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March
18, 2004
Spring-Seeded
Winter Cereals Can Extend the Northern Plains Grazing Season
Northern Plains beef
producers should consider using spring-seeded winter cereal pastures as
an alternative to native rangeland as a source of late-season forage,
says a North Dakota State University range scientist.
“Beef cows grazing native
rangeland pastures after mid October have negative weight performance,
and the pasture and forage costs per day for grazing native rangeland
during the fall are extremely high. Pastures of spring-seeded winter cereals
such as winter rye provide forages that extend the grazing season economically
and improve animal performance from mid November to mid December,”
says Lee Manske, a range scientist at NDSU’s Dickinson Research
Extension Center.
A decline in performance of animals grazing native rangeland begins in
midsummer, because the crude protein levels of native grass lead tillers
drop below a lactating cow’s dietary requirements in mid to late
July. However, secondary tillers can remain at or near lactating cow crude
protein requirements until late September or mid October. Defoliation
management that stimulates vegetative reproduction of secondary tillers
can minimize the late-summer decline in animal performance and extend
by two to two and one-half months the length of time that native rangeland
grasses meet beef cow dietary requirements.
Because of biological limitations of native grasses in the Northern Plains,
these species cannot be manipulated to maintain adequate crude protein
levels to meet beef cow requirements after mid October. Wildryes like
Altai and Russian, which retain aboveground crude protein levels near
cow requirements until about mid November, can be used to extend the grazing
period another month, but no perennial grass species in the Northern Plains
has nutritional quality that consistently meets beef cow dietary requirements
later than this.
Further extending the grazing period requires evaluating and finding annual-plant
pasture forages that meet beef cow dietary requirements economically from
mid November to mid December. A recent study compared two late-fall pasture
treatments: spring-seeded winter cereal and fall-grazed reserved native
range pasture.
“An interpretation of livestock feed costs that is based only on
production costs per acre indicates that at an average rent value of $8.76
per acre, fall-grazed reserved native rangeland has lower costs than spring-seeded
winter rye, which has average per-acre production costs of $42.84 for
land rent, seed costs and custom costs for labor and equipment,”
Manske says. “However, the land area required to produce adequate
forage for a 1200-pound range cow on spring-seeded winter rye was 0.54
acres, only 12.6 percent of the 4.27 acres required on reserved native
rangeland pastures during the late fall. Supplementation of 0.34 pounds
of crude protein per day to meet the nutritional requirements of the cow
grazing fall native rangeland would add 10 cents per day, or $3.26 per
period, to the expense.”
The costs to feed a 1200-pound range cow for the 32-day period of mid
November to mid December are $40.70 for native rangeland forage and supplementation
and $23.13 for spring-seeded winter rye, a 43 percent reduction in fall
pasture costs for the winter rye. Daily pasture-forage costs per cow were
72 cents on spring-seeded winter rye, compared to $1.27 on reserved native
rangeland.
“In addition to being less expensive, winter cereals also improve
animal performance. Cows that grazed native rangeland and did not receive
crude protein supplements lost an average of 1.1 pounds per day during
the fall period,” Manske says. “In contrast, cows grazing
winter rye gained an average of 1.05 pounds per day during mid November
to mid December. After 32 days of grazing, average cow weight between
animals grazing native rangeland and those grazing spring-seeded winter
rye would differ by 69 pounds.”
Spring-seeded winter cereals have a greater chance of providing sufficient
forage during late fall than traditional summer-seeded winter cereals
because in western North Dakota water deficiency conditions are likely
to occur sometime during the period from August through October. As a
result, summer-seeded winter cereals are likely to be subjected to water
stress while the seedlings are small and have limited root systems with
which to absorb water. Because of the low amount of precipitation received
from the beginning of June to the end of October in 2003, a midsummer
seeding of a winter cereal last year would not have provided forage for
fall grazing. The spring-seeded winter rye, however, provided fall forage
in 2003 at a fairly high stocking rate of 0.51 acres/AUEM.
Spring seeding winter cereals for fall forage pasture has generally been
perceived as losing a growing season for crop production. To address this
concern, an attempt to produce a summer hay crop on the same land used
to produce a forage crop for fall grazing was made with a mixed oat-winter
rye treatment. Double cropping with a spring cereal and a winter cereal
should be biologically possible during May, June, and early July, when
soil water is usually at its highest levels and water deficiency conditions
occur relatively infrequently. However, the data for the mixed oat-winter
rye treatments indicate that this double cropping has two major problems
that diminish its attractiveness as a practice for producing late fall
annual cereal pastures.
First, when the spring oats on the mixed treatment were swathed and baled
for hay, at the late milk to early dough stage, the cutting and removal
of some leaf material of the winter rye plants caused a measurable reduction
in the leaf height and herbage weight of the winter rye. The growth was
not regained during the remainder of the season.
Second, the oat plants senesced during the middle portion of the growing
season and were dry during October through December, and the dry oat stubble
restricted the availability and utilization of a substantial quantity
of winter rye forage.
“Both factors affected the amount of herbage grazing cows removed
from the mixed treatment,” Manske says. “During the 32 days
of the grazing period, an average of 1779.54 pounds per acre of herbage
was removed from the winter rye treatments, and an average of 390.25 pounds
per acre of herbage was removed from the oat-winter rye treatments. The
herbage removed from the oat-winter rye treatments was only about one-third
of that available for grazing. The 637.11 pounds per acre of available
herbage that was not grazed was primarily winter rye that was shorter
than the stiff oat stubble. About 0.70 AUM’s of forage per acre
remained ungrazed on the oat-winter rye treatments.”
A basic strategy for providing both late fall pasture and harvested hay
on the same cropland area is to spring plant a portion of a field with
winter cereal separately and to spring plant another portion of the field
with spring cereal. The spring cereal is mechanically harvested for hay
at an early stage in summer, stored nearby, and delivered as feed to cows
on the cropland acres during winter. The spring-seeded winter cereal is
grazed during the late fall. About 0.5 to 1.0 acres of winter cereal will
be needed per cow for a month of grazing. Dividing the cropland area into
four pastures permits opening successive segments with ungrazed forage
at a rate of about one pasture per week.
“Spring-seeded winter rye planted separately provides an economical
late-fall annual cereal pasture forage that meets beef cow nutritional
requirements and allows grazing dry cows to gain weight from mid November
to mid December,” Manske says.
More information on
spring-seeded winter cereal pastures is available on the Web at www.ag.ndsu.nodak.edu/dickinso/research/2003/range03t.htm
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Source: Lee
Manske, (701) 483-2076, Imanske@ndsuext.nodak.edu
Editor: Rich Mattern, (701) 231-6136, richard.mattern@ndsu.nodak.edu
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