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Let’s Talk Forages
ELDON COLE
MT. VERNON, MO.
I’d like to visit a bit about forage observations this winter. We grow forages in the warm months but there’s a lot of things you don’t observe in the summer that deserve your attention in January, February and March. By-the-way, I’m not Tim Schnakenberg, field specialist in agronomy, but I’ll bet he’d echo some, if not all, of these bullet points.
• If you’ve never attended the Novel Tall Fescue Renovation Workshop plan to do so on March 24 or 25. The 24th event is at Harrison, AR and on the 25th it is at the Southwest Center, Mt. Vernon. These are day-long events from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm. At it, you’ll hear about fescue toxicosis, how to identify it, it’s money and performance losing problems, how to establish it and topics from researchers and producers on managing it whether you convert to a novel variety or some other less toxic forage. You don’t have to convert all of your Kentucky-31 fields to see a response, just 25 to 30 percent conversion can help a bunch.
• Do you test your soil regularly? Poultry litter has been used extensively since the 1990’s but many still use a 3-1-2 ratio fertilizer. Test your soil to determine what your forage really needs. I’d almost bet the results won’t call for a 3-1-2. Just because a 3-1-2 was what dad or grandpa used doesn’t mean it’s what your pastures or hay crop need.
• Are you seeing lots of brown or tan forage in pastures and hay fields this winter? It’s broom sedge or sage grass and is a bad, invasive pasture weed when phosphorus and lime are needed. Take note as you drive down the roads how much broom sedge there is. If broom sedge is there it means you don’t have a healthy stand of desirable forage.
• Attend a management-intensive grazing school if you’ve never attended one. They are especially useful for new land owners. Seven of these three-day schools are offered this year. The one at the University’s Southwest Research Center, Mt. Vernon is May 5, 6 and 7. Call me or the Southwest Center 417-466-2148 for details.
• Have you tested any of your 2019 hay crop through a lab? There has been some cow deaths in the region and nitrates and low quality were blamed. Tests were basically inconclusive as to whether the hay was the smoking gun that caused the deaths and abortions. The limited number of hay samples did reveal some terribly poor hay. The two that I saw results on had crude protein on a dry basis of 4.8 percent and 5.4 percent. The TDN values were 48.5 percent and 49.2 percent. Perhaps more revealing, the neutral detergent fiber levels were 68.8 percent and 73.3 percent. Neutral detergent fiber (NDF) values are used to estimate dry matter intake. Thus, when you combine those three items there’s no doubt the animals couldn’t consume enough of those hays to allow them to perform adequately. Could they flat-out kill an animal or result in an abortion? That’s still debatable. ∆
ELDON COLE: Extension Livestock Specialist, University of Missouri
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