 We're going to kick off the 2024 NDSU extension horse management webinar series. This is our fifth year doing this. Time flies when you're having fun. And you guys, I so look forward to seeing this group every spring. It's like, I know when we're doing the horse webinars that there's just no need to be sad about this weather. It right around the corner. You guys are getting excited and that makes me excited to be outside as well. So to kick off our webinar this year, we're starting with pasture weed and manure management. And so how do we manage weeds and manure in our pastures? Today we have Dr. Joe Eichle with us. He's our NDSU extension weed specialist. And then you'll hear from me just a little bit at the end as well when I have a couple things to add about manure management. So in the past on these webinars we've talked about weed control and pastures very slightly. And so we've talked about it from a bit of a cultural standpoint. We can think of that as management practices. So rotation to avoid over underutilization or composting manure before using it as a to maintain our fertility in our pastures. And so at the end of this presentation I've put links to past webinars we've done that talk about grazing and manure management. We've also just briefly touched on mechanical control. So mowing or clipping weeds, biological controls and other things. So maybe we have a variety of animal species that we have on our farm and so we can use those species to control weeds. And then the big one that we haven't talked about yet and why Joe is with us today is chemical control. And so many questions come in all the time about these weeds and how do we control them? And so we're really excited to have Joe with us today. And he's gonna take over and talk about chemical weed control. Thank you, Mary, for the introduction. So good afternoon everyone or you're watching the recording, good whatever time of day it is you're watching from. So yeah, I'll spend most of my time today focusing on some chemical weed control. I am gonna touch on some of the other things that Mary had touched on there as well. Mainly because with some of the weeds we wanna touch some of the weeds that we get most questions on we really do need to consider some other options because there's just not the chemistry available that we might want for an easy way to kind of spray the weeds and make them go away that way. And so I'm just gonna start. So if you're within North Dakota every year we put out the North Dakota weed control guide. So easy way to get a physical copy of this is go to your local county agent. If you're near one of our research extension centers they usually have copies on hand. We do have this available electronically so you can either search it there on the left side of the screen or the QR code in the middle part of the screen will bring you to an electronic copy of this. And this will be important because a lot of the things I'll be sharing today I have screenshots taken right from the guide and I'm gonna kind of walk us through how to use some of the tables in the guide that might be a little intimidating at first if you haven't used the guide before. And so a lot of the things I'll be talking through a couple of different sections in the guide I've got up here on the top part of the screen. So some of our more important weeds we have dedicated sections to those. If we're talking about just general sprayer calibration I'll share a little thing, a little bit of information from those pages. And then one thing to always consider when we do use chemicals in a pasture is there are going to be certain restrictions either grazing or haying restrictions basically a waiting period between spraying that chemical and when we're allowed to turn animals loose in that pasture again. So to start, Mary kind of asked me to go through what are some different options available to mix and spray chemicals on a small setting? And so what I kind of think of some of my preferred tools if I've got an acre or a couple of acres I need to take care of with some chemical might be a four wheeler sprayer. So these are just a couple of pictures this one here and the left side then the top middle. These are a typical 20 to 30 gallon spray tank that we can mount on the back of an ATV or a four wheeler. These usually come in a couple of different ways. This top middle picture I'll kind of point out sometimes you can have a lateral boom where you'll have nozzles you can calibrate and that's to deliver a certain amount of product on a per acre basis. On large scale situations and row crops where I spend a lot of my time this is the type of setup we have on a spray rig and we talk about spraying a certain amount of product per acre. But most of these sprayers will also come with a wand or you can get these backpack sprayers are relatively cheap as well. And these aren't as specifically calibrated and so a lot of times we talk about mixing in a different way and I'll get into the details on that because we'll basically mix a certain amount then use the gun on the four wheeler sprayer or the wand that comes with the pump sprayer and we'll basically spot spray our different weeds. And that's also very effective way just not as precise as using a lateral boom on a sprayer. This one on the top right, this is what we would call a ropewick or some people call it a weed wiper. We don't have many of these out in the landscape these days anymore. We use a lot of these in the 80s and through the mid part of the 1990s they can still be very effective especially on a small scale and especially in a pasture type situation. There's really one chemical that we have utilized historically in these weed wipers and that is glyphosate the main brand name there is Roundup and that's because that's a non-selective herbicide that if you basically get it in contact with some plants it's going to do a very good job controlling them. Where these come into play is that if you have weeds that are taller than your pasture grass you can basically load up they're pretty easy to make you can Google how to make these things so it's basically PVC and you have some sort of wick that can saturate some liquid and basically that once that ropewick comes into contact