Alfalfa in pasture?

[grassfarmer]

I was doing a final pasture assesment yesterday ahead of getting cows onto new grass today and found alfalfa on the increase.
The quarter in question was seeded in 2000 with a timothy/red clover hay mix and no alfalfa because the previous owner claimed alfalfa wouldn't grow on the place. After intensive grazing it for 4 years we now have a quack, timothy, clover and alfalfa stand. The alfalfa is still numerically small but it is definately increasing and the plants are very healthy (some 10 inches tall already) It is patchy and seems to be growing in areas where the quack is strongest and the timothy weakest. Also growing in some of the driest and the wettest parts of the pasture. Would you expect alfalfa to be an increaser in intensively managed pasture? How does it get there? can seeds survive and regenerate years later or would there be a few plants survived from a previous seeding of hay that are now more visible/ or active because of different management?
I'm delighted to see the stuff but have no experience of it's growth habits or natural regeneration.
Pasture here is probably 5-6 days ahead of last years, enough moisture for now but could probably use more heat?

[ALLFARMER]

I don't follow to closely what the previous owner says. I had an old guy tell me you could grow anything but Barley on a quarter I bought from him. So I put down 100 acres and later he said her couldn't believe how good it looked, it yielded 94bu/ac.

Some land I have now has a ph of 5.3 and it grows a pretty decent alfalfa crop.

So my 2 cents is try it for yourself under your own conditions small scale for the first year. For hayland we usually seed timothy brome alfalfa mix and when the stand gets older the timothy comes in stronger.

[grassfarmer]

Thanks for that Allfarmer but i'm not really talking about seeding alfalfa just now rather trying to find out why it is spreading naturally and if this is normal. If mother nature will seed it for me why would I want to ;o)
Our ph levels here are all in the 6.3-6.8 range. There is a superb field of alfalfa about 3 miles from here on very similar land to mine so I don't doubt it would grow here. The previous owner here couldn't grow much but horses by all accounts - and they were damn thick on the ground!

[pandiana]

I have had similar experience, grassfarmer. I could speculate that your alfafa seed could be coming from cattle manure, bird droppings or feeding of alfafa containing hay. I would expect that seeds might be viable for quite some time.

In my experience, most of this alfafa appeared when I was strip grazing. May have something to do with short grazing periods and long rests.

I didn't think alfafa liked wet areas?

Following years of breaking, tilling and manuring fields I would expect the pH to gradually become more neutral as compared to virgin grey wooded soils in newly broken fields.