Getting to Know Your Weeds...Sandspur

This is generally the time of year we notice sandspur problems in our pastures and hayfields. Maybe they were there last year too and they're still a problem. Sandspur can be aggravating for us to control and even more aggravating to a grazing animal. 

Sandspur is an annual grass weed and tends to grow well in fairly sandy soils. It must drop viable seed to reproduce. There is more than one type of sandspur – Southern, longspine and field sandspur can be found in our part of the country. Sandspur can tolerate poor conditions and is easy to spread via grazing or haying. At the early stages, sandspur can be a challenge to identify against other grasses. There are a few characteristics that can help you with identification early in its growth cycle. Sandspur has a fibrous root system and plants tend to be a lighter green than many other grasses.

Sandspur seedling (Photo courtesy Virginia Tech).

The leaves have several identifying characteristics. First, leaves tend to feel rough, compared to grasses such as ryegrass. Next, leaves appear flat but are folded when budding. Third, leaves usually have a raised midvein and have few or no hairs. The ligule is an outgrowth from the base of the grass blade and is very important in identification. Here's a photo of a ligule on a sandspur, which is only a fringe of hairs. Ligules on other grasses may be a thin membrane or may be non-existent.

Sandspur ligule is a fringe of fine hair, about 1 mm long. Photo courtesy Virginia Tech.

Sandspur stems can stand straight or spread, splaying outward. When you run your thumb over the stem it will feel flat, not well rounded like many other grasses. There can be many branches off the stem as well, particularly as the plant matures.

Another identifying characteristic for grasses is the presence or size of auricles. Auricles are projections at the joint of the leaf blade and sheath. Auricles are absent on sandspur.

Diagram explaining parts of the plant for identification purposes. Diagram courtesy University of Georgia.

The sandspur’s tell-tale burs are a common sight once the plant is maturing.

Sandspur producing seedheads or burs. Photo courtesy Virginia Tech.

Once you know you have sandspur, how do you control it? First, contact your local Extension Agent for herbicide options. They can give you information on rates, restrictions, and check products that will work at different plant growth stages. Second, avoid grazing the area that is infected to avoid injury to horses and livestock but to also avoid moving seed to a clean area. Third, when mowing, mow clean areas first before moving to infected areas. Clean equipment after mowing infected areas. Mowing can give temporary control to reduce potential for seedhead development but as plants are mown they typically produce seedheads closer to the ground to compensate. Controlling sandspur may take more than one season to accomplish particularly if seeds have banked in the soil and sandspur has been established for years. With multiple approaches to this weed, sandspur can be controlled.

Foot and Hoof Care

A quote that I came across recently is “No foot, no horse.”  That quote pretty much sums up the importance of the horse’s foot.  They are the foundation of any animal and care must be taken to reduce problems.  Each foot supports weight, resists wear, absorbs shock, provides traction, conducts moisture and helps pump blood.  Here are some diagrams from Wayne Loch, Department of Animal Sciences at the University of Missouri from the article Care of Your Horse's Feet.

Figure 1  Anatomy of the horse's foot.

Figure 2  Parts of the ground surface of the horse's foot.

 

Here is a video by Nate Allen, of Allen Farrier Service-Juanita, NE and Central Community Technical College-Hastings NE, that helps viewers understand how the equine hoof functions and gives suggestions for managing horses' hooves to maintain long term soundness.

You can also view other Videos on the Equine Hoof .   Resources on hoof care and laminitis are located My Horse University - Equine Laminitis:Cause, Treatment and Prevention.

Bahiagrass: Alternative Forage or Invasive Weed?

For those of us that are in bermudagrass country in Southeastern NC, bahiagrass is all too familiar a sight in our pastures.  Like bermuda, bahiagrass is a warm season perennial grass that grows in sandy soils.

If you're not sure if you have bahiagrass in your pastures or not, it is most commonly identified by the black "V" seed head it puts up every 12-14 days during the summer.

Bahiagrass, also referred to as Pensicola bahiagrass, was commonly used by the highway department as an erosion control several years ago.  It certainly offers some advantages to bermuda.  It establishes quickly, it stands up to hoof traffic well, and thrives much better under dry conditions and low soil fertility.  It also is more tolerant of continuous overgrazing.

So why is bahiagrass not used more than it is?  The answer is nutrition, yield, palatability, and ascetics.  While is does come pretty close to matching feeding values of bermuda in a low fertility (fertilization) scenario, if we compare bahiagrass to well fertilized, well managed bermuda pastures, it is clearly inferior.  While Pensicola (and especially the improved variety, Tifton 9) bahiagrass will out yield the older, unimproved common bermudagrasses, the newer, improved seeded varieties (Wrangler, Mohawk, etc.) and especially the hybrid bermudas (Coastal, Tifton 44) have much greater capacity for growth.  Finally, due to its capacity for seed production, (the prevalent seed head mentioned above) bahiagrass is not a  very attractive grass in a pasture setting.  The grass sends out a seed head all summer, and if you've ever tried to mow bahiagrass with a mower or bushhog, you know how difficult this grass is to mow.  Given a horses grazing behavior of skipping over mature, tougher grasses in favor of more lush, tender grass, bahia certainly does not match an equine's grazing habits very well either.