with plants it'll release that chemical onto that plant and so if you have a weed that's much taller than your pasture grass you can just drive through this wipe that chemical onto the plants and it'll do a very good job. So something to consider if you didn't want to really mess around with sprayers this is a technology that's relatively inexpensive to make your own and can be quite effective on tall weeds. But so for the first thing I want to get through is just some calibration of sprayers and really calibrating a backpack sprayer if you do have a lateral boom that's a little bit of a different calibration process it's gonna take more than the time we have available today to go through that calibration process but there are plenty of great online resources on how to calibrate a lateral boom sprayer. Spot sprayers are a little bit less specific and so there's a few general ways that we can calibrate these sprayers and these will be that page 86 to 87 in the weed guide if you want to revisit that because there's some math involved and we're not going to go through the math that's kind of what want to walk through the different parts of this section. So there's a few different ways to calibrate a hand sprayer or like I said that handgun that may come along with your four-wheeler sprayer. One way that's relatively inexpensive if you don't like doing math is to basically mark off an 18 and a half by 18 and a half foot square and then basically spray that whole area and record the number of seconds it takes you to spray that area. The reason this can work is that we may spray at different speeds and so you're basically calibrating this to yourself but so however long it takes you to spray that section then take a bucket and spray into that bucket for that same amount of time. So let's say it takes you 30 seconds to spray that area spray that same amount of volume into a bucket for 30 seconds then you measure how much you put into that bucket and that will basically tell you how much you're delivering on a per acre basis. So not very precise at all but kind of an easy way to get a very good idea of how much product you're delivering per acre if you're pretty consistent with how you use that wand or that backpack sprayer. Otherwise we get into some math involved and again I'm not really gonna take the time to go through this math because a lot of times what happens is if we're just kind of going out there with a backpack sprayer we usually wanna spray our weeds until they're wet. We don't wanna spray them too much so we have droplets beating up and running off of the weeds and we don't wanna underspray them so we just get a little bit of chemical on there. When we're spot spraying weeds we're typically doing a good job covering those weeds until they're wet. A general assumption is when we do that if you put that on a per acre basis we're applying 15 to 70 gallons of what we call carrier volume per acre and that's our base assumption for some of the math involved in these tables. Then what you basically do is some of the herbicides I'll be talking about if you do have to go into their product labels and they might tell you if you wanna spray Canada Thistle with this product with a backpack sprayer mix it up in a concentration of 1% volume to volume. And so that's where we put this table into the weed guide down here of let's say you have a two gallon backpack sprayer you need 1% volume to volume that basically means you need 2.6 fluid ounces of that herbicide and the whole rest of that two gallons is basically water. And that's the general way to mix up for that desired amount if your goal is to just spray those plants to be wet is you consult the herbicide label see what percent concentration that you need and that sprayer and then what's the size of your sprayer. If you have a 10 gallon sprayer you need 2% volume to volume you need 25.6 fluid ounces of product and the rest of that will basically be water in that tank. On the right side of the screen here I do have just a couple of different examples that of some very common mix rates I've only pulled a select screenshot from the weed guide but some common products might be 2.4D, dicamba, tordon some of our common herbicides we use in these settings and we basically have some easy examples of our typical mix rates for spot spraying in the weed guide. So for here I've got 2.4D basically our one quart or two quart per acre rate what does that look like if we're trying to mix up for spot spraying? Well, if you have a three gallon backpack that might be two or four fluid ounces of 2.4D product that goes to that three gallon backpack again the remainder is mainly water. And then a couple of slides I'll focus a little bit more on adjuvants. So these are basically some products we add into these sprayers that help out our chemistry get into the plants. So they are not herbicide-ly active themselves but they do help the herbicides get into the plants and each herbicide may have a slightly different adjuvant recommendation rate. For spot spraying we made it pretty simplified on these pages as well. So again, very good resource if you wanna mix up for spot spraying I won't spend much more time on that here today. So I do wanna get into some just general tips when I think about weed control particularly on smaller pastures I'll just say five acres or less is that a lot of times when we're dealing with some of the weeds that we get questions on these weeds are basically doing a good job of invading thin spots or poor areas of our pasture. So a very well-maintained very thick pasture grass will oftentimes do a lot of work keeping weeds out but we get drowned out areas. If drought happens we'll lose some grass and that's when these weeds typically move in. So a really good starting point for weed control in pastures is making sure that pasture is the best shape it can be in. And that's kind of that second bullet point. A thick stand, that's our number one best defense against weeds. When we talk about spot spraying usually the product of choice people like to use is glyphosate or roundup. I mentioned this before because this is a non-selective chemical it does a really good job killing a lot of our weeds. They also will kill a lot of our