As it turns out, the same stresses we have placed on our cattle that prevent them from acting as a herd, has also narrowed their natural dietary intake. As we change our stockmanship methods to allow the rebooting of herd instinct, cattle widen their diet, often before herd instinct is completely rebooted. A partial list of plants they begin to eat is common ragweed, ironweed, sumac, locust, thistles, blackberry bushes, chicory, and wild roses. The cattle don't just nibble on a few plants, but actually graze them hard.
The following picture is from a herd in Kansas which recently had it's herd instinct rebooted. The rancher call these "peppermint weeds." Prior to having their herd instinct rebooted, cattle wouldn't walk through these weeds, let alone graze them. Rather than grazing through spread out as we are used to, they migrated through as a herd, roughly consuming the top half of the plants on the right side of the picture.
Other than one short session to entice the cattle to ruminate in the hemp, nothing was done to encourage the cattle to trample it, or browse the "peppermint" weeds. The cattle just started doing it on their own as soon as their stress levels were reduced enough for herd instinct to begin rebooting. The only thing that changed was the stockmanship methods of the man handling the cattle. The rest of it was simply the changes it allowed in the attitude of his cattle. They are working, doing weed control for the rancher, without spending a dime on chemicals, fencing or fire. As an added bonus, he is reducing his outputs on supplemental feed and was able to discard part of his water infrastructure.
For more information, visit http://migratorygrazing.com/