So why would you want bahiagrass in your pastures?  If you have very infertile soil. or if you are not going to fertilize your pastures every summer, then bahiagrass will have a much better chance of surviving under these conditions than bermuda will.  If you're like most of us though, then bahiagrass has unfortunately gotten into your pastures through bird droppings, deer, or even through purchased hay.  Once bahiagrass has gotten into a bermuda pasture, it will (over time) out compete the bermuda and basically take over your pasture if left to run its course.  Can you do anything to stop this from happening?  You can.  There are a few pasture herbicides that can control bahiagrass in a pasture quite well.  Any of the herbicides containing metsulfulron (such as Cimmeron Plus or Pastora) will do a good job of containing the growth of bahiagrass.  If you have a significant infestation, you very well may have to spray several years in a row to fully control the bahia. 

Before you decide to use these products, however, you need to take time to walk your pastures and make sure you want to remove the bahiagrass.  If the grass mix in your pastures is 50% or greater of bahia, then it's debatable if its worth the time and expense to first kill out the bahia and then wait for the bermuda to fill back in.  This can be a slow process and you will have a lot of dead spots with very little vegetation on them during this time. 

While the equine industry in Florida and Louisiana depends on bahiagrass for their main forage source in their pastures, in NC, more often than not, most animal operations prefer to keep it on the roadside and out of their pastures and hayfields.

Written by Randy Wood

Can Imprinting Go Too Far?

Imprinting is beneficial if done right, but dangerous if done wrong warns Dr. R.D. Scoggins, equine
Extension veterinarian at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine.  As soon as a foal is born, the mare starts nuzzling to teach the foal that it is a horse. Humans have learned
to use this time when a foal can be imprinted—the first 24 to 48 hours of its life—to benefit human-equine interaction as the horse matures.

Certain North American Indians spoke to horses before they were born and handled foals daily during the first few days after birth. California veterinarian Robert M. Miller has popularized this practice of imprinting through numerous publications including his book Imprint Training.
"He came to the conclusion—and a lot of equine veterinary practitioners agree with him—that foals handled directly after birth are quieter and easier to handle than foals with no immediate human contact," says Dr. Scoggins.  "Imprinting can prepare the foal to live in our world and tolerate a lot of the things we do to horses, such as inserting a nasogastric tube, placing a rectal thermometer, clipping the coat, working with the head, or trimming the feet. If you stop there, imprinting is not a bad thing.

But some people try to see how many things they can get their horse desensitized to until, eventually; they get the horse desensitized to life. Some foals get so submissive that they end up with no protective mechanisms. But we need those protective mechanisms in the training process. The flight syndrome, for example, is used to teach a horse to ride and go forward, and, for racehorses, to move out of the starting gate. If you take the horse's natural reactions away, you might as well ride a horse on a carousel that's not rotating.  "Some people don't like the fact that the foal has to be submissive for the short time required for imprinting.  When a foal struggles, these people release it, but they are only teaching the foal that it can struggle and get released. This idea gets imprinted on the foal and is extremely difficult to extinguish."  Poorly imprinted horses may be impossible to train. "I know a trainer who had never encountered a horse
he couldn't change until, in some of the western states, he ran into about 50 poorly imprinted horses in one year. They don't respond to the normal things that a horse responds to.

"Do not attempt imprinting on your own unless you accept the consequences, which may be an unusable horse," Dr. Scoggins warns. "I recommend Dr. Miller's approach, which is a less aggressive imprinting technique. When you first begin, have an experienced imprinter on hand to remind you what things you should do and when to stop.  "The mare should be present so you don't create foal rejection problems. Someone ought to handle the mare and hold her, rather than tying her to the wall. She should face the foal and be so positioned that the people working on the foal will not be endangered if the mare gets upset."  Imprinting can be done as soon as the foal is dried off. Everything you do to the foal should be continued until the foal submits. If you flex a leg and tap on it, imitating shoeing or trimming, do not let the foot loose while the foal struggles. After the foal submits and totally relaxes, then release the foot. If you release it when the foal struggles, you're teaching the animal to take the foot away from a farrier.  "You can do the techniques associated with imprinting for two or three days in a row. It takes about half an hour each time. After the first 24 hours, though, it really isn't imprinting; it's more habituation," Dr. Scoggins explains. 

Imprinting is a learning process, occurring during the critical time soon after birth, in which a long-term behavior pattern is established. Habituation, by contrast, is the process of repeatedly exposing an animal to something until that thing no longer causes the animal to react.
Imprinting is not a substitute for handling and training your new foal. With supervision and moderation, imprinting merely provides a window of time in your foal's life that can be used to make the horse easier to handle and train. Before attempting to imprint your own foals, consult an experienced imprinter, a veterinarian who understands the subject, and Dr. Miller's learning aids.

Written by Sarah Probst, Information Specialist at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine.
Posted by Michelle Shooter.