Heifer eats spiny pigweed

Sometimes our trainees are doing just what they’re supposed to.  It’s our assumptions that make us think things aren’t going quite right.  Here’s an example, along with a video I uploaded to Youtube to help you with your own assumptions about cows trying a new weed.

Chuck Talbott, the Ag Agent for Putnam County, West Virginia, wrote me in early August about a training demonstration he put on.  He’d gone through the whole training process with 13 replacement heifers.  During the training the heifers would eat their snack and then head back to pasture to eat things he didn’t expect them to eat like lambsquarters, pre-bloom curly and smooth dock, and spiny pig weed.  The pig weed was actually the target weed for this demonstration. Everything was going well until the day he was to introduce the weeds.

Since this was a demonstration, Chuck invited folks to watch the heifers on the very first day of trying spiny pigweed in the tubs.  Everyone was disappointed when the heifers nosed around in the tubs a bit, ate some of the supplement, but left the cut weeds, and then went back to pasture to eat…weeds!

The next day, Chuck and I talked on the phone.  ”Everything’s just fine,” I told him.  ”Your heifers did pretty much what all my trainees have ever done.”  Based on our conversations we made a few other adjustments.  He switched from pigweed, which was seeded out and not as nutritious, to ironweed, and they ate 80% of that plant on its first offering.

We all have the same assumption – that the cows are going to devour the weeds the first time we feed them.  To help you adjust your assumptions, here’s a video showing what cows normally do when they’re trying a new weed.