As we get into the grazing season another advantage of our new Novel Endophyte Tall Fescue plantings has become obvious. In past years we have depended on annuals in a 40 acre area called the “front field” for our yearling heifers and finishers. This field is our best land and it sits adjacent to our headquarters. We can stock it at about one animal per 0.75 acres and it will provide feed from early March to the first of October when the heifers start to calve. This has worked well for us but there has been one complication; significant “holes” in both yield and forage quality in both spring and fall.
To create our summer pastures in this area we have sprayed glyphosate on the lower half of the field where we have grazed out the ryegrass in late May. We then have planted a Brown Mid Rib Sudangrass. On the upper half we have encouraged a natural stand of crabgrass and Johnsongrass, which my colleague Johnny Rogers calls “poor man’s summer annuals”. Both sides have been planted back to Ryegrass and Spring oats (if seeded by October 1) or pure Ryegrass if planting has been delayed.
This system works better in some years than others, but it is inevitable that we will have a significant “hole” in our system, mostly during late May and early June. The lower side of the field will be grazed out by June 1 and the Sudangrass will not be ready to graze until August 15. We continue to graze the Poor Man’s Summer Annual side, but by June it turns into mostly seedheads with some small contribution of the summer plants. Because the forage is mostly ryegrass seedheads the cattle don’t love it like they did just a few weeks earlier, but with our system of daily moves we work them pretty hard and make them eat it. It works and gives us a lot of grazing days, but the cattle don’t grow much during late May and June.
This nutritional “hole” in our system has worked out ok for the replacement heifers. By mid-May they are in mid-pregnancy and they have been gaining over 2 lbs a day since early March. They can go along at 1 lb per day average daily gain for 45 days without any detriment to their development or to the calf growing inside of them. As long as they gain well starting in mid-August they have very nice calves and grow into very good cows.
This system does not work nearly as well for our finishers. We know that a hole in their nutritional plane can have a lasting impact on how they will marble at harvest, and of course slow gains at this point mean more days to harvest. In the past we have separated these cattle off from the replacement heifer group so we can give them some good non-toxic hay or pasture and some supplemental feed so they keep gaining. It works but it is expensive and we spend a lot of energy feeding hay and grain.
This year is different. We planted the lower half of the front field to Novel Endophyte Tall Fescue last fall, and as I wrote last month these stands have really come on well and have already been grazed either once or twice. Now that the ryegrass is heading, it is clear that we have a very different situation where we now will have high quality forage to graze in late May and June when we would normally be waiting for the summer forages to get started.
We have put a second dose of 30 lbs of N per acre on these Novel Endophyte Tall Fescue stands, and with some timely rains the growth is downright explosive. With the high quality of this forage, and the lack of the toxins usually associated with tall fescue in our area, we have effectively plugged that spring hole in the system. Happily, we also will enjoy the same benefit this fall when we will be able to graze
the new fescue while we wait for Oats and Ryegrass seeded over the Poor Man’s Summer Annual to develop.
We all should be thinking about our forage system and where our weak points are. Our big holes traditionally in the front field t were in May and June grazing hay aftermath, and again in October and November due to the high level of toxins in the KY31 tall fescue at that time. It was great for stockpiling and yielded a lot of first-cutting hay. After we killed that KY31 in the front field and went to annuals in 2014 we had a much better time dealing with the toxins, but we found these new holes in our yield curve.
We also added several plantings of Novel Endophyte Tall Fescue last fall in the “middle field” where we are grazing our first calf heifers and their calves. We have plenty of this new stand tall fescue and ryegrass for this group as of today. We just finished our first rotation, and have plenty of forage ahead of the heifers to get through June. Once we go over the ryegrass one more time, we will run a light disk across that area to stimulate the crabgrass we will use to weaning our calves in July. Then we will be back on Novel until we wean the calves in late June.
The remainder of the Middle Field is dominated by KY31, and we are allowing that to stockpile for late summer grazing. This system called, “Summer Stockpiling” was developed by David Fiske and coworkers at the Shannedoah Valley Research and Extension Center at Raphine, VA. In this system, the spring growth of fescue is allowed to accumulate, but rather than cutting it for hay the forage is left standing, to eventually be frontal grazed by dry cows.
We used to cut much of this area for hay each May, but we have done this summer stockpiling in recent years as we move our system away from a lot of hay feeding. As a result of eliminating the hay cutting these areas are dramatically improving in their productivity and by the time we start grazing there will be a very high forage mass, with moderate quality, perfect for third trimester dry cows. See more about Summer Stockpiling of Tall Fescue elsewhere in this month’s newsletter.
It is really nice to have a diverse forage system that both flattens your yield curve, and also provides more nutritious forage throughout the year. Novel Endophyte Tall Fescue is proving to be very useful as it gives us high quality non-toxic forage where we used to have a nutritional hole. With the benefits of Novel Endophyte Tall Fescue becoming obvious, we have identified two more pieces in the Middle Field to be converted, and are in the process of clipping to prevent seed production. One of these areas will be renovated with the Spray-Smother-Spray system and our smother crop will be Ray’s Crazy Mix. The other area has a lot of legumes and summer grasses, so we clipped the fescue seedheads and will graze it all through the summer before using the Spray-Wait-Spray system starting mid-August.
I am excited to extend the benefits we are seeing in our replacement heifers to the mature cow herd. Once you see your cows after an extended time off KY31 Tall Fescue you will realize how much those toxins actually do hurt your system.
~ Matt Poore, NC State and the Alliance for Grassland Renewal
The Alliance for Grassland Renewal is a national organization focused on enhancing the appropriate adoption of novel endophyte tall fescue technology through education, incentives, self-regulation and promotion. For more resources or to learn more about the Alliance for Grassland Renewal, go to www.grasslandrenewal.org
The Alliance for Grassland Renewal 