2023 Eastern Nebraska Soil Health Conference - Mary Drewnoski

Deloris Pittman & Mike Kamm Author

03/20/2023 Added

11 Plays

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Practical tips for selecting and grazing forage cover crops - Mary Drewnoski, UNL Beef Systems Specialist

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[00:00:04.085]Okay
[00:00:05.190]So I am an animal scientist,
[00:00:07.830]if you haven't figured that out.
[00:00:09.900]But I work in integrated crop livestock systems,
[00:00:12.780]and today I'm actually gonna talk a little bit
[00:00:14.760]about selecting and grazing cover crops.
[00:00:17.250]And to the question that was earlier,
[00:00:19.260]about how much added value do cover crops bring?
[00:00:23.010]In particular, that question was about interceding.
[00:00:26.190]Jenny and her group got me very interested in that question.
[00:00:31.650]So we actually worked on putting a grant together,
[00:00:34.950]and the Corn Board just gave us funding
[00:00:36.720]to actually answer that question.
[00:00:38.220]So this spring, we're actually gonna be doing
[00:00:41.010]some interceding in corn
[00:00:42.780]and we're gonna graze it this fall.
[00:00:44.550]I will tell you our experience.
[00:00:46.230]We did some planting oats into high moisture corn
[00:00:50.220]and we were kind of thinking,
[00:00:51.854]oh, that'll add value to the corn residue.
[00:00:54.090]And the lesson we learned when we did that
[00:00:56.250]a few years ago was that the cattle like the cover crop.
[00:01:00.090]Surprise, right?
[00:01:01.230]So they went and just ate all the cover crop first.
[00:01:03.150]Well, that didn't really work
[00:01:05.460]to extend our grazing season very much.
[00:01:08.400]So in this case,
[00:01:09.360]we are gonna be doing the strip grazing,
[00:01:11.730]as was kind of suggested,
[00:01:12.960]to see how much added value we can get.
[00:01:15.000]So stay tuned, we'll tell you what we learned.
[00:01:18.300]But I do think there's some potential there
[00:01:20.700]from that interceding.
[00:01:21.990]I got very excited when I went out
[00:01:23.790]and saw some of those fields and pictures and stuff.
[00:01:25.950]I was like, "Oh this is exactly what I'm looking for."
[00:01:29.070]Because as we all know,
[00:01:29.970]it's very hard to get very much biomass
[00:01:33.156]when we're thinking about corn and soybean systems
[00:01:35.820]and trying to have a cover crop.
[00:01:37.080]And biomass is kind of the key when it comes to forage.
[00:01:41.670]We gotta have biomass for them to be able to graze it.
[00:01:44.250]So the first thing when we're talking about
[00:01:46.440]selecting cover crops for grazing is
[00:01:51.030]don't skimp on the grass.
[00:01:52.290]A lot of times the grass is what's gonna be king
[00:01:55.890]for producing biomass.
[00:01:57.480]And so we need to have enough grass in there.
[00:02:00.840]So what I'm gonna talk about is nothing that's super fancy
[00:02:04.650]or maybe even exotic for many of you,
[00:02:08.160]because grasses are going to be the mainstay for grazing.
[00:02:13.440]Specie and selection then often depends on planting day.
[00:02:17.250]And that's probably one of the most common things
[00:02:19.560]that I hear is, "Oh, I tried that and it didn't work."
[00:02:23.190]And when we start talking,
[00:02:25.650]what usually comes up is they tried planting something,
[00:02:29.910]let's say turnips, which are winter sensitive,
[00:02:32.250]and I planted them in October.
[00:02:34.500]And I'm like, "Man, they didn't produce very much," right?
[00:02:37.980]Yeah, that's not gonna work very well.
[00:02:39.750]So one of the key things about selection is,
[00:02:42.540]when are you actually gonna be able to plant it
[00:02:44.430]and then when do you want to be able to graze it?
[00:02:46.440]So we're gonna kind of talk a little bit more about that.
[00:02:51.360]So I kind of categorize our cover crop species,
[00:02:55.860]or in this case our annual forages,
[00:02:57.450]because that's the way I'm looking at them, right?
[00:02:59.040]Cover crops, I'm using them for forage,
[00:03:01.260]into three categories.
[00:03:02.820]So we have our warm seasons,
[00:03:05.640]we have our cool seasons.
[00:03:07.080]And then our cool seasons,
[00:03:08.160]I break them into two categories that kind of tell us
[00:03:10.980]about when it might be appropriate to plant them.
[00:03:13.230]So warm seasons would be, most of you guys would be familiar
[00:03:16.560]with things like sorghum sudan,
[00:03:19.410]sudangrass, pearl millet's probably fairly common.
[00:03:23.580]Japanese millet's one that's kind of coming
[00:03:26.100]into the market, in my opinion.
[00:03:28.230]So there's some advantages to each of these
[00:03:30.780]for different reasons.
[00:03:33.090]But as a cover crop, honestly the only system
[00:03:37.410]where these probably come into play is
[00:03:40.230]if you have wheat in your rotation.
[00:03:42.600]If you're wanting to do a double crop annual forage,
[00:03:44.970]then you've got some options.
[00:03:46.590]But otherwise, these are gonna be planted
[00:03:48.900]the same timeframe as when you're probably wanting
[00:03:51.180]to plant your cash crop, right?
[00:03:53.257]Your warm-season corn or soybean.
[00:03:55.230]So we'll spend a little bit of time on these,
[00:03:57.300]but not very much.
[00:03:59.220]These are kind of the things where we have some options
[00:04:01.770]to work within our traditional cropping systems.
[00:04:05.430]So we have our winter-sensitive species.
[00:04:08.040]So basically that just means they winter kill.
[00:04:10.950]Probably the most common ones that people think of are
[00:04:13.080]the small cereals like oats,
[00:04:15.390]spring barley, spring triticale, annual rye grass.
[00:04:20.760]We talked a little bit about annual rye grass earlier today.
[00:04:24.300]Field peas or your brassicas, like turnips and rapeseed.
[00:04:28.440]I will tell you that,
[00:04:30.540]in terms of the winter-sensitive species,
[00:04:32.670]I'm a big fan of oats.
[00:04:34.950]They're cheap, they work well.