grasses though too. So usually we wanna do spot spraying if we have basically no other alternative or if we have a very thick weed infestation basically small patches is what we typically desire for spot spraying with glyphosate because if we get any of that product onto our grasses it'll at least severely injure if not kill some of those grass patches. So if you do choose to use glyphosate to spot spraying I just like to say be ready to renovate or reseed that area where you spot sprayed because you'll wipe out the weeds but you'll probably wipe out some grass and that leaves another bare spot for other weeds to move in. So that's just kind of a tip there. There's a few herbicides I'll be talking about the main one that we talked about within pasture weed control is Tordon. So piclaram is the active ingredient Tordon is the trade name that you can go into a lot of stores and buy. That's a restricted use pesticide. And for this if you're not familiar with restricted use pesticides that basically means you need to have a license for that. And so you have to go take some training, get certified and then you can purchase it and use that product. Luckily Tordon's the main one that's restricted use I'll be talking about today but it is very effective on some of the weeds we're dealing with. And so if you think you might be interested in becoming a certified applicator or sprayer contact your County agent we have ways to get you certified. Most of the other products you can go into your local farm and ranch store and usually buy them off the shelf. Couple of tips I do have to talk about whatever we mentioned using the herbicide always read the label. The weed guide that I'll be using is a very good starting point to compare some different products but as far as how much to mix some other things to consider when applying these herbicides we do need to read the label within herbicide applications we always say the label is the law and you do have to follow the label to make sure a legal application takes place. And I'll get into this a little bit later but the Grayson and Hain restrictions are also very important with consideration to pasture weed control. Okay, I mentioned adjuvants earlier and again, most of our products that we're applying to emerged weeds will be enhanced by using an adjuvant. This isn't meant to be intimidating at all it's basically a few different products that will be contained on that herbicide label and it will tell you basically the general rate to mix it in. Usually the use of an adjuvant is listed as a percent volume to volume so one or two percent volume to volume of a crop oil concentrate is one type of adjuvant. Easiest way to describe this that means basically one gallon per 100 gallons. I doubt many of us today will be mixing 100 gallons at a time but if you mix up one gallon that's one tenth of a gallon sorry, one hundredth of a gallon for that one gallon. And so some pretty simple math but a little bit intimidating if you've never come across that before. Where do you go for adjuvant tips? The label and that North Dakota weed control guide are the best places to start and to look for that adjuvant recommendation. Before I get into some chemistry and specific weeds I didn't want to take some time to go through this grazing restrictions. So for the most part I know it's a lot of horse people here so that's good news for us today. So when we look at applying a herbicide and having some restrictions that usually means for animals like beef that are going to be entering the commercial food chain market or lactane animals have some even more restricted time frames between applying a herbicide and then allowing them to graze. For the most part the only restrictions if we just have horses for consideration in the middle part here that's glyphosate. What we're probably going to do on a small scale is a spot spray of glyphosate. And depending on which glyphosate or roundup brand you buy it's going to take seven to 14 days between applying that herbicide to where you should be allowed that animal to graze. When you get into haying if you hay some different areas that's going to be a completely different set of allowances or waiting time. And again if you do have cattle or some lactane animals it gets a lot more severe but in general for looking at things like horses spot spraying glyphosate seven to 14 day waiting period some of our two 4D labels we might use some have zero days some have seven. So just want to get into that just to make sure that that's pretty apparent there. Okay one thing I'm going to highlight in the weed guide a lot of what I'll be talking through next are those pages 64 to 76 or so. And towards the beginning of that part of the section we have this table that we put together for our noxious weeds. And so noxious weeds with the North Dakota means you're obligated by law if it's on your property to make an attempt to control it. And we have 13 different noxious weeds and some of these pop up a lot of times in our pastures. So leafy spurge, canned athistle, wormwood. These are just common invaders of our pastures. And so these are within that noxious weed section. On the left side of the screen here's just a bunch of the different trade name herbicides that will typically get used in pasture and range land. And what we decided to do is we make this little chart where you pick a product I'm going to pick milestone. Something we might use in pastures quite a bit. If there is a letter that intersects with that weed so we'll go here in the middle part. This C here milestone. That C goes up to canned athistle. If you go towards the bottom that means that milestone controls canned athistle. And so these are data that we pull directly from the product labels. Where this becomes important is if you want to mix up and spray, let's say you have leafy spurge, canned athistle, and wormwood. Well, if you choose milestone, you'll control your athistle. You will control your wormwood but it won't do anything to leafy spurge. And so that's where this table which is a very good quick tip to go in and look at what activities some of these herbicides have on some weeds. If you only have leafy spurge then you could go down the column this way and basically see