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| Yes alfalfa can and will kill cattle from bloating. It can be grazed with some precautions. Chemical additives like bloat blocks help. Cattle are far more likely to bloat when the alfalfa is wet from rain or dew. I personally graze anything with alfalfa growing in it by waiting until it has blossomed and then some. Having some dry (non alfalfa) hay available also helps.
As far as grazing alfalfa killing it, you would have to grub it into the ground for long periods of time to do much damage and even then probably not kill much of it. I have a neighbor that runs several hundred head of horses for a dude ranch all winter on his mixed grass alfalfa hay fields with no ill effect . I have a couple of small pastures close to the corrals that were initially planted before I was born (I'll be seventy in Nov.) that are grazed very hard and the alfalfa always reappears. If you are already going through the trouble of tillage, planting something like oats in the spring will give additional forage and lessen the chance of bloat. | |
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Alfalfa / autotoxicity