[00:04:36.990]And I'm a big fan of the brassicas,
[00:04:38.970]especially for late summer planting
[00:04:40.650]and I'll show you why.
[00:04:41.940]But from a forage perspective,
[00:04:43.950]they can have a lot of really high-quality forage planted
[00:04:47.010]in the late summer.
[00:04:49.590]So after corn silage, for instance,
[00:04:51.480]if you have early-harvested corn silage.
[00:04:53.880]Winter hardy is probably what most people are familiar with
[00:04:56.430]and most common cover crop, right?
[00:04:58.140]Cereal rye.
[00:04:59.670]So cereal rye, winter wheat, winter triticale,
[00:05:02.580]and then hairy vetch is something
[00:05:04.680]that'll reliably over winter.
[00:05:05.880]I will tell you, from a forage perspective,
[00:05:08.550]I am a little bit nervous about hairy vetch
[00:05:11.760]and I tend not to put it in if I'm gonna use it for forage.
[00:05:15.030]And the reason is because hairy vetch does have
[00:05:17.820]the potential to produce a toxin
[00:05:19.680]that can make cattle photosensitive.
[00:05:22.950]I've had people who have success
[00:05:24.480]and don't have any problems.
[00:05:25.890]It's kind of Russian roulette. (laughs)
[00:05:28.020]And I am a little bit risk adverse,
[00:05:30.240]so I don't play Russian roulette.
[00:05:32.666]So I do not use hairy vetch, typically,
[00:05:35.190]in mixes that I'm going to want to graze.
[00:05:37.770]I will tell you, at small proportions,
[00:05:39.420]it's probably not a big deal.
[00:05:41.880]And if you are going to graze it
[00:05:43.500]when it's very immature, it's less of a problem.
[00:05:45.810]But if it happens to get mature or it overtakes
[00:05:50.100]and it's a lot of the biomass, there is a risk there.
[00:05:53.850]I wish that we had more legumes that overwintered reliably
[00:05:58.763]because I think that's something we're missing.
[00:06:02.340]Okay, so timing is everything here.
[00:06:04.920]So I kind of broke it down,
[00:06:06.030]based off of when you might be able to plant.
[00:06:08.850]And I put in red here,
[00:06:10.230]these are kind of the two timeframes
[00:06:12.180]that I see most of us working in.
[00:06:14.340]But if we are, somebody talked about they were going
[00:06:18.120]to plant oats this spring to me, earlier today,
[00:06:21.390]and they're gonna graze those oats
[00:06:23.370]and then plant a soybean later.
[00:06:25.500]You can make that work.
[00:06:26.880]However, you are looking at planting fairly late
[00:06:29.280]because if I spring plant oats
[00:06:32.910]or spring barley or spring wheat, whatever,
[00:06:37.170]I'm really looking at maybe May 15th
[00:06:39.819]before I can really start grazing.
[00:06:40.652]It takes about 30 to 45 days for it to really get going.
[00:06:45.780]And then if we look at timeframe,
[00:06:49.350]the next timeframe is really not planting a cash crop
[00:06:52.500]and planting your warm seasons
[00:06:55.170]or planting them after you harvest wheat
[00:06:58.680]or maybe you're harvesting rye for grain,
[00:07:02.400]then we're looking at some warm seasons.
[00:07:04.500]And if you're gonna graze, sudangrass is my favorite,
[00:07:07.230]and if you're gonna graze in the growing season.
[00:07:12.450]And the reason why I really like sudangrass is
[00:07:15.690]that it regrows very well post-grazing.
[00:07:20.040]Some of the other warm seasons don't do quite as well,
[00:07:24.300]especially sorghum sudan mixes.
[00:07:27.210]So that hybrid of sorghum sudan, it does not regrow as well.
[00:07:30.540]Pearl millet doesn't regrow as well.
[00:07:31.920]I will tell you, Japanese millet regrows better
[00:07:35.160]than some of the other ones.
[00:07:36.450]So it's kind of a second best in my opinion.
[00:07:39.420]So that's an option, especially if you're wanting to graze
[00:07:43.170]into the time period where you're gonna have a frost.
[00:07:46.200]Because the millets do not produce prussic acid
[00:07:48.930]when they get frosted on.
[00:07:50.880]Sudangrass does.
[00:07:52.470]So that's something else to think of.
[00:07:54.090]If you wanna graze, let's say in late September,
[00:07:58.050]and there's a chance of a frost that can catch you up,
[00:08:02.550]so there is kind of an option there to switch
[00:08:05.070]from sudangrass, if that's the case.
[00:08:07.710]But I'm gonna spend most of my time here.
[00:08:10.710]This is where we kind of started most of our work
[00:08:13.830]because I was kind of tasked with
[00:08:16.980]how do we add value to calves?
[00:08:20.490]And we were looking at,
[00:08:22.440]well our calves are gonna be weaned,
[00:08:24.960]traditionally right in the fall, in October,
[00:08:27.900]and that's kind of the slump in prices.
[00:08:30.000]And so we were kind of like,
[00:08:30.967]"Well, what if we can grow them in the fall
[00:08:34.290]on some cover crops?"
[00:08:35.370]And so oats and brassicas have become
[00:08:38.457]kind of my favorite mix for that,
[00:08:39.990]and I'll show you a little bit about that.
[00:08:41.610]You can also graze dry cows with it,
[00:08:43.980]that works just fine.
[00:08:45.240]In fact, the quality's so high, though,
[00:08:47.850]that I know we were talking about sea corn earlier
[00:08:51.922]and that's basically just grazing brassicas
[00:08:53.850]with some corn residue,
[00:08:55.500]a little bit of corn residue, right?
[00:08:57.450]Does great, right?
[00:08:58.500]Lactating cows, they can do well.
[00:09:00.703]The quality's very, very high.
[00:09:01.950]If you wanna use it for that,
[00:09:03.720]probably the way to get the most value out of it,
[00:09:05.910]again, is to limit access to strip grazing,
[00:09:09.210]which takes extra labor, I realize.
[00:09:11.670]But for calves, we've been doing set stocking
[00:09:14.820]and getting really great gains.
[00:09:16.830]And then let's talk about winter-hardy cereal.
[00:09:19.560]Rye is everybody's most common.