what are the different products I have available. If I want to go shopping for what's cheapest or just want to have a wide range of options then that's another way to utilize this chart based on if you have one weed you're going after you can go through and see what's available and what's going to be effective. So that I do want to go through some of our more important weeds that pop up every year that I'll certainly get questions on and Rachel and Paige will get questions on as well. And we're just going to go through basically some of our broad leaf weeds first just kind of a reminder of what these weeds look like so we're on the same page and then a little bit about them and some of our best chemical options. And so leafy spurge is one of our most problematic weeds across the state in any pasture or rangeland situations. And so some of the reasons this was a very tough weed to control it is a perennial weed. It does exude this milky sap if you break it so it's not very palatable. And then I'll get into the flowering structures a little bit here in a minute because that becomes important when trying to time our herbicide applications. So just a few points here on leafy spurge it is one of our noxious weeds. So that means we do have to make an attempt to control it. It is a perennial which means this weed will persist year in and year out and that makes it more difficult to control than some of our annual weeds that will germinate in May and then go to seed in the whole year and die off throughout the winter. So leafy spurge has a lot of underground reproductive structures and that make it very difficult for complete control year over year. A lot of the herbicide options I'll be pointing out I'm going to mention this phrase just for leafy spurge true flower. So if leafy spurge a lot of times around mid to late May in the landscape we'll see a lot of leafy spurge turn yellow. That's these bracts, these yellow kind of cup shaped parts of the plant. That's not actually the flower even though a lot of people think it is that's basically a protective structure called a bract. In the middle part out here that's where the true flower is going to develop and that's often one, two or three weeks after the landscape turned yellow. So if you have a herbicide where you want to apply that true flower you're gonna have to go and look at these leafy spurge plants and make sure that flower has developed because that is the best time for a lot of these products to make that application. For anyone who knows general herbicide chemistry we assign these group numbers that's just really saying how the product works within a plant. A lot of them are within this group for chemistry that we might utilize in pasture and rain plant. So a few different products we might use dicamba, facet, tordon, tordon plus 2-4-D. These are some of the standard go-tos for making an application on leafy spurge in a pasture setting. Glyphosate, that's one of those ones where we can spot spray. So that's gonna be a slightly different application timing. So these group four herbicides those work best at that true flower timing. If we utilize glyphosate that's when we wanna make an application after seed has set, generally maybe about a month after these products are effective or wait late into the fall before we get a killing frost and that's gonna be a very good time to utilize glyphosate for leafy spurge. Here's a screenshot from the weed guide. And so within that noxious weed section we do have entire tables dedicated to a weed like leafy spurge. Important to note, when we list product recommendations in this part of the weed guide we do sew on a product per acre basis. So this is really meant for that calibrated lateral boom. The recommendations here but we can kind of go to other parts of the weed guide and the label of these products to figure out how much to mix up in a spot spray application. But if I show a few different products here tordon or tordon plus 2-4-D is one of our standard recommendations. And if we go across to the different parts we see pasture as a weed location. So this is a program we can use in a pasture setting. When to apply, spring true flower stage. So that's that best time. So again, recommending for that true flower. And then there's some remarks and paragraphs just a little bit more detail on what you might wanna be looking for to make that application. And so a bunch of different products here as I mentioned, tordon is one that is a restricted use pesticide. That's what the RUP there means. And so you would either need to be certified or if you have a friend or family member who's certified they would be able to purchase and make this application. If you're not certified, you don't wanna get certified. That's perfectly fine as well. There's other options, dicamba for instance is one. A lot of different trade names available for the product for the active ingredient dicamba. And again, we'll typically go into a typical use rate. We can still use it in a pasture setting. That true flower stage is best. And here's the remark is add an oil adjuvant. And then that kind of gets into a different section of the weed guide or the label. That's kind of how we would walk through one of these type of charts. So switching gears, different weed, canvathistle. This is another one of our noxious weeds. So this one will start emerging probably about a month from now. Another perennial that will have emergence come from some underground root structures. Sometime get into June, we'll have this pre-bud stage that I'll focus on again in a few minutes. Then we'll progress through flowering stages. And then this is a wind-borne dispersal mechanism. So any new seed produced will float across the landscape. And so I've again mentioned perennial. It is one of our 13 noxious weeds as well. When we talk about canvathistle, a lot of the herbicides that we might see list early bud stage. And that's what this picture is showing. So we don't have any of those purple flowers coming out yet. We might be a few days or a week away from those flowers emerging from the bud. And that's when some of our group four products work best on canvathistle. Again, just pulling a section from the weed guide, showing some of the