Grasses and Grazing

Imagine a hay feeding system where you did not have to use a tractor all winter and, at the same time, it allowed you to build up pasture nutrient levels without applying commercial fertilizer. Would you be interested?

The cost of hay and feed for winter supplementation is one of the largest expenses for cattle producers. Stockpiling bermudagrass or bahiagrass fields for grazing use in the winter can help save on hay cost and labor. You can expect to get 30 to 60 days of grazing from this practice, but to do this you need to follow a few management steps.

High-producing dairy cows need high-quality forage to produce milk efficiently on a high-forage diet. High-quality forage is better defined by high neutral detergent fiber digestibility (NDFd) than any other single attribute.

Drought continues to cover much of the country, resulting in reduced supplies of quality forage and grain. In an attempt to salvage corn and sorghum crops as a feed, cows are turned into the field to graze the total plants (leaves, stalks and grain). This practice, however, may cost more money than it saves due to production and livestock losses resulting from the presence of aflatoxin, prussic acid or nitrate in the grazed crops.

Throughout spring and summer, we’ve seen a variety of weedy plants in irrigated cool-season perennial pastures. Often, the first question we’re asked is, “What do I use to kill ____?”

Native warm-season grasses have long been considered “low-input” forages, having the ability to yield high quantities of forage while requiring limited fertilizer and at lower pH than many of our other common forage species.