Mark Kennedy, State Grassland Conservationist, spoke at the Southwest Missouri Spring Forage Conference to a crowded room of livestock producers Tuesday, Feb. 26. His topic, “10 Tips for Grazing 365 Days,” was a popular one, with fertilizer prices skyrocketing and hay just as costly.
But, he warned the listeners, “If you’re expecting a magic pill or silver bullet today, you’re in the wrong room.”
He noted that his ten tips were nothing new, likely heard before, and likely would not be able to be used by every single producer out there. “But utilizing a combination of these ideas can help get you to that 365-day grazing rate,” Kennedy added.
“It is possible, barring ice, that is. When stuff gets covered with an inch or more of ice it is hard not to feed hay,” he noted.
The goal of profitable grazing management is to meet the nutritional needs of livestock from standing pasture as many days as possible, Kennedy began.
“It’s important to harvest forage from pastures with animals and as efficiently as possible,” he said.
1. Proper Stocking Rate
Square one is establishing the appropriate stocking rate for your pastures. Stocking rate, Kennedy explained, is the number of animals or animal live weight on a pasture. It is important for stocking rate to be near the carrying capacity, also. Carrying capacity is how many animals can be on your land and have enough forage to meet livestock needs and not do harm to the pasture.
2. Efficient Utilization of Forage Produced
Utilization of forage can determine carrying capacity as well. “Slow continuous grazing will yield about 30 to 35 percent utilization efficiency, whereas management-intensive grazing with paddocks can increase that to 60 to 65 percent,” Kennedy said.
Forages can be harvested two ways, either by mechanical means or by livestock. Mechanical harvest is 70 percent efficient, but there is a cost involved. “The longer an animal is in a pasture, the lower that utilization efficiency becomes,” Kennedy explained. “So the first goal is to get a grazing period to less than five days in one pasture.” This would increase utilization up to 50 percent. The quicker animals harvest forage in a pasture, the higher the utilization will be.
3. Use Legumes
“People always ask me, ‘what should I plant in my new pastures?’ and I say to start with fences and water lines. After that, I say use legumes, to bridge that seasonal gap in forage supply with grasses.”
Kennedy suggested to use red and white clover or an annual lespedeza to add production in the summer. “You’ll need a rotational grazing system to maintain mixtures like that,” he stressed. Still, he added, “Highly diverse pastures is the key to maintaining a long growing season.”
4. Add Warm Season Grasses
There are many native and introduced warm season grasses that work well in Missouri’s pastures. “Warm season grasses offer good summer production and they can help manage the endophyte problem,” he noted. They help manage spring growth of forage in cool seasons, and they are more efficient utilizers of water and Nitrogen than cool season grasses. Available crude protein numbers range from 14 to 16 percent, making them a viable forage as well.
5. Stockpile Tall Fescue
They say successful businesses always have an unfair advantage. Kennedy proposed that tall fescue is Missouri cattle producer’s unfair advantage. “Fescue is our cheapest livestock feed in winter,” he said. Fall regrowth accumulates high concentrations of carbohydrates, and the leaves’ waxy coating creates resistance to weathering. Also, in tall fescue, the levels of toxins are lower in the fall.
To compare stockpiled fescue to hay, it proves a profitable option. Tall fescue will start in October with crude protein levels at 18 to 22 percent, and bottom out at 10 percent. Hay averages 10 percent all winter. Hay’s total digestible nutrients (TDN) is around 60 percent, whereas stockpiled fescue starts around 70 percent and levels off at 60 percent.
To stockpile fescue, start out with a fescue pasture eaten down to about 3 to 6 in. in mid- to late August. Apply 40 to 60 lbs. Nitrogen. (Kennedy noted that at $70 per ton for hay, this is a cheaper method.) Defer grazing on this pasture until growth stops (late Nov. early Dec.) or until needed.
When feeding stockpiled fescue, utilizing strip grazing can be most effective. “Allocate in one to three day feed supplies by strip grazing. This will improve utilization.”
Kennedy said this will stretch the forage supply, offering 40 percent more grazing days per acre.
6. Use Warm Season Annuals
Sudan, corn, millet, crabgrass are all recommendations for warm season annuals. Crabgrass is Kennedy’s pick, calling it the highest quality warm season grass out there. Crabgrass offers a medium yield potential, and good persistence when reseeding. When using sudan, corn and millet beware prussic acid poisoning at some stages. (Like johnson grass, they can be toxic during young, tender growth.)
7. Use Winter Annuals during short seasonal gaps
Brassicas: turnips, rape, kale, swedes, can offer excellent quality late fall, early winter forage, and can produce up to 3 tons per acre by Dec. 1 if planted by late August. But these must be grazed off by Jan. 1. These do well when planted with small grain winter annuals such as wheat or rye.
Another winter annual, annual ryegrass, offers a high quality forage of 20 to 22 percent crude protein, and it is capable of producing 3000 to 5000 lbs. of forage within 90 days of planting.
8. Graze Crop Residuals
Not as common in southwest Missouri, Kennedy said that grazing in crop fields can lengthen pasture time.
9. Graze dormant alfalfa and hayfields
While hayfields will need a 45 day resting period prior to frost, utilizing standing dormant forage can bee effective. Studies have shown that grazing alfalfa hayfields reduced the weevil population. Grazing should not occur before the killing frost, Kennedy said.
10. Graze dormant warm season grasses
“Stockpiled bermuda grass has protein levels above 10 percent, if grazed by the end of December,” Kennedy noted. Missouri data has shown that crude protein levels of dormant native warm season grasses will be around 7 to 9 percent with TDN levels at 55 to 60 percent. Some types of supplement may be needed in this situation, he added it’s possible to run cows concurrently on two pastures, in a situation where they will have to eat both, and let them supplement each other. Kennedy said grazing is a more efficient use of the native warm season grasses than burning them off.
“It all goes back to utilization,” he said.
