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Tumbling Tumble Weeds

S

Shortgrass

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Joined
Sep 25, 2006
Messages
2,406
Location
Eastern Colorado
The drought broke in August; we grew a lot of grass, but lots of grass died, and so the weeds grew. I thank God for the rains, but they did come with a price. Now we are dealing with Tumble Weeds. I have seen them all my life, but never like this year. Snow plows are out on the County roads, and places they are 6 feet deep for 1/4 mile. My corrals really filled up.






The water tank for the horses and calves is right there!





I've hear people say to "shut the gate" when the wind blows. It appears this one should have been open.


Leaning on the ol' top rail.....


There was plenty of work for the little fork


This one did the bulk of it......two days


Fork after fork went down the alley


to be run over by the mower a few times


Am I even making a dent?


SAY NOW! The boss has made good progress in the house! (She puts macoroni in the slots to help reduce oven mess.)

I should have taken some finished pictures, but I did get the tank and pens opend up again (yeah, we finished the pie ,too). Tomorrow I will tackle some fence cleaning. From past experience, I will bet this process will be repeated a few times before we see grass. I carried the weeds out of the corral to keep a mat from building up.
 
Talk about a bumper crop!!!!!!!! Woooweeeee!!

We had tumbleweeds so bad one year that we had the volunteer firemen come out during the winter and practice a
'controlled burn.' They had lined the fenceline,
but still weren't as impressive as what you showed us here!

Macaroni in the pie slits? I bake a lot of pies, but I never heard of that little trick. Tell me more!
 
Do they still pull the fences up so the tumble weeds can blow on through? We get them pretty bad in the exotic pens, but nothing like what you have. Tumble weeds always make me nervous. You just have to set 1 on fire, and you have the whole country burning.
 
Mike, these came off of CRP, blank fields, and pastures and neighbors within 20 miles. There is just too much ground and too may people for that to be the easy answer it seems like.

Soap, I don't think anyone would want to hear what I would write about tumbleweeds right now :mad: :wink: !

3 M, I am fearful that this will be an ongoing problem for a few years because of the damaged grass and many seeds :cry: :cry: :cry: ,

WP, where there are cattle, we are trying to get the bottom wire up, and some have raised all the wires where they can.

Faster, fire is quite a concern this winter. The key word in controlled burn is control! That may be a problem. The picture pretty well shows how she puts the macoroni in pies while they bake. That serves as a vent. Then she removes them before serving.

Running them through a conditioner is working where that is possible, but it take about three trips over. Then bale them and make windbreaks. That is costly also.
 
We did a seeding project on rangeground that didn't come up this spring....but the tumbleweeds sure did. Don't have them like you do though. Where did you haul them to? I guess they baled them (green) in the dust bowl days and helped save the cattle those winters. Supposedly even decent winter feed. I know they love them when they are green.

I've been wondering about you. Did the rain help enough to keep people from selling cows?
 
Shortgrass,

A few years ago, we had a similar problem. We ended up buying a fence clearing machine which would follow along the fences and pulverize the weeds. A neighbor borrowed our 20 foot bush hog and ground his weeds up.

It was strange to see the creek filled level across with tumble weeds.

The next year they were all gone and haven't been a problem since. I guess the seeds are all over, but they can't grow in grass.

CP
 
Nicky said:
We did a seeding project on rangeground that didn't come up this spring....but the tumbleweeds sure did. Don't have them like you do though. Where did you haul them to? I guess they baled them (green) in the dust bowl days and helped save the cattle those winters. Supposedly even decent winter feed. I know they love them when they are green.

I've been wondering about you. Did the rain help enough to keep people from selling cows?
Click to expand...

There are about half or maybe fewer cows in this country that we had a few years ago. My place has been blessed with as much rain as anyone. I found some more grass in late July, and most of this ranch has started a nice recovery. No, I am not ready to talk herd rebuilding yet! Doubt I ever do. I am very grateful to have been able to hang on to as many as I did. Cows will eat these weeds on a frosty, damp morning. Just more weeds than cows! One day at a time!
 
Cowpuncher said:
Shortgrass,

A few years ago, we had a similar problem. We ended up buying a fence clearing machine which would follow along the fences and pulverize the weeds. A neighbor borrowed our 20 foot bush hog and ground his weeds up.

It was strange to see the creek filled level across with tumble weeds.

The next year they were all gone and haven't been a problem since. I guess the seeds are all over, but they can't grow in grass.

CP
Click to expand...

Cowpuncher, I too bought one of those machines a few years ago. Probablly about the same year. I will try to put a few pics of it on later.
 
I hope you didn't think I meant you should try a controlled burn, Shortgrass. You are too close to buildings and wooden fences. Ours was on a line fence with mostly steel posts so it made a fine practice for the volunteer firemen. It certainly would have been a mess with drifting snow in a blizzard. I hate the darn things, and we sure have them here. Some years worse than others, of course.

Great that you got yours cleaned up so nicely.
 
My winter range is around a big lake. With the lake dropping like it has the tumble weeds are all over the shorelines. When it rains or snows and softens the tumbleweeds up my cattle eat them like baled alfalfa hay. It's good feed. When it's palatable.
 

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