different products available. And canvathistle is one that does show up a lot in cropland. So I want to point that out when you go to the most of the weeds, the noxious weed section, it's all pasture and rangeland based. Canvathistle we have basically a page dedicated to cropland that does spill over onto this page. But more or less the rest of the products on this page are for pasture and rangeland type situations. And so here's just a bunch of those different herbicides that we have available for use. Again, the preferred timing of some of these different products, it will vary byproduct and then our different use rates and then some remarks there as well. Absinthwormwood, another very problematic weed that we have to deal with in pasture and rangeland. In this case, a little bit different than when we focus on leafy spurge or canvathistle. For spurgent thistle, a lot of our recommendations go basically around when these plants are flowering. Absinthwormwood, it's really more about the height of that plant. So it's not as responsive to herbicides during reproductive stage as those first two weeds are. So basically for most of our recommendations, we do want to make sure absinthwormwood is at least 12 inches tall. If we spray before it's 12 inches tall, we're not going to get the best control out of many of these products. Another good time for controlling not just wormwood but the other perennials, thistle and spurge is in the fall. If you are going to try and control wormwood in the fall, we do recommend mowing that plant sometime in the middle part of summer. This basically removes all the top growth, will stimulate some regrowth and then we'll get to that 12 inch tall or so plant in the fall and that's when we can get a lot of herbicide onto that plant and really get some absorption of that herbicide to help kill that plant. Again, picture here from the weed guide from the absinthwormwood section, a bunch of the different products we have that are available and then again, the different locations we can use them when to apply a few different comments there on the right. Common birdock, I'm sure everyone loves dealing with a plant like this. There's a few different plants we have available or out in the landscape that will produce these birds that get stuck in our clothes, get stuck to the fur of animals and can just be a real bugger because of that. That's basically the dispersal mechanism of these seeds and so they're annoying because of where they get stuck but also that's how these plants move around across the landscape and get introduced into new areas. So common birdock is one of the more problematic ones we see in pastures. It can get very tall if the conditions are right and again, these birds are quite problematic. The first three weeds I talked about are what we call biennial or sorry, the first three weeds are perennials. So they live year over year. Common birdock is the one weed I'm talking about today that's a biennial. It has a two year life cycle. So this weed will typically germinate and emerge sometime in May or June. It stays in a smaller rosette that first year. So you're just getting a bunch of those big rounded leaves that are gonna stay close to the ground. The second year sometime early summer is when that plant will start growing vertically or what we call a bolting and then go on to flower. That's when it's most obvious is the second year when you start seeing the flowers. But for control of birdock, it's easiest in that first year when it's staying low to the ground. If you do catch it in that second year early part of the summer before bolting before it starts elongating, growing vertically, that's when this plant is easiest to control. General, 240 or dicambor are some of our better products that we can use for birdock. Because of the large leaves, this is one that's pretty effective if we wanna go spot spray. It's very rare to get large swaths or big patches of common birdock. You'll have a few isolated colonies of some very big plants for the most part. Screenshot from the weed guide again. We don't have as many products available or as much research behind common birdock. So it falls into this other section called troublesome weeds in pasture, rangeland, noncrop land. A very condensed section. So a few different weeds we might encounter. Here's birdock. So just a couple of three different effective applications that we might use. For a small pasture setting, if you're not used to applying chemicals, I'd go with 240 or dicamba. I wouldn't really recommend this middle option for smaller areas. Common cockle burr. So this is another one of these burr type plants. And so common cockle burrs will often be in the middle part of the plant. This one is a summer annual. So it has a one year life cycle. It's going to merge sometime in May or June. By about October it's done. And then that plant no longer needs to be controlled. So this one, due to that annual life cycle, we do still wanna catch it when it's small, easier to control. We have these typical group four herbicides that can be very effective for us. Because it's an annual, it puts most of its growth into the top part of the plant. So if we do catch a time in the middle part of summer, when we see cockle burr leaves emerging above our grass, we can go mow the tops off of those plants. It may take a second mowing, but this is one we don't necessarily need herbicides for. Being an annual weed, it's gonna be in those thin areas of pastures. And we can usually with a couple of mowing applications do a pretty good job controlling these plants. If you choose chemistry, it's generally that group four type of herbicide again. So those were the broadleaf weeds that we deal with. In general, when we're dealing in a pasture setting, that kind of means easier when it comes to chemistry. Couple weeds I'll focus on now that are much more difficult from a chemical perspective are some of our grass weeds. And that's just because when we look at herbicides, it's much more difficult to kill a grass weed and not kill a grass crop, just because of the physiological differences between the grass and a broadleaf weed. So foxtail barley is one of the most problematic weeds that we'll have across the landscape and