[00:09:22.590]Winter triticale is a little bit more expensive.
[00:09:24.840]It is an option.
[00:09:26.430]I'll tell you, in our systems,
[00:09:30.780]if we think about what the timeframe is,
[00:09:34.470]I still think cereal rye makes a lot of sense,
[00:09:36.600]even for forage.
[00:09:38.070]And here's the reason.
[00:09:39.810]So the first thing is that cereal rye does tend to be
[00:09:44.880]a little bit more cold tolerant
[00:09:46.650]and come out of dormancy a little bit earlier
[00:09:49.590]than winter wheat or winter triticale.
[00:09:52.080]And that means we can get on it a little bit earlier.
[00:09:54.360]And if you're trying to fit it into a cropping system,
[00:09:57.150]being able to start grazing even a week earlier is
[00:09:59.700]an advantage, in my opinion.
[00:10:01.650]So I do like cereal rye from that perspective.
[00:10:03.840]But I do wanna point out
[00:10:05.040]that there's probably just as much variation
[00:10:09.360]between varieties of a species
[00:10:11.700]as there is among species, it seems like.
[00:10:15.120]So I have a picture.
[00:10:17.250]This actually was one of Gary's fields
[00:10:21.570]that they had to prevent plant.
[00:10:23.850]And we planted, if I remember correctly,
[00:10:27.270]it was elbon rye, VNS rye.
[00:10:30.630]There was a winter barley and a winter triticale.
[00:10:33.420]And I just wanted to put this picture up here.
[00:10:35.390]If you look on the TVs,
[00:10:37.740]you'll see it a little bit better.
[00:10:38.910]But these were planted on the same day.
[00:10:41.370]They had the same fertility, it's the same field.
[00:10:43.650]And you can see a difference in maturity.
[00:10:46.320]And that resulted in a difference in yield
[00:10:49.651]at the same time point.
[00:10:50.614]Why?
[00:10:51.447]Well, elbon rye is a southern rye,
[00:10:52.980]so it comes out of dormancy even earlier
[00:10:55.110]than northern ryes do.
[00:10:56.490]VNS can be anything, 'cause it's a variety unstated.
[00:11:00.510]They tend to be northern ryes that we get here in Nebraska.
[00:11:04.290]And so it didn't come out of dormancy quite as early.
[00:11:07.740]It was not quite as far along as the elbon.
[00:11:11.610]So there's an advantage, in my opinion,
[00:11:13.440]to having those southern type ryes
[00:11:15.870]if you're looking for grazing.
[00:11:17.370]'Cause again, we can get more grazing out of it earlier.
[00:11:20.640]I will say that, in terms of quality,
[00:11:22.830]I hear a lot of people talk about rye and they think,
[00:11:25.207]"Man, that's low quality."
[00:11:27.750]And the truth is that it's all about maturity.
[00:11:31.290]So this is in that same field that I just showed you,
[00:11:35.340]this was actually the samples taken at that timeframe,
[00:11:37.770]that picture.
[00:11:39.120]And what you see is,
[00:11:40.680]I just really wanted to point out that
[00:11:42.270]between these varieties or species, excuse me,
[00:11:45.690]we don't see any real differences in quality.
[00:11:47.850]So this TDN is basically corn silage.
[00:11:54.510]So the energy content is similar to corn silage
[00:11:57.300]at that relative stage.
[00:11:58.830]So very, very high energy.
[00:12:01.050]And if you look at those crude protein numbers,
[00:12:02.940]that is good quality alfalfa right there.
[00:12:06.540]So my point is that, if you manage it to keep it
[00:12:11.070]in the vegetative state, so keep it short,
[00:12:13.710]keep it green, then you can have really,
[00:12:17.100]really good quality.
[00:12:18.750]In fact, you can have quality
[00:12:20.370]that will get 3.2 pound a day gain on calves.
[00:12:23.820]I had a producer tell me they could get
[00:12:26.580]three pound a day gain on calves and I thought, no.
[00:12:30.859](laughs) I mean I was like, "Nah, no, that's a fill thing.
[00:12:35.160]He weighed them, they were empty when they went out,
[00:12:37.470]and then they were full when they came back off.
[00:12:39.990]I was like, I had serious doubts.
[00:12:42.810]And I was wrong and that does happen,
[00:12:46.200]quite frequently, unfortunately.
[00:12:49.020]That's why I'm a scientist, right?
[00:12:50.220]We have hypothesis and then we test them.
[00:12:53.100]So this is actually Angela Knuth's field,
[00:12:57.030]where we were doing a study where we were actually comparing
[00:13:00.060]having rye versus not having rye
[00:13:01.920]and then grazing rye as a part of the question.
[00:13:04.950]But what I really wanted to show you here is
[00:13:08.176]we can put out 700 pound calves
[00:13:09.780]and they can gain three pounds a day
[00:13:11.880]and it is not a fill thing.
[00:13:13.560]We manage for fill in our research studies.
[00:13:16.920]So the quality's really good.
[00:13:18.900]Couple things that we did learn:
[00:13:21.360]annuals, they grow fast.
[00:13:25.170]And so it's very different than perennial forage management.
[00:13:28.680]So what you're used to grazing,
[00:13:30.330]if you're thinking about grazing smooth bromgrass,
[00:13:33.300]for instance, the management is very night and day.
[00:13:36.690]Good perennial grass managers probably find annuals
[00:13:40.380]a bit of a challenge at first
[00:13:42.390]because they want to grow so fast
[00:13:45.180]and you try to be conservative when you're grazing.
[00:13:48.600]It is really important that you stay on top of it.
[00:13:51.960]So you gotta have high stocking rates.
[00:13:53.760]In this case, we were stocking at two calves an acre.
[00:13:58.710]Started grazing in early April and we pulled them off
[00:14:02.490]by May 10th so that we could plant the next cash crop.
[00:14:07.260]So relatively short grazing period, but good gains.
[00:14:11.580]And then the other thing that I'll point out is that
[00:14:14.670]you can make mistakes and overgraze and it'll come back.
[00:14:18.570]This is what we kind of targeted for post grazing.
[00:14:21.150]We were just doing a back and forth rotation.
[00:14:24.840]This is not what it always looked like.
