused to go over the sandhills to the creek. We drove them to water several times but they always came back to the ponds. Then the soapweeds came into bloom. The cattle craved the soapwed blossems and traveled the whole pasture to find them. They learned their way through the steep sandhills and I didn't have any more trouble getting them to go to water untill I had the wells in and going. Another case of more luck than brains.

[Jinglebob]

[Big Muddy rancher]

JB as a kid I remember we baled green russian thistle for feed. The cattle ate it pretty good but it was sure tough handling those square bales.

[Jinglebob]

[movin' on]

Jinglebob, I drove down 83 highway from Colby to Garden City about five years ago. I don't remember if it was south or north of Scott City but there were a couple of pastures that were absolutely devoid of soapweeds. The pastures on both sides of them had numerous plants, but they had none. The guy riding with me knew the man that owned these pastures and said he had been running buffalo in there for several years and they had cleaned the soapweeds out. Interesting, huh?

[Jinglebob]