certainly in pasture settings. And one of the reasons is it's got a lot of dense hairs and when these seed heads come out, those things are quite prickly and they are quite irritating. So whether an animal decides to try and eat it or just gets its face near it, it's a known irritant. Foxtail barley is a perennial weed, but it's what we call a simple perennial. So the candethysyl, the leafy spurge, they have underground root structures that'll creep around underground and make colonies pop up about anywhere. Foxtail barley won't really move from when it becomes established. It needs these seed heads to have new colonies or patches appear in different areas. This is one weed where it's most prevalent in saline areas or high salt areas or wet spots. So these seeds also float and they'll kind of follow some drainage patterns and a field or a pasture. So this is one, if you can, really doing a good job cleaning up saline areas or wet spots in a pasture are gonna be the number one defense for foxtail barley. Limited herbicide options. There's really one to selectively control foxtail barley out of a grass pasture setting. And this is one, if you're not really used to applying herbicides, I wouldn't really make this recommendation. You do need to have it on a per acre basis. It's a little bit risky to spot spray this product. So if you're comfortable, have a lateral boom, you're comfortable making calibrated spray applications. This is really the one good chemical option we have. Not gonna recommend this for a spot spray application. That's where glyphosate can come into play. So if you have a dense foxtail barley patch, spot spraying it is gonna be a very effective option with glyphosate. Or if you wanna do that research, build yourself a rope wick, oftentimes that foxtail barley will be taller than some of our grass, our pasture grasses at certain times a year. And that's where you can kind of run that rope wick across there and basically focus on killing that foxtail barley without sacrificing the desirable grasses in that area. Last specific weed I wanna cover are what we call the foxtails. Some people call this pigeongrass. So we have two main species, green and yellow foxtail, really diagnostic by the seed heads, just compacted seed head. I'm guessing a hundred, 200 years ago, someone said it looks like a foxtail and that's where the name comes from. These are summer annual grasses and this becomes a very big challenge for trying to control them chemically in pastures. Really one of the only ways to get these products or these weeds selectively controlled out of our grass pastures is with the most effective chemical is this product called pendymethylene, Pryl H2O is the main trade name for this. We can only use this in established pastures. If we try to use this product on a new pasture, we'll likely injure that pasture severely. This is a product that we call, it's a pre-emergence product. Every other thing I've talked about, we call it a post-emergence herbicide application. The weed drop, they have emerged, that's when we make the application. This one needs to be applied before foxtail emerges. Foxtail will emerge about middle part of May and so if you have a calibrated sprayer, again, I will not recommend this at all in spot spraying application. But if you have a calibrated sprayer, we have a rate range that we can work with and you wanna get out there about late April to make this Pryl H2O application into these areas. Otherwise, a summer annual weed, foxtail is one that will just show you where the thin area in a pasture is. So if you can overseed or renovate some of the thin areas, that's really the best long-term management option for the green and yellow foxtail or pigeongrass plants. So I just wanna show a couple of different resources that I have here. So for those more noxious and troublesome weeds, a couple of different really good publications. So we had a really good weed scientist here for a number of years, Dr. Rod Lim. He basically wrote these and when I revised them, they put my name on the front, but most credit does go to Rod. And so this one on the left here is a, it's eight and a half by 11 book, a lot of information. The one on the right, it's kind of a pocket guide. And so this one's really nice, just if you wanna get some basic information on weeds, a lot of good pictures, if you wanna keep it in your back pocket. And then if you see some flowers or some new weeds, might be one of these weeds that are located in here. So very good couple of resources. And if you are into podcasts at all, if you have drive time, I'm part of a podcast, we call it the War Against Weeds. This is with a couple of weed science colleagues of mine from other states. Most people on the webinar today are not gonna be interested in 95% of the episodes, but we do have a few episodes on pasture and rangeland. The general focus of those is generally the larger scale pasture and rangeland, not a smaller scale pasture, but we also have one or two episodes like toxic plants to animals. And so we typically go on and we find an expert in some other area of weed science or toxicology for animals in the case of that episode and interview them for about a half hour. So might be an additional resource if you're interested in that. Okay, so I'm gonna roll right in some manure management and then we'll hold questions until the end. Sounds good. So we can't really talk about horse and horse pastures without talking about manure because in the past we have done a lot of discussions on manure management and spreading our manure out on our pastures, spreading compost on our pastures and what that looks like. And so today I'm just gonna touch very briefly. Again, I put a lot of the links at the end from past episodes that we've done. So I'm Mary Keenan, the livestock environmental management specialist. I'm based out of the Carrington Research Extension Center in North Dakota. And so I work with manure and mortality. And so one of the first questions I get when I'm talking to folks about spreading manure on any kind of production land is does manure carry weed seeds? And so let's see here. Yes, is the answer, yes. And then does manure carry nutrients that nourish the weed seed bank that's already