[00:14:26.880]I'd go out on a Friday and I'd be like,
[00:14:28.237]"Oh, I think they'll make it till Monday."
[00:14:30.300]And then you come out Monday and there's nothing left
[00:14:34.230]and you go, "Man, I might have killed that."
[00:14:36.780]I did not.
[00:14:38.490]I will tell you that this stuff is very different
[00:14:41.850]because it's whole...
[00:14:43.590]I wanna call it thought processes.
[00:14:45.540]I don't know, like plants think. (laughs)
[00:14:47.670]But it's different in that it's not trying
[00:14:51.510]to remain viable in terms of growing
[00:14:55.080]a bunch of root structure so it can come back the next year.
[00:14:57.840]Its whole goal in life is to reproduce and produce seed.
[00:15:01.800]So it tends to do better, even than what I would think
[00:15:05.520]of a perennial, when we do severely graze it.
[00:15:09.275]Now I'm not talking about overgrazing.
[00:15:10.380]If you severely graze it multiple times in a row
[00:15:13.140]very quickly, you can kill it.
[00:15:14.820]But it's kind of hard to do.
[00:15:16.350]In fact, I've had producers who try to graze it out
[00:15:20.940]to plant their next crop, and it doesn't work.
[00:15:24.510]You pretty much have to herbicide kill it, okay?
[00:15:28.170]Because it's really hard to reduce the root stores enough
[00:15:31.950]to make it not be able to come back.
[00:15:35.610]Okay, so I get questioned a lot about rye
[00:15:39.120]versus triticale or wheat.
[00:15:41.520]In these systems where we're grazing
[00:15:43.710]for a shorter period of time,
[00:15:44.820]because we're gonna go into another crop,
[00:15:47.430]we really don't see much differences between the species.
[00:15:50.220]So this was the first year where we compared rye,
[00:15:52.770]triticale, and wheat.
[00:15:54.240]And what we did is we were trying to target,
[00:15:57.690]start grazing at five inches of height.
[00:16:00.660]And the rye hit five inches
[00:16:02.430]about a week earlier than the triticale and wheat
[00:16:04.440]so we went out early.
[00:16:05.970]Then we had a cold snap about a week later.
[00:16:09.420]And what that resulted in is that we set the...
[00:16:13.140]We actually probably got ahead of the rye a little bit.
[00:16:16.050]We ended up having to come off of it a little bit earlier.
[00:16:18.210]So we got the same number of grazing days between them.
[00:16:21.450]We got the same amount of gain on them.
[00:16:24.810]And you guys are looking at four pound a day.
[00:16:26.250]I should point out, these calves had come off of stocks.
[00:16:29.370]They were gaining about a pound a day on stocks
[00:16:31.320]with the amount of supplement we were giving them.
[00:16:32.940]So probably a quarter of that gain,
[00:16:35.490]like 25% was compensatory gain.
[00:16:38.400]They just gained a little bit better 'cause
[00:16:39.720]we had restricted their growth earlier.
[00:16:41.910]So but about three pound a day, still good stuff.
[00:16:45.270]Second year we did it, it looks a little different.
[00:16:49.140]So that fall was very dry when we planted.
[00:16:53.130]And the rye didn't really get going, none of them did.
[00:16:56.250]And so they all reached five inches about the same time.
[00:16:59.220]So we were like, "Okay, we'll turn out." (laughs)
[00:17:01.826]Yeah, so the rye, the thing was that,
[00:17:05.220]again, we had that little bit of cold weather in early April
[00:17:08.070]after we turned out and the rye wasn't phased
[00:17:11.490]to the extent that the triticale and wheat was,
[00:17:13.770]you could see damage,
[00:17:15.630]frost damage on those species and it set it back.
[00:17:19.470]And so this is not a quality thing,
[00:17:21.270]this is we restricted the intake on those calves.
[00:17:25.080]So where we didn't have as much restriction,
[00:17:28.050]same stocking rates, everything's the same,
[00:17:30.510]it just does better in the colder weather.
[00:17:32.160]So for me, I'm kind of a fan of rye
[00:17:35.070]if I'm gonna be grazing it, especially early grazing.
[00:17:40.290]Key thing for all annuals, regardless of species,
[00:17:43.680]is that management is going to dictate
[00:17:46.740]the performance of the animal.
[00:17:49.440]And this is basically just showing early,
[00:17:52.950]short vegetative stuff is going to be low yielding
[00:17:56.820]but very high quality.
[00:17:58.740]And as you continue to let it mature,
[00:18:01.380]it gets lower and lower quality.
[00:18:03.360]And you think feed value there, right?
[00:18:06.570]But higher yielding.
[00:18:08.130]Every time I hear somebody talk about an annual and say,
[00:18:10.929]"Oh man, that stuff's low quality," that's true.
[00:18:15.210]But they were over here.
[00:18:16.650]They were shooting for big yields they hayed it off
[00:18:19.560]or something like that, when it was maybe seeded out.
[00:18:23.220]Yeah, it's low quality.
[00:18:24.870]But even sedan grass, sorghum sedan
[00:18:27.900]that everybody thinks of as kind of low quality,
[00:18:29.610]can be extremely high quality
[00:18:31.410]if you're hitting it over here.
[00:18:34.680]Okay, so let's talk about early spring planting.
[00:18:36.960]Again, it doesn't always fit into a good cash crop rotation,
[00:18:40.980]but in years like this year
[00:18:42.930]where we're very short on forage,
[00:18:45.540]I've been getting a lot of ration questions lately
[00:18:48.000]about what in the heck do I feed?
[00:18:49.230]I have no hay left.
[00:18:51.120]So this is an option, you can plant it late March,
[00:18:56.430]early April and be able to start grazing it mid-May.
[00:19:01.650]If your pastures were set back this year
[00:19:04.620]because you over grazed, this still might be a benefit,
[00:19:08.475]but it kind of doesn't typically line up.
[00:19:10.950]We usually can't go out on pasture at that point.
[00:19:13.830]I do wanna say that if you're looking at early spring,
[00:19:16.680]planting oats is a great option.
[00:19:19.710]Annual rye grass might be even nice to add into the mix
[00:19:22.770]if you wanna extend your grazing season.
[00:19:25.740]So that's something to think about.
