movin' on
Well-known member
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?
Question about soapweed---the actual plant
- Thread starter movin' on
- Start date
Soapweed
Well-known member
movin' on said:
They must be Herefords. :wink: Sometimes conditions are just right that cattle will eat soapweeds. Usually a protein supplement of cottonseed cake enhances their desire to eat the yucca plant. If they are eating it, and doing good condition-wise, let them keep doing it. Your pasture will be better because of it. The yucca plants use up a lot of moisture that would be better utilized from other more palatable nutritious grasses.
movin' on
Well-known member
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
Well-known member
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
Well-known member
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?
Maybe the cows are just getting what they need?
movin' on
Well-known member
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
Well-known member
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.
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
Well-known member
Clarencen said:
We don't have a lot of soapweeds, but where we do, the yearlings always eat all the blossoms off.
A neighbor just a couple miles northeast of me, got buffalo a few years back. The brother told me that they would hook all the soapweeds out and eat them in the pasture they put them in. I had never heard of this before or since.
I was up there last fall and never thought to see if there were any soapweeds left in that pasture.
I do think that soapweeds must play some part in the ecosystem or they wouldn't be here.
Kind of like flat cactus which grows south and north of us in the more clay area's. An old cowboy told me that they were the first places to green up in the 30's when it started to rain, as the cattle hadn't ate the grass down so hard, in amongst them.
In his book "the Longhorns", JF Dobie told of longhorn calves running into big patches of cactus when they were chased by predators, as the wolves and coyotes couldn't go into the patches of cactus with their "soft" feet, like a hard hoofed bovine could.
Everything is good for something. Somethings we just ain't figured out what that is yet. :wink:
In the last Grassfarmers magazine, there is a good article about a lady teaching cows to eat weeds. Like Canadian Thistle, spurge, clubmoss and some others. Very interesting. She said it didn't take long and you only had to teach a few and they would teach the rest. I think I'll train mine to eat russian thistle and quit trying to kill it. Might look a lot better if we knew cows were getting some good out of it.
I had a neighbor who had russian thistles fill up his barbed wire fence line. While he was working on removing them, a feller came to fill up his luid feed tanks and told him to spray some of the liquid feed onto the weeds and let the cows do the work. The neighbor tried it and he said that what they didn't eat they tromped down. Worked real slick.
Sometimes we just need to look "outside" of the box. :shock: :lol:
And quit being afraid to try something new or different. :wink:
Big Muddy rancher
Well-known member
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
Well-known member
Big Muddy rancher said:
We stacked some with a Haybuster stacker, but they were so green (dad said you stacked it green so that the stickers would fall off) that I could only make half stacks. That winter the cows broke into the hay yard and ate all of those stacks to the ground and ignored alfalfa. Both first and second cutting. It smelled like tobacco and the cattle loved it. Almost made me wish for more, the next year, but then decided it was a good "dry" year crop. :wink:
movin' on
Well-known member
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
Well-known member
movin' on said:
Interestink. Veddy interestink. :wink:
Evidently, it wasn't a totally common practice or the buffalo from years ago would have wiped the soapweed out. Maybe they just do it at a certain time of the year or when they need some mineral or something.
There is a world of knowledge out there that we know so little about. :wink:
Faster horses
Well-known member
I know one thing, if cattle can't get enough dry matter, they will try
to eat anything. When they start eating sage, trees, etc. you better
start giving them something for their belly, cause they can't find enough
on their own.
BTW, we used to take the Corriente roping steers to our place in the spring to stouten them up. Had good feed and protection for them there. One year a steer had a red mark on his horns and he wasn't doing well.
We doctored him and when he didn't respond, we called the vet. Mr. FH and the vet packed him into the barn by hand and drenched him. He died later that day. It was a strange
deal, so Mr. FH cut him open. His stomach contained inner tubes that
were cut to size for saddle
horn wraps along with baler twine and some soft rope. That poor little bugger was so hungry he ate anything
he could down there in Old Mexico. When we got him on good feed,
he couldn't pass the undesirables in his gut and died. We always felt so bad about that. What a way to have to exist.
to eat anything. When they start eating sage, trees, etc. you better
start giving them something for their belly, cause they can't find enough
on their own.
BTW, we used to take the Corriente roping steers to our place in the spring to stouten them up. Had good feed and protection for them there. One year a steer had a red mark on his horns and he wasn't doing well.
