Cattails??? My goaties seems to love them...

[FarmScapeGirl]

But, then again, they seem to love just about everything, and that doesn't mean it's always good for them.

I have about 40 acres, 2/3 heavily forested, and the remaining 1/3 is marginal land, mostly covered in cattails. We do use them for various things, biofuel, starch filler through the winters, and so on. I had a pile of them up by the barn the other day, the daughter and I were going to weave baskets. Well, my doe decided to take a nibble, then gobbled a few up, stalks and leaves. No plumes (we left those down in the gorge)

They are safe for us to eat, so I'm not too terribly worried about it, but this has gotten me thinking.... I don't have a lot of grass pasture land, but I do have cattails as far as the eye can see. If they can eat them as part of a regular diet, this would be very beneficial for our farm. I wouldn't have to haul in so much extra hay, and my horses can have more of the grass cause, well, they are horses, and big old softies when it comes to what they can eat.

Does anyone have any thoughts, or experience? They do have nutritional value, it's just not the easiest thing to harvest for human consumption though.

 

[OneFineAcre]

There are usually cat tails in any of the grass hay varieties I get, and they seem to specifically pick them out to eat.

Not sure about the nutritional value though.

 

[FarmScapeGirl]

Oh, they are packed full of nutrients! Honestly, my father and I are trying to obtain a grant to do a study on small farm sustaining with cattails. The biggest problem is, harvesting them for human consumption. It's a big fat pain in the rump! You want to get as much of the root clump out of the ground as you can.

My biggest question here is, can I replace part of their hay/grazing with the cattails? If so, how much could I replace? I'd love to be about to give them less dry hay, and more fresh "anything"

I think I'm going to try adding small amounts through out the week, and see how they do, and what it does to the milk. I'm also, not sure about the kids. They are about 10 weeks old.

 

[Sippie]

That is good to know. We have a low marshy area in one of the front acres. It has cat tails and pampas grass and all other sorts of stuff growing there.

 

[Livestock lover]

There are usually cat tails in any of the grass hay varieties I get, and they seem to specifically pick them out to eat.

Not sure about the nutritional value though.

x2! Good post

 

[secuono]

Fancy/ornamental grasses tend to be toxic on some level to many animals.
But I hear cattails are edible. As far as roots, that would be iffy to be harvesting, because you are killing the whole plants, nothing to keep going and continue harvesting and such. Maybe they grow fast enough or rotate pastures style?


You can try feeding the tails and do your own trial. You know the drill, one control group, then one or more test groups of x amount of tails mixed in and see how they do. Or feed half tails, if they loose weight, add more tails until they even out.