Other Forage

Sometimes non-traditional crops for livestock can augment forage supplies or stretch the production on a piece of land.

While perennial forage species are the backbone of most forage-based livestock systems, annual forages can supplement and complement the perennials to increase production of your operation.

Producers are changing the way they value a corn crop. Fields that once yielded only grain and “trash” are now revered as the source of a valuable but under-used commodity: corn stover. Whether on the soil or in the barn, corn stover is a valuable resource on crop and livestock farms.

When I talk about forage chicory, the first response from a lot of people is, “What? The roadside weed?”

• Many annual forages are good cover crops, right?
• Improving soil health by planting annual forage cover crops is good, right?
• Annual forage cover crops are good to graze or harvest, right?

Not so fast. What about nitrates?

Wooded pastures need “health checkups” just like open pastures do, according to Keefe Keeley, an agroecology graduate student at the University of Wisconsin – Madison.