Mulberry Leaves Can Be Nutritious Forage for Cows
Published: Friday, December 22, 2023
Continuing the series for The Farmer's Exchange, I plan on bringing you a monthly edition of my "Pasture Plant Profiles." I will focus on one less-talked-about plant commonly found in pastures in the Great Lakes region and beyond. In this series, I will focus on if that plant is invasive or not, what it adds to the pasture landscape/how livestock utilize it, and some cool and interesting history about the plant I am profiling for the month.
For the month of December, we will be looking at one of my all-time favorite pasture plants, mulberries!
While usually I choose to highlight a specific plant this month, we will be focusing on the genus of Morus, which includes all of the 64 known mulberry species. In the United States, four mulberry species are commonly found: white, black and a hybridization of the red and white mulberries, which is known as the Illinois Everbearing. These three invasive mulberry species far outcompete the true native red and are more commonly found within the landscape.
Mulberries are deciduous trees that are fast-growing when young, and can grow to 79 feet tall under ideal conditions. The leaves of mulberries are alternately arranged, simple, and often lobed and serrated on the margin. Leaf lobes are more common on juvenile trees than on mature trees which tend to display a more uniform rounded leaf pattern.
Most mulberry trees can be self-fertile, but many benefit if a companion pollinator is present.
The mulberry fruit is a multiple compacted berry, ranging from ¾ to 1.25 inches long. Immature fruits are white, green or sometimes pale yellow. The fruit generally turns from pink to red while ripening, then dark purple or black, and has a sweet flavor when fully ripe.
The white mulberry can maintain its white coloration when fully ripe but may also mature into a dark purplish/black berry.
The white mulberry is scientifically notable for the rapid plant movement involved in pollen release from its flowers. The stamens act as catapults, releasing stored elastic energy. The resulting movement is approximately 380 miles per hour, about half the speed of sound, making it the fastest known movement in the plant kingdom.
Both the white and black are both invasive, the white mulberry originally native to China and Northern India, and the black mulberry originally native to the mountainous highlands of Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq in the foothills of the Hindu-Kush Mountain range.
Both species of mulberry have now naturalized around the world and are considered a persistent weed in many agricultural areas, frequently appearing in freshly disturbed soils.
Both the white and black mulberry were originally imported by members of the Shaker religion to support silk production, which was a key economic opportunity for their society.
The fruits of mulberries are sweet and delicious and a great food for many wildlife, seeds are rapidly spread anywhere wildlife, especially birds, tend to gather; under utility lines, pastures, woodlots, freshly tilled soils and fencerows.
The United States does have a native mulberry species, which is the red mulberry, but true populations have been rapidly declining and are considered highly threatened by both competition from the invasive white and black mulberries, but also by hybridization with the invasive white mulberry the offspring then is known as the "Illinois Everbearing Mulberry."
Mulberry is a fantastic pasture addition and is, in my personal opinion, one of the top woody plants I want to see in my pastures. If every shade tree I had on my farm was a species of mulberry I would sing with joy!
The fruits of the mulberry are full of vital nutrients that are very beneficial for livestock. Raw mulberry fruits contain up to 88% water, 10% carbohydrates, 1% protein and less than 1% fat. In a standard 3.5-ounce reference amount, fresh mulberries provide 43 calories, 44% of the Daily Value (DV) for vitamin C, and 14% of the DV for iron.
There is a strong reason why silkworms choose mulberry as their food of choice, and maybe you should consider adding it to your pastures for forage. In a 2020 study done out of Basel, Switzerland, researchers found that mulberry leaves, as a forage crop, showed extreme potential. Leaves of the mulberry plant boosted a staggering high protein percentage, between 14-34.2%, which rivals most conventional grains.
As well as its fantastic protein potential, mulberry also has a metabolizable energy rate of between 1,130-2,240 kcal/kg, and with a high dry matter (DM) digestibility rate of 75-85%.
In addition, mulberry leaf flavonoids (MLFs) possess antimicrobial properties and can effectively decrease the population of ruminal methanogens and protozoa to reduce enteric methane (CH4) production.
Owing to its rich flavonoid content, feeding mulberry as a forage increased fiber digestion and utilization leading to enhanced milk production in ruminants. Dietary supplementation with mulberry forage also altered ruminal fermentation kinetics by increasing total volatile fatty acids, propionate and ammonia concentrations.
Furthermore, they can substantially increase the population of specific cellulolytic bacteria in the rumen. All that science saying, it's never a bad idea to feed mulberries as forage.
Some North American cities have banned the planting of mulberries because of the large amounts of pollen they produce, posing a potential health hazard for some pollen allergy sufferers. Actually, only the male mulberry trees produce pollen; this lightweight pollen can be inhaled deeply into the lungs, sometimes triggering asthma.
Conversely, female mulberry trees produce all-female flowers, which draw pollen and dust from the air. Because of this pollen-absorbing feature, all-female mulberry trees have an OPALS allergy scale rating of just 1 (lowest level of allergy potential), and some consider it "allergy-free."
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