[00:19:27.150]Let's talk about spring field peas
[00:19:29.160]because everybody's tired of grass right now, right?
[00:19:33.090]No? Okay.
[00:19:35.387]I did wanna show you, there's a lot of data,
[00:19:36.690]but I just point out right here,
[00:19:38.910]so this was some work by Jerry Valesky and Darren Red Fern,
[00:19:42.360]hi Darren, where they were looking at seeding rates
[00:19:46.530]of oats and peas.
[00:19:47.970]So this over here is peas alone,
[00:19:50.190]this over here was 70 pounds of oats alone,
[00:19:52.980]and then mixes between.
[00:19:54.960]And one of the things that kind of comes up,
[00:19:56.760]as you would expect,
[00:19:57.840]if you add a legume in, you get more protein.
[00:20:00.600]Not surprising.
[00:20:01.470]So 19% crude protein, if it was the pea alone,
[00:20:05.130]going down to 9% if it was the oats alone.
[00:20:09.960]But this was kind of the one that kind of caught my eye.
[00:20:12.630]And that is we got the same amount of yield
[00:20:14.880]if they put in 50 pounds of oat
[00:20:17.640]with about 17 pounds of peas.
[00:20:20.370]So a little bit higher seed cost than oats alone,
[00:20:23.640]but we got some more protein out of the deal and same yield.
[00:20:26.910]Now this study was done about the same time
[00:20:29.820]but it was before we knew they did a seeding rate study
[00:20:33.120]on oats and basically, we've been telling you
[00:20:36.690]you need to seed 90 pounds an acre is typical seeding rate
[00:20:41.850]for oats for forage.
[00:20:45.420]They decided to question that.
[00:20:47.100]And I think the data really suggests
[00:20:49.290]that 50 pounds of oats is gonna give you
[00:20:52.800]the same yield as 90, if that makes sense.
[00:20:56.220]So you can back off that seeding rate,
[00:20:57.810]which is kind of cool.
[00:20:59.490]I think that's probably...
[00:21:00.570]Those rates were based off of 50s and 60s,
[00:21:03.360]probably seedling vigor wasn't as good.
[00:21:05.280]Now we have better seedling vigor
[00:21:07.230]so more of those plants survive
[00:21:08.790]and that's probably why we can back off.
[00:21:11.130]So that's kind of useful information,
[00:21:13.560]it saves you some money.
[00:21:15.810]Okay, so warm season annuals.
[00:21:17.850]Most people are familiar with sorghum sedan hybrids,
[00:21:20.490]and they're kind of good options
[00:21:22.680]if you're trying to do silage or hay,
[00:21:25.500]if you manage it well.
[00:21:27.420]They've got big stems and they're hard to dry.
[00:21:30.270]But I really kind of wanted to talk about sedan grass
[00:21:32.880]'cause it does, if you're looking to graze in the season,
[00:21:35.910]it regrows well.
[00:21:37.980]Japanese millet is another one, it likes wet feet.
[00:21:41.430]So if I'm looking for something for some wetter areas,
[00:21:46.050]Japanese millet might be an option.
[00:21:47.640]If I'm looking for dryer areas,
[00:21:50.430]pearl millet's actually a fairly good option.
[00:21:52.290]And there's some pearl millet varieties that yield
[00:21:55.380]as well as sorghum sedan, if I was gonna hay it.
[00:21:59.460]So that might be a great option if you're on some hillsides
[00:22:02.310]or something that's a little bit drier.
[00:22:04.050]It does not like wet feet, though.
[00:22:06.390]So the advantage of the millets, in my opinion,
[00:22:09.810]is that they do not produce the prussic acid.
[00:22:13.080]So you can get on them maybe a little bit earlier,
[00:22:15.450]not have to worry about prussic acid when they're short.
[00:22:18.840]And then also at the frost period.
[00:22:20.970]Foxtail millet or German millet,
[00:22:22.680]you guys might have have heard of,
[00:22:25.050]it's a very quick maturing, very low yielding.
[00:22:28.500]I see it used more in the West
[00:22:30.630]as a way to get a second crop in.
[00:22:34.140]It's very cheap so if it fails it's not that big of a deal,
[00:22:36.870]so they'll put it in after wheat.
[00:22:38.940]But it's one of those where it takes 60 days
[00:22:42.120]to get the full maturity and it does not yield very much.
[00:22:45.600]So there's kind of two timeframes
[00:22:46.860]that I think about seeding for the warm seasons.
[00:22:49.530]One is seeding exactly when you would think
[00:22:51.840]about seeding sorghum, kind of that May time period.
[00:22:56.250]It likes the temperatures to be around 60 in the soil.
[00:23:01.110]65 is ideal, so warmer, right?
[00:23:05.220]Or you can delay and plant after your wheat.
[00:23:09.600]And in my mind, this kind of makes sense for stockpiling.
[00:23:13.170]And there's actually some really interesting stuff
[00:23:15.030]they're doing in Iowa right now,
[00:23:16.890]where they're actually stockpiling it
[00:23:19.800]and then they're cutting around this time
[00:23:22.650]and actually swapping it then
[00:23:25.380]and grazing it and getting really great utilization rates
[00:23:29.310]to allow them to get more cows per acre,
[00:23:32.820]if that makes sense.
[00:23:33.660]So I'm kind of intrigued by that.
[00:23:35.490]I'd been a little bit hesitant in the East
[00:23:38.910]to do something like that, because of the moisture.
[00:23:41.490]I think the key is that they're waiting to actually cut it.
[00:23:44.550]So it's kind kind of dried in the field
[00:23:47.270]and then they just wait until right before
[00:23:48.540]they think they're gonna get a snow
[00:23:49.770]or something and then they cut it.
[00:23:52.680]Okay, so these are kind of your options.
[00:23:55.560]And I really just wanted to show you that in my mind,
[00:23:58.170]for grazing, these are kind of the two
[00:24:00.360]that I might think about: sedan grass or pearl millet,
[00:24:04.149]depending on the timing, in-season grazing.
[00:24:06.720]This is more for stockpile or fall grazing
[00:24:09.930]that I don't wanna deal with the prussic acid issue.
[00:24:13.380]And I just wanted to show you
[00:24:15.502]that foxtail millets doesn't really yield very well.