there? So I ask that question back to them and then they have to say yes. Yes is also the answer, okay? So this is kind of their weeds coming from all over the place. I like to put this picture up here because manure carries weed seeds and how do weed seeds get in manure? Well, sometimes it's from our feed sources. And so here is a great picture showing some weeds growing and some of our hay sources that we have. And this picture was from North Dakota. So does composting help? We've talked about composting in the past, does it help? Yes, but management is the key. And so Joe, I took this quote from you and so this was about Palmer amaranth. And so one of the weeds we didn't necessarily touch on today but a weed that really proliferates. And so does composting help? Yes, but if we're even losing a few seeds out of that or we're not managing that properly, that can lead to an issue. So what does management look like? Heats and killing weed seeds. So let's see if I can get my arrows to drop here. Okay, so we have this chart that I'm gonna show you it's across the top, we have temperature and degrees Fahrenheit. And so you can see here, we have 140 down to 108. I'm just gonna go through a couple of them. Then we also have the number of hours required to kill 90% of the seeds, just 90% of them. And then we have the kind of weed over here on the left. So I'm gonna talk about annual south thistle which is at the top and tumble pig weed which is at the bottom. And so if we just first look at annual south thistle and we say we're at 140 degrees Fahrenheit, number of hours required to kill 90% of the seed, less than an hour. So we're killing it pretty quick. Now, if we go down to 115 degrees, it's about 13 hours to kill 90% of that seed. When we go down to tumble pig weed, we have about an hour, just over an hour to kill 90% at 140 degrees. And then when we get over to 115 degrees, you'll notice 268 hours to kill 90% of the seed. So does management matter? Yes, we can kill stuff with heat, but we have to manage it properly. Okay, so there is an entire 13 video series on composting that I put together with the University of Minnesota. This was back in 2020, but the information is still very relevant today. And so this stuff is all linked. The presentation that you'll get with the email, with the recording, everything has links in it. The publications that Joe showed you, the page numbers, all of it's linked up. And so on here, there's just different things that talk about composting, the site selection, how do we do it? What does it look like? How do we analyze it? All of that is in here. Just real quick, if we are gonna compost our manure in North Dakota. So a lot of us, again, we're talking about this because oftentimes we take our manure and we put it out on our pasture or we put it out where our animals are. And so, again, we wanna compost that. That's the best way to put it out there. But if we're gonna compost it, where do we do that at? Do we just compost it anywhere? So here's a couple options. Short-term, manure stockpiles is the one that you're most likely gonna use for composting. In North Dakota, they can only be in one location for nine months at a time and then you have to move them or use them, okay? There are some permanent manure stockpile options depending on the type of operation you have that involves a little more regulatory oversight. And so that is potentially an option. But for the most of us, we're gonna be using a short-term manure stockpile. And this is gonna be pretty similar for other states as well. Sandy soils, just keep in mind, have rapid permeability. So we're gonna wanna stick with something that has a little more clay in it, slows down the permeability. And then we wanna keep in mind our depth of groundwater and location of surface water. And then of course, manure stockpiles. So this is if you're doing manure management, if you're gonna compost, if you have a mortality that you're gonna compost. These may not be located in gravel pits, along streams or lakes within a floodplain. So we use a lot of common sense when we're doing this. Okay, the benefits of composting manure. Weed seeds, one of the first ones, we're reducing weed seeds, we're reducing pathogens, we're reducing parasites. Big issue for you as horse owners, okay? And so again, we can kill those parasites with heat while we're killing the weed seeds. Reducing nutrient loss, increasing nutrient stability. I feel like in composting, everybody wins. So again, we're not gonna go through the entire cycle. I just wanted to touch on a couple of things included in composting. So site selection, which we talked about, the carbon to nitrogen ratio. So that's how many parts of carbon and how many parts of nitrogen to make that pile work. Moisture, we need about 50% moisture. And then the temperature, again, becomes very important. And so this thermometer that you see here in the picture, these types of thermometers, they're called long stem composting thermometers, they're anywhere from $45 to $120. And you can get them pretty readily online. Mixing is important to keep all of the things from the previous slide and check. And so you don't have to have a payloader or a big fancy turner like is in this picture. You can use something like a skid steer or a pitch fork. And then of course, once you've composted, now we can go and spread it at agronomic rates. And so again, we've reduced our pathogens, we've reduced our parasites, we've reduced our weed seeds. Now we consider it more safe to spread, especially in a situation where we might be grazing or hanging that for animals to eat later. And so we would feel comfortable spreading compost versus manure. If you wanna sample it, that's here. And there's many places, depending on what state you're in, you can sample your manure. And like I said, on the end of this, we have some webinar links as well. So with that, I think we're gonna stop sharing, Joe, and we're going to take some questions for the remainder. All right, so the first question is for Joe. Can you briefly explain what an adjuvant does? Yeah, so there's a few different adjuvants and the briefest way to describe them is they help the herbicide get into the plant. So there's a few different