We doctored him and when he didn't respond, we called the vet. Mr. FH and the vet packed him into the barn by hand and drenched him. He died later that day. It was a strange
deal, so Mr. FH cut him open. His stomach contained inner tubes that
were cut to size for saddle
horn wraps along with baler twine and some soft rope. That poor little bugger was so hungry he ate anything
he could down there in Old Mexico. When we got him on good feed,
he couldn't pass the undesirables in his gut and died. We always felt so bad about that. What a way to have to exist.
nortexsook
Well-known member
shortgrass:
What's the story with the bull on your avator. My eyes are having trouble with the small picture. Could you post a larger one? From what I can make out he looks like a dandy!
What's the story with the bull on your avator. My eyes are having trouble with the small picture. Could you post a larger one? From what I can make out he looks like a dandy!
the_jersey_lilly_2000
Well-known member
The Soapweed Yucca
The species Yucca glauca, commonly known as the soapweed yucca, is one of the more prevalent members of the genus Yucca, of which there are a total of about forty different species. The largest yucca is the Joshua tree (species Yucca brevifolia), which can reach a height of forty feet, and grows in the desert environments of California, Nevada and Arizona. The range of the soapweed yucca is much more widespread, extending from extreme southeastern Alberta, Canada, south through a total of thirteen U.S. states. It can be found in prairie and grassland areas of the high plains states of the central and western U.S. Its range extends south through Colorado, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona in the southwestern U.S. It is generally found at elevations beginning at about 2,500 feet in northern sections of its range, and up onto the high mesas and Rocky Mountain foothills of the Southwest to about 9,500 feet.
One of the most interesting and studied aspects concerning yuccas is the relationship between the genus Yucca and the genus Tegeticula yuccasella, also known as the Tegeticula moth, and more generally and aptly referred to as the yucca moth. For the most part, the information in this article is specific to the species Yucca glauca, and more generally to the genus Tegeticula yuccasella, since I am not knowledgeable about most of the other species of yucca nor have I studied any single particular species of the yucca moth in detail.
The Yucca glauca is a plant that is well suited to thrive in the semi-arid climate generally found throughout its range. The word glauca is from the Latin root "glaucus" which is defined as a bluish or greenish-gray color. Many plants have evolved with this characteristic color, which helps them to reflect the intense sunlight usually present in a semi-arid or arid climate. The soapweed yucca has evolved with many other features which enable it to survive long periods of time without a significant supply of water. The long, pointed, dagger-like spines are actually the plant's leaves. The soapweed yucca is sometimes mistakenly referred to as the Spanish Bayonet. However, that name is more correctly a reference to a very similar species, the banana yucca. The spines of the soapweed yucca have a concave, gutter-like upper surface that helps to catch and direct rain and melting snow down into the plant's roots. The roots also gather and store water in three ways. The root system consist of a large fleshy storage root, a network of small roots directly below the surface that gather water quickly before it runs off or evaporates, and a long tap root that extends as deep as three feet to collect water further down. I've also been told that the roots secrete a chemical enzyme into the soil surrounding the plant which tends to inhibit other plants from taking root nearby, decreasing competition for water and other resources. However, I haven't been able to find any direct reference to this characteristic that would support or verify the claim in anything I've read about the soapweed yucca or any other yucca species.
Plants can grow to a height of up to six feet. Mature specimens have been estimated to be about fifty years old. They grow solitarily, or in small dense clusters of a few plants. Individual plants or clusters normally grow widely scattered from each other, although they can also be found in more densely populated evenly spaced stands as in the photograph to the right. The soapweed yucca is extremely resistant to destruction by fire, or by natural or mechanical disturbances such as animal consumption or plowing. Remaining roots can and usually do regenerate into a new plant within only a few years after the plant has been severely damaged, destroyed or removed. The plant is also resistant to herbicides.
The soapweed yucca usually blooms in June and July. This is, of course, when it is at its photogenic peak. The first blooms do no normally appear until the plant is five or six years old. Thereafter it will only bloom every two or three years. Some years, when conditions are favorable, they bloom in very prolific numbers. Other years, only a relative few will bloom. A plant will quickly produce a long vertical stalk called a raceme inflorescence, on which the flowers appear. Young flowers have a purple tint. Mature flowers are greenish-white in color. Between twenty and sixty flowers will be produced per stalk, depending on plant size and growing conditions. The flowers have three petals and three sepals, which close during the day and open at night. Each flower has one pistil and six stamen. The pistil is the flower's structure that contains its female reproductive system. This includes the stigma, which is located at the tip of the pistil to receive the pollen, and the ovary which contains the eggs. The stamen contain the plant's male reproductive system, which produces the pollen. A component at the tip of each stamen called the anther secretes the pollen.