[00:24:18.480]Teff is, in my opinion, hard to get going
[00:24:22.410]'cause you gotta have the seedbed just right.
[00:24:24.390]And again, yield wise, not great.
[00:24:26.880]So I really think these are great options.
[00:24:29.970]And I think this one is really only an option for silage,
[00:24:33.570]just FYI.
[00:24:35.760]All right, so this I wanted to show you,
[00:24:38.730]just again trying to convince you
[00:24:41.370]quality is all about timing.
[00:24:43.590]So this is sorghum sedan.
[00:24:45.720]This is probably one of the ones
[00:24:47.100]everybody's most familiar with.
[00:24:48.810]And again, if we look at early vegetative,
[00:24:51.750]so when I would want to be grazing it,
[00:24:53.700]in this timeframe, we're very, very high energy.
[00:24:57.060]We're, again, not quite corn silage.
[00:24:59.970]Maybe drought-stress corn silage,
[00:25:01.950]in terms of energy content,
[00:25:03.180]but great energy and really good crude proteins.
[00:25:06.660]It's just when you start getting down into this stage
[00:25:09.390]that we get into lower quality, right?
[00:25:12.330]So the idea is you can match the quality
[00:25:16.110]with the requirement of the animal.
[00:25:18.930]If I have a dry cow and I'm just trying to get her through
[00:25:22.170]until stocks, for instance,
[00:25:23.460]or I don't have access to stocks,
[00:25:25.560]then letting some of this stuff get mature
[00:25:28.200]and doing something where you can strip it,
[00:25:30.360]maybe it makes sense.
[00:25:32.370]But I just wanna point out that,
[00:25:34.290]think about staging if you're thinking about quality less.
[00:25:38.310]I think you need to think about that more
[00:25:39.960]than you need to think about species selection,
[00:25:41.730]if that makes sense.
[00:25:43.320]So for summer grazing, while it's growing,
[00:25:46.950]suggestion is that it takes about 45 days
[00:25:50.190]for something like sedan grass to get ready
[00:25:52.350]to be able to be grazed.
[00:25:53.850]You don't wanna graze until it's two foot.
[00:25:55.800]Maybe you can get to 18 inches on sedan grass,
[00:26:00.630]and that's because you do have prussic acid
[00:26:02.460]in those little plants.
[00:26:04.920]And then you want to be pretty aggressive
[00:26:07.020]about doing a rotation.
[00:26:08.280]You gotta keep up with it and you gotta keep it vegetative.
[00:26:11.520]'Cause there's two things going on there.
[00:26:12.960]One is quality and the other one is regrowth.
[00:26:15.450]If it gets mature, it will not regrow after grazing.
[00:26:19.320]So if you wanna get the most out of it,
[00:26:21.090]you're gonna want to be able to kind of keep it down there
[00:26:24.750]to where it's not getting too tall
[00:26:26.700]and too mature too quickly.
[00:26:28.710]And then we actually suggest leaving about six inches
[00:26:32.550]for it to be able to regrow from.
[00:26:34.020]I don't know if anybody's got experience grazing
[00:26:37.380]warm seasons, but one of the things that happens is
[00:26:39.930]if it gets away from you and then you graze it,
[00:26:42.300]it'll just make these little spindly tillers
[00:26:44.220]and doesn't grow very much anymore.
[00:26:45.780]So it's kind of disappointing when that happens.
[00:26:49.980]So you kinda gotta manage based off of heights, right?
[00:26:53.280]So sometimes that means quicker moves to keep up with it,
[00:26:56.880]even if you're not utilizing everything
[00:26:58.650]that you graze through.
[00:27:00.900]Okay, so let's talk about late summer planting real quick.
[00:27:03.600]I know I'm hitting you with a lot of information.
[00:27:07.110]Again, I was kind of telling you my favorites
[00:27:09.480]right now are oats and rapeseed.
[00:27:11.700]and the reason why I like rapeseed is because
[00:27:14.280]it produces this nice little tap root
[00:27:16.620]rather than a tuberous root,
[00:27:18.690]which most people think of when you think of
[00:27:20.220]purple top turnip or even a radish.
[00:27:25.230]Tap roots are great for compaction, right?
[00:27:27.720]They're also great because it puts a lot of energy
[00:27:30.840]into producing leaf.
[00:27:32.640]Which means that for grazing perspective,
[00:27:35.160]I can manage my grazing better and maintain ground cover,
[00:27:38.910]which I really like.
[00:27:40.950]If I use something like purple top turnip or a radish,
[00:27:43.980]they put a lot of energy into making those tubers,
[00:27:46.020]and if I wanna make use of it,
[00:27:48.564]I pretty much have to have them eat all the grass first
[00:27:49.680]and all the leaf off of those brassicas
[00:27:52.500]and then they'll start eating the tubers.
[00:27:55.320]By the time we're done, we have bare ground.
[00:27:58.890]With a mix of oats and rapeseed,
[00:28:01.560]I can kind of manage how much material I have left
[00:28:05.730]and make use of more of the energy
[00:28:08.820]that that brassica is producing for me.
[00:28:13.110]So after early-harvested corn silage,
[00:28:16.410]oats and brassicas can produce a lot of biomass
[00:28:20.220]and be really, really high-quality feed
[00:28:22.170]because the oats don't actually try to mature
[00:28:25.290]if you plant them late enough,
[00:28:26.610]if you plant them in August.
[00:28:28.320]If you plant them in July,
[00:28:29.940]they will do nothing but try to go to seed.
[00:28:31.980]And they are very low quality.
[00:28:33.210]So timing matters, right?
[00:28:36.720]But here's the other end of timing matters.
[00:28:39.030]The other end of timing matters is if I plant oats too late,
[00:28:42.360]I get nothing.
[00:28:43.410]So this was oats planted September 3rd.
[00:28:45.840]I got about a ton and a quarter or so off of it.
[00:28:52.053]Then I planted on the same field two weeks later
[00:28:54.450]and got 500 pounds an acre.
[00:28:55.860]That looks like that, right?
[00:28:57.480]Not very much.
[00:28:59.760]So I'm better off at this point, middle of September,
[00:29:02.970]to go to the winter-hardy species like cereal rye
[00:29:06.390]rather than planting oats.
