Introduction

Cattle are grown world wide, even yaks count as cattle and they grow in the coldest places. There are many places where cattle come in contact with cacti. It was even proposed 100 years ago that spineless Opuntia plants (O. ficus-indica) could replace most fodder and cattle would grow in areas with almost no rain.

The Details

The scheme was guaranteed to make ranchers wealthy, except it didn’t work. The cacti were not very nutritious and they were cold-sensitive in most parts of the USA. Luther Burbank pushed the scheme, but it just didn’t work out. Still, even today, cattle can be found munching on cacti. You have to wonder how they deal with the spines and the glochids.