classes of adjuvants and we pair them up with different herbicide and it's all kind of chemistry related. But there might be one that we're almost recommended all the time to add with glyphosate is one called AMS or ammonium sulfate. And that basically helps condition the water and helps glyphosate get into the plant. One that you may see is called NIS, which is a non-ionic surfactant. That's kind of like a soap. So it basically helps reduce water tension and spread a droplet out across the plant better. That gives us the droplet and the herbicide more chances to absorb through the plant cuticle and get into the plant. The last general class you might see are different oils. There's a COC and MSO, a whole bunch of different other ones. And these basically help get the herbicides in through the plant cuticle as well. And so the main defense barrier on a plant leaf is called the cuticle and that's composed of different waxes. And so this oil helps dissolve some of those waxes. And so kind of chemistry one-on-one will dissolve a like. So it basically helps dissolve some of that plant cuticle and the defense help that herbicide penetrate through there as well. Again, that's the real quick rundown on the basic different classes, but they all help different herbicide chemistries get into that plant. Ones are weed specific. So we'll just run through those quickly and see if we can stump you or not. The first one is they found a patch of what they think is salt heliotrope. And do you have any recommendations on what they could potentially use to eradicate that? And that's one that I don't recognize the name off the top of my head, but I know some of our weeds have about three or four different names. The NDSU weed guide for the people who aren't from North Dakota that have logged in today, where do you recommend they would find a similar resource? Yeah, so most states will have a similar resource to a weed guide. If I look at the states around North Dakota, I know South Dakota has an annual update on to pasture and rangeland herbicides. Minnesota does not have a weed guide to my knowledge, but I know surrounding states you go to Wisconsin, they have a weed guide. Illinois down to Missouri, they've got some different weed guides. Nebraska, Kansas has their own. Going west, I don't know, I don't think Montana has a weed guide, but they have a whole bunch of great independent resources. And so most states that their extension services will have some sort of a similar product to a weed guide. I know people might have specific issues that they're looking for and reaching out to those resources is a great spot. So another weed that pops up was hound's tongue. Is that similar in its control as common burdock? Yes, yeah. So hound's tongue is one that's become more prevalent for us in North Dakota and the western part of the state. And that is gonna be pretty similar to common burdock. So sounds like a pretty informed question there. So hound's tongue is a biennial, just like common burdock is. And so if we find it in the first year of growth, it's gonna be easier to control than when it's bolting and puts the flowers on. And I know we have some specific sections on hound's tongue. I believe 240 is one of our top recommendations as a herbicide for hound's tongue. Do you know if there's a newer version of method or a similar product that doesn't have hay or grazing restrictions? Yeah, so that's another one. So I didn't put this product called method on many of the slides because you can't graze or hay after that. There's another trade name or two in the works. There's somewhere within being approved along the line from the EPA. And so there may be available in surrounding states, not North Dakota yet that I'm aware of unless I came through recently, but there are working on some products, very similar to method that we can use in some haying and grazing situations. Right on, how much of a problem poison hemlock could be in pasture lands? Yeah, so poison hemlock, not when we have a whole lot of in North Dakota, but you go south and east of here, it can become a pretty big problem. So poison hemlock, usually when we see that pop up as an issue in pasture is, it's usually when the pasture grass itself is a little bit stressed or it's a younger animal that finds a young growing poison hemlock. So that's another one of our biennial weeds. It's in the carrot family, so it can be quite poisonous if ingested. Most animals have this innate ability to kind of avoid it, but usually younger animals on a young lush vegetative poison hemlock and usually when the desirable forge is not in the best shape is when these happen, but it certainly can be an issue in somewhere, somewhere in the Midwest, there's probably at least one fatality each year, just the conditions all line up. So that's one that if you know you have it against a biennial, so if you catch it early, some of those growth regulator group four type herbicides are some of the better options for that one. For those that aren't wanting to use glyphosate, is there another product that is an option? Yeah, so if you don't want to use glyphosate, then some, well, so that's gonna make it very, very difficult for any sort of grass control. So we have a few selective ones and they have a high chance of injuring our desirable grass. Otherwise, those broadleaf options that I pointed out, those group four herbicides, those are really the next best thing for the majority of our pasture weeds. The 240 dicamba, Tordon, if you have that RUP license, those type of chemistry are really just about as good as glyphosate in these pasture settings. With that, we'll be back again next week. And of course, you can always contact in North Dakota, your local extension agents if you have further questions, or you can contact myself, Rachel, our page and we will make sure that your questions from today get to Joe so that we can get those answered. You can expect the recording sometime between now and next week between our next one. And with that recording will come the resources, again, this PowerPoint and it's all clickable and so you can then easily find the resources we talked about today. With that, thanks so much for joining us. I really appreciate it. Have a great day.