As mentioned earlier, the genus Yucca, including the soapweed yucca, and the yucca moth have an interesting relationship, known as "coevolved mutualism". Coevolution is defined as a state in which two organisms have become nearly completely dependent on each other for their existence and continued survival. Mutualism between two organisms exists when both benefit from the relationship between them and neither is harmed by it. The genus Tegeticula yuccasella consists of many different species, just as does the genus Yucca. The complete relationship between all the different species of both is not known. A particular species of yucca may serve as host to multiple species of yucca moths, and a particular species of yucca moth may populate multiple species of yucca. Yuccas depend exclusively on yucca moths for pollination, which results in seed production and genetic diversity. Likewise, yuccas are the only known host plants for the yucca moths. Yucca moths remain inside the closed flowers during the day for protection. Mating takes place inside the flowers. The male moths do not have a role in pollination. At night, when the flowers are open, the female will collect a load of very sticky pollen from a flower's anther. She will form the pollen into a small ball with mouth parts that have evolved for this purpose. She will then fly to the flowers of other plants to deposit her eggs, with the pollen ball clinging to the underside of her body and held in place by her tentacles. After laying her eggs in a flower's ovary, she will deliberately pollinate its stigma with a portion of the pollen she has collected. The moth thus guarantees that the flowers in which she has just deposited her eggs will not abort due to a lack of pollination. She may also deposit eggs in developing fruit. Other factors such as beetle infestation may however, cause the flower to subsequently abort, after it has been pollinated. It's not known what determines how many eggs a moth will deposit in a single flower or how many total eggs she will deposit. A greater number of eggs would tend to favor the moth in the short term. Of course, this would result in a greater number of seeds that are consumed by the larvae. Yucca populations would thus decrease in the long run. Moth numbers would then subsequently decrease. Mutualism would be violated. Apparently, a female will not deposit eggs in a flower in which she or another moth has already deposited eggs. The manner in which she senses this information is also not understood. A reason could possibly be that the moths leave minute traces of scented chemical indicators called pheromones in the flowers they have visited. It has also been theorized that the plant has some control over the situation. It may produce a large number of flowers, but then spontaneously abort some of its flowers that have been pollinated. The plant could be stressed by too much fruit production. Thus, if a moth lays more of its eggs in less flowers, there would be a greater chance that none of its larvae would survive. The moth is more likely to produce offspring by laying smaller numbers of eggs in the flowers of many more plants. In general, what is completely understood is that by pollinating the plant, the moth benefits from the production of seeds on which its developing larvae totally depend for food. The plant benefits because pollination can not be achieved by any other means. The soapweed yucca does have the ability to clone itself vegetatively. However, without pollination, the yucca's genetic diversity resulting from sexual reproduction would rapidly decrease and it would become extinct, as would the Tegeticula moth.
Unpollinated or aborted flowers will wilt and drop off the stalk usually by around early July. The remaining pollinated flowers will become fruit and then ripen into woody pods during July and August. Developing larvae inside a pod will normally only consume less than a third of the pod's total yield of seeds, thus having a negligible negative impact on the plant. Mature larvae will burrow through the surface of the pod and drop to the ground or descend on a thread of silk. In September, the pods dry up and split open. The seeds begin to be dispersed, mostly by wind action. Wind will shake them loose from the pod. The seeds are thin, disk-shaped and very lightweight, which increases the likelihood that they will be carried a good distance from it's parent plant.
The yucca was an extremely useful plant to native Americans. Its leaves are very fibrous. The strong fibers were used to make string and twine which was then used to make a variety of items such as sandals, mats, baskets, cloth, brushes, etc. The tips of the spines were used as needles for sewing. The roots contain a substance that belongs to a group of compounds called saponins, which have detergent properties (sapo is the Latin word for soap). The roots were made into a pulp and used as mild soap and shampoo. This, of course, is why the plant received its common English name, although other varieties of yucca and many other plants contain saponins as well. There is evidence that saponins increase a plant's resistance to fungal attack. Parts of the plant are edible. As the plant prepared to flower, the young stalks, which resemble asparagus, were harvested and cooked. New seed pods were roasted and peeled before eaten. Mature pods were ground into flower. The spines, flowers and roots were used to make teas that were consumed for medicinal purposes.
