bermuda

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Beefy

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getting ready to sprig some bermuda. think i'm gonna go wtih coastal. any better suggestions? will be for hay purposes.
 
Beefy,

Any particluar reason that your going with a sprig variety? The reason that I ask is that LSU just did a recent study and found that a couple of "seed" variety types of bermuda produced as much as the "sprigged" types. Having said that, most people around here have either jiggs or alicia.
 
not really, i think we'll have better luck with sprigged anything than seeds b/c the land is so sandy and b/c it is dry as nuts here.
we have some alicia and although it grows well, it is slow as christmas to green up. its still brown and the common bermuda and bahia has been green for a long time. plus the cows seem to prefer other grasses over it. ive only heard good things about coastal for years. common and coastal seem to be the old standbys. i'm not impressed with Tift85. having seen test plots where the alicia took it over and it had dead spots all throughout it.
 
I have read some good things about midland 99. You might want to consider it for sprigging.
 
Coastal bermuda was develped in Georgia at the Tifton Experiement Station. Tifton