[00:29:09.000]But if I do get it planted early enough,
[00:29:13.140]the quality is amazing.
[00:29:15.990]So this is better than corn silage.
[00:29:19.590]It's high-quality, in terms of protein.
[00:29:21.900]I call it corn silage and alfalfa in a river.
[00:29:25.560]It's really good stuff.
[00:29:27.270]In early November, that's when we usually have been putting
[00:29:29.550]our calves out, after they're weaned.
[00:29:32.310]And then it melts down and looks horrible.
[00:29:35.430]And the first year I did this,
[00:29:37.530]the crew kept calling me and saying,
[00:29:39.795]"There's nothing out here for them to eat,
[00:29:40.770]we need need to pull them."
[00:29:42.000]And I'd be like, "No way, I was just out there
[00:29:44.280]like two days ago, there was plenty."
[00:29:46.560]Because neither of those, the oats or the brassicas,
[00:29:51.180]have any kind of structural material in them
[00:29:54.210]'cause they didn't try to mature.
[00:29:56.040]So as soon as they get frost killed,
[00:29:58.260]they melt down and they look like there's nothing there.
[00:30:00.210]You have to actually go out there and kind of fluff it up
[00:30:02.100]to see that there's anything there.
[00:30:03.990]That's a good thing, from a quality perspective,
[00:30:06.210]'cause that means most of the carbohydrates are
[00:30:08.580]very readily available to the animal.
[00:30:11.070]So quality-wise, still good, even when it's brown and ugly.
[00:30:15.750]It does lose a little bit of energy.
[00:30:18.390]Now it's, hmm, more like drought-stress corn silage
[00:30:21.960]and alfalfa.
[00:30:23.211]So still really great stuff.
[00:30:25.890]And we can get...
[00:30:27.090]On average, I typically get between 1.3
[00:30:30.480]and two pound a day gain.
[00:30:32.670]1.3 is in a bad year, where it's not cold,
[00:30:36.630]actually cold has not been our major problem.
[00:30:39.090]It's precipitation. (laughs)
[00:30:40.800]If we have a little bit warmer weather
[00:30:42.811]and a bunch of precipitation events,
[00:30:43.650]we don't get as good of gains.
[00:30:45.300]This was actually a five-year study where we planted oats
[00:30:49.800]onto corn silage.
[00:30:51.720]And these calves were getting ready to be pulled.
[00:30:53.700]But I wanted to show you one thing,
[00:30:55.350]and that is down here.
[00:30:56.820]Each year we looked at the harvest efficiency.
[00:30:59.040]That just means how much grazing did we get
[00:31:01.050]relative to the amount of biomass that was out there?
[00:31:03.630]Everybody likes to think that we were gonna get 50%.
[00:31:07.200]Some years we got 40%, some years we got 13%.
[00:31:11.640]It depended on the weather
[00:31:13.110]and how much they trampled in, right?
[00:31:17.070]So on average we were about 30%.
[00:31:20.100]And that made me kind of disappointed,
[00:31:21.870]'cause I was like, "Man, there's a lot of forage
[00:31:24.030]that disappeared that didn't go into the animal."
[00:31:26.790]It went into the soil, which can be a positive, right?
[00:31:29.340]But I started wondering how much can we get
[00:31:33.240]if we just stripped or done something like that?
[00:31:36.180]And out at USMARC, they were giving them about
[00:31:38.831]a week's worth at a time and we were giving them
[00:31:41.280]about 70 to 90 days worth at a time, right?
[00:31:44.700]Make it easy, set them out there,
[00:31:47.100]let them go until it's done.
[00:31:49.200]The difference was they were getting
[00:31:51.000]about double the amount of grazing we were.
[00:31:53.400]And so same amount of biomass and double the grazing.
[00:31:56.010]So I started going, "Well is that worth it?"
[00:31:57.990]So we actually did the head-to-head comparison
[00:32:01.260]out on one of the fields that the canoes had.
[00:32:04.800]We planted oats and rapeseed.
[00:32:06.990]And we basically continuous grazed,
[00:32:09.090]or provided them access to the whole field for 70 days.
[00:32:12.810]Or we stripped grazed it, moving twice a week.
[00:32:16.140]We almost doubled the amount of grazing
[00:32:19.260]that we got off of that field.
[00:32:21.210]It did reduce their ability to select a little bit.
[00:32:23.850]So individual annual performance decreased just a teench.
[00:32:27.780]But total gain per acre increased significantly, right?
[00:32:32.190]Basically, if I'm looking at the economics
[00:32:34.290]and how much I can get out of it,
[00:32:36.210]stripping it made a lot of sense.
[00:32:39.060]One of the things that we are wanting to do now is
[00:32:41.400]look at ways to reduce the labor associated
[00:32:43.620]with strip grazing,
[00:32:44.520]because we all know labor is always a challenge, right?
[00:32:48.510]So one of my colleagues is a technology guru.
[00:32:51.960]I am not.
[00:32:53.460]But we're actually gonna try using virtual fencing
[00:32:56.160]to see if we can do it, then strip graze it,
[00:32:58.590]which would kind of be fun.
[00:33:01.260]But this is kind of what it looked like.
[00:33:03.060]This is that field early in the season
[00:33:06.420]where we were stripping it.
[00:33:07.590]This stuff was planted the 1st of August,
[00:33:10.380]and so it did have a head on it,
[00:33:12.210]but still super high quality.
[00:33:13.530]You saw they got one and a half, two pound a day gain.
[00:33:17.580]And this is what it looked like in February.
[00:33:20.850]There's a lot of snow there.
[00:33:22.110]Couple things that we noticed.
[00:33:23.280]One is that where we were strip grazing,
[00:33:25.290]the snow caught into the oats, right?
[00:33:27.930]The oats that was standing, that hadn't been knocked down,
[00:33:31.020]of course, held the snow.
[00:33:32.760]Good from a soil moisture perspective.
[00:33:35.430]Made me a little bit nervous.
[00:33:38.250]And this was a foot and a half of snow out there.
[00:33:43.500]And we ended up one day in about this time,
[00:33:47.250]probably it was this time,
[00:33:50.100]it was really, really, really cold.
[00:33:52.230]And we thought, man,
[00:33:54.120]I think we need to provide them something.