Jim Greenwood - NPN 013
The species Yucca glauca, commonly known as the soapweed yucca, is one of the more prevalent members of the genus Yucca, of which there are a total of about forty different species. The largest yucca is the Joshua tree (species Yucca brevifolia), which can reach a height of forty feet, and grows in the desert environments of California, Nevada and Arizona. The range of the soapweed yucca is much more widespread, extending from extreme southeastern Alberta, Canada, south through a total of thirteen U.S. states. It can be found in prairie and grassland areas of the high plains states of the central and western U.S. Its range extends south through Colorado, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona in the southwestern U.S. It is generally found at elevations beginning at about 2,500 feet in northern sections of its range, and up onto the high mesas and Rocky Mountain foothills of the Southwest to about 9,500 feet.
One of the most interesting and studied aspects concerning yuccas is the relationship between the genus Yucca and the genus Tegeticula yuccasella, also known as the Tegeticula moth, and more generally and aptly referred to as the yucca moth. For the most part, the information in this article is specific to the species Yucca glauca, and more generally to the genus Tegeticula yuccasella, since I am not knowledgeable about most of the other species of yucca nor have I studied any single particular species of the yucca moth in detail.
The Yucca glauca is a plant that is well suited to thrive in the semi-arid climate generally found throughout its range. The word glauca is from the Latin root "glaucus" which is defined as a bluish or greenish-gray color. Many plants have evolved with this characteristic color, which helps them to reflect the intense sunlight usually present in a semi-arid or arid climate. The soapweed yucca has evolved with many other features which enable it to survive long periods of time without a significant supply of water. The long, pointed, dagger-like spines are actually the plant's leaves. The soapweed yucca is sometimes mistakenly referred to as the Spanish Bayonet. However, that name is more correctly a reference to a very similar species, the banana yucca. The spines of the soapweed yucca have a concave, gutter-like upper surface that helps to catch and direct rain and melting snow down into the plant's roots. The roots also gather and store water in three ways. The root system consist of a large fleshy storage root, a network of small roots directly below the surface that gather water quickly before it runs off or evaporates, and a long tap root that extends as deep as three feet to collect water further down. I've also been told that the roots secrete a chemical enzyme into the soil surrounding the plant which tends to inhibit other plants from taking root nearby, decreasing competition for water and other resources. However, I haven't been able to find any direct reference to this characteristic that would support or verify the claim in anything I've read about the soapweed yucca or any other yucca species.
Plants can grow to a height of up to six feet. Mature specimens have been estimated to be about fifty years old. They grow solitarily, or in small dense clusters of a few plants. Individual plants or clusters normally grow widely scattered from each other, although they can also be found in more densely populated evenly spaced stands as in the photograph to the right. The soapweed yucca is extremely resistant to destruction by fire, or by natural or mechanical disturbances such as animal consumption or plowing. Remaining roots can and usually do regenerate into a new plant within only a few years after the plant has been severely damaged, destroyed or removed. The plant is also resistant to herbicides.
The soapweed yucca usually blooms in June and July. This is, of course, when it is at its photogenic peak. The first blooms do no normally appear until the plant is five or six years old. Thereafter it will only bloom every two or three years. Some years, when conditions are favorable, they bloom in very prolific numbers. Other years, only a relative few will bloom. A plant will quickly produce a long vertical stalk called a raceme inflorescence, on which the flowers appear. Young flowers have a purple tint. Mature flowers are greenish-white in color. Between twenty and sixty flowers will be produced per stalk, depending on plant size and growing conditions. The flowers have three petals and three sepals, which close during the day and open at night. Each flower has one pistil and six stamen. The pistil is the flower's structure that contains its female reproductive system. This includes the stigma, which is located at the tip of the pistil to receive the pollen, and the ovary which contains the eggs. The stamen contain the plant's male reproductive system, which produces the pollen. A component at the tip of each stamen called the anther secretes the pollen.