[00:33:55.560]So we decided to supplement all the calves sweet bran.
[00:34:00.240]And the calves who were out on the continuous graze went
[00:34:03.600]straight to the sweet bran.
[00:34:05.160]The calves who were on strip grazing had gotten a new strip,
[00:34:11.010]they didn't care about the sweet bran.
[00:34:13.110]They were going to town finding all the rapeseed
[00:34:15.420]that was in there, in that snow.
[00:34:18.420]So that was actually a really cool moment for me
[00:34:21.450]because it made me realize that as long as
[00:34:24.360]we don't have something that's crusted over,
[00:34:26.250]they can graze through quite a bit of snow.
[00:34:28.560]And as you saw, they gained well.
[00:34:31.710]So last thing here is just,
[00:34:33.570]I mean, you can take that to the extreme.
[00:34:35.910]This was out at USMARC,
[00:34:37.377]and they had some oats and brassicas that was planted
[00:34:42.150]after corn silage.
[00:34:44.160]And they took a pivot fence and they moved every day
[00:34:47.850]and they limit fed these cows, basically, on this.
[00:34:51.090]So they were giving about an eighth of an acre
[00:34:54.912]to about 400 cows.
[00:34:56.280]I was like, "Holy smokes."
[00:34:58.200]I went out there and was looking at it and they're like,
[00:34:59.917]"How did you determine how much to give them?"
[00:35:01.380]They're like, "Well, we just kept moving it
[00:35:03.330]and playing around with how much until they cleaned up
[00:35:05.730]about what the way we wanted."
[00:35:07.320]And so then of course, the nutritionist came in
[00:35:09.150]and did math, back-of-the-napkin math
[00:35:12.540]and I was like, "Wow, they actually about hit it
[00:35:15.030]straight on target for maintaining a dry cow."
[00:35:17.640]I was pretty impressed.
[00:35:19.320]But look, the AUMs they got were basically four times
[00:35:22.890]what we would normally be getting.
[00:35:25.110]So this is the extreme example of harvest efficiency.
[00:35:29.250]And you still had decent cover, which I was surprised by.
[00:35:33.330]Okay, so I will tell you there's another reason
[00:35:36.030]why I like oats and rapeseed,
[00:35:37.740]beyond the fact that when we planted rapeseed,
[00:35:40.920]we got a boost in gain.
[00:35:42.330]And for any cattle people in here,
[00:35:44.340]you're like, "That's not very much difference.
[00:35:46.380]How'd you pick that up?"
[00:35:47.610]It's called having a lot of replication
[00:35:50.250]and genetics that work similar. (laughs)
[00:35:53.820]But we could get a little bit of boost in performance
[00:35:56.610]on the calves.
[00:35:58.075]But the coolest thing was that we compared marbling.
[00:36:00.990]So we finished those calves out after these trials.
[00:36:06.030]And the thing was that where we had the rapeseed in the mix,
[00:36:10.650]they marbled as well as calves who had been put
[00:36:14.460]onto a corn silage and corn-based grower ration.
[00:36:19.200]And they marbled better than those who were put on the oats,
[00:36:22.980]which was a little bit surprising to me.
[00:36:24.600]I did not think during the back-grounding period,
[00:36:26.850]'cause they only grazed for about 90 days,
[00:36:29.490]that it would matter, but it did apparently.
[00:36:31.710]And the rapeseed was kind of a little bit magical.
[00:36:35.160]So that was something that was kind of cool.
[00:36:40.290]All right, so if you guys are interested,
[00:36:43.530]we do have a planting guide which kind of outlines timing,
[00:36:47.850]seeding rates, seeding depths, and even some suggestions
[00:36:52.200]in terms of what to plant in terms of mixes.
[00:36:55.860]So it's on this go.unl.edu plant guide.
[00:37:00.900]And of course, Darren and I are here,
[00:37:03.450]so if you have questions that are specific
[00:37:05.580]to your operation, we'd be happy to answer them.
[00:37:08.940]And I think we have a few minutes
[00:37:11.100]so we can answer questions in front of the group as well.
[00:37:14.820]How'd you keep them calves from bloating,
[00:37:16.500]feeding them rape?
[00:37:19.020]Oh, okay.
[00:37:19.853]So the question was how did I keep the calves
[00:37:22.740]from bloating when they were grazing rape?
[00:37:26.550]That's a great question and that is,
[00:37:28.200]I never graze just straight rape.
[00:37:30.330]So I've always put it in a mix with oats,
[00:37:32.310]and we've never had a problem with bloat.
[00:37:35.115]In fact, it takes them a little bit to figure out
[00:37:38.270]that they like the rapeseed.
[00:37:40.890]So early in the grazing season, they don't select for it
[00:37:43.620]and then they start selecting for it
[00:37:45.750]later in the grazing season.
[00:37:47.670]But we've never had much of...
[00:37:49.470]Never had any issue with bloat, in fact, with that mix.
[00:37:52.770]And I think it's because we have enough fiber in the oats,
[00:37:56.460]so it's working for us.
[00:37:59.820]So Randy's question was,
[00:38:01.020]do I have to do anything special before we turn them out?
[00:38:02.970]And the answer was no, we didn't do anything.
[00:38:06.810]I mean, honestly, I would be much more nervous
[00:38:11.340]if I had a bunch of a legume in there
[00:38:13.170]than a brassica, for bloat.
[00:38:15.360]Have you done the GPS collars yet?
[00:38:17.850]Or is that what's coming?
[00:38:19.470]That's a virtual grazing?
[00:38:21.090]Yep, that's what's coming.
[00:38:22.680]We haven't done it yet.
[00:38:24.420]Well, they have some out at GSL right now
[00:38:27.480]that they've been using on range land.
[00:38:29.760]We haven't done it in these confined systems yet,
[00:38:34.200]more on cropland where you're gonna have smaller areas.
[00:38:37.710]So that's actually what we're trying to get going this year
[00:38:41.370]with trying to do rotational grazing on cropland
[00:38:44.550]as well as strip grazing.
[00:38:45.810]So we'll see.
[00:38:47.610]I have high hopes, anyway. (laughs)
[00:38:51.090]There is some data from other states and it looks promising.

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2023 Eastern Nebraska Soil Health Conference - Mary Drewnoski

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