As mentioned earlier, the genus Yucca, including the soapweed yucca, and the yucca moth have an interesting relationship, known as "coevolved mutualism". Coevolution is defined as a state in which two organisms have become nearly completely dependent on each other for their existence and continued survival. Mutualism between two organisms exists when both benefit from the relationship between them and neither is harmed by it. The genus Tegeticula yuccasella consists of many different species, just as does the genus Yucca. The complete relationship between all the different species of both is not known. A particular species of yucca may serve as host to multiple species of yucca moths, and a particular species of yucca moth may populate multiple species of yucca. Yuccas depend exclusively on yucca moths for pollination, which results in seed production and genetic diversity. Likewise, yuccas are the only known host plants for the yucca moths. Yucca moths remain inside the closed flowers during the day for protection. Mating takes place inside the flowers. The male moths do not have a role in pollination. At night, when the flowers are open, the female will collect a load of very sticky pollen from a flower's anther. She will form the pollen into a small ball with mouth parts that have evolved for this purpose. She will then fly to the flowers of other plants to deposit her eggs, with the pollen ball clinging to the underside of her body and held in place by her tentacles. After laying her eggs in a flower's ovary, she will deliberately pollinate its stigma with a portion of the pollen she has collected. The moth thus guarantees that the flowers in which she has just deposited her eggs will not abort due to a lack of pollination. She may also deposit eggs in developing fruit. Other factors such as beetle infestation may however, cause the flower to subsequently abort, after it has been pollinated. It's not known what determines how many eggs a moth will deposit in a single flower or how many total eggs she will deposit. A greater number of eggs would tend to favor the moth in the short term. Of course, this would result in a greater number of seeds that are consumed by the larvae. Yucca populations would thus decrease in the long run. Moth numbers would then subsequently decrease. Mutualism would be violated. Apparently, a female will not deposit eggs in a flower in which she or another moth has already deposited eggs. The manner in which she senses this information is also not understood. A reason could possibly be that the moths leave minute traces of scented chemical indicators called pheromones in the flowers they have visited. It has also been theorized that the plant has some control over the situation. It may produce a large number of flowers, but then spontaneously abort some of its flowers that have been pollinated. The plant could be stressed by too much fruit production. Thus, if a moth lays more of its eggs in less flowers, there would be a greater chance that none of its larvae would survive. The moth is more likely to produce offspring by laying smaller numbers of eggs in the flowers of many more plants. In general, what is completely understood is that by pollinating the plant, the moth benefits from the production of seeds on which its developing larvae totally depend for food. The plant benefits because pollination can not be achieved by any other means. The soapweed yucca does have the ability to clone itself vegetatively. However, without pollination, the yucca's genetic diversity resulting from sexual reproduction would rapidly decrease and it would become extinct, as would the Tegeticula moth.
Unpollinated or aborted flowers will wilt and drop off the stalk usually by around early July. The remaining pollinated flowers will become fruit and then ripen into woody pods during July and August. Developing larvae inside a pod will normally only consume less than a third of the pod's total yield of seeds, thus having a negligible negative impact on the plant. Mature larvae will burrow through the surface of the pod and drop to the ground or descend on a thread of silk. In September, the pods dry up and split open. The seeds begin to be dispersed, mostly by wind action. Wind will shake them loose from the pod. The seeds are thin, disk-shaped and very lightweight, which increases the likelihood that they will be carried a good distance from it's parent plant.
The yucca was an extremely useful plant to native Americans. Its leaves are very fibrous. The strong fibers were used to make string and twine which was then used to make a variety of items such as sandals, mats, baskets, cloth, brushes, etc. The tips of the spines were used as needles for sewing. The roots contain a substance that belongs to a group of compounds called saponins, which have detergent properties (sapo is the Latin word for soap). The roots were made into a pulp and used as mild soap and shampoo. This, of course, is why the plant received its common English name, although other varieties of yucca and many other plants contain saponins as well. There is evidence that saponins increase a plant's resistance to fungal attack. Parts of the plant are edible. As the plant prepared to flower, the young stalks, which resemble asparagus, were harvested and cooked. New seed pods were roasted and peeled before eaten. Mature pods were ground into flower. The spines, flowers and roots were used to make teas that were consumed for medicinal purposes.
Jim Greenwood - NPN 013
Jinglebob
Well-known member
Oh yeah, I knew all that. :roll:
:wink:
:wink:
the_jersey_lilly_2000
Well-known member
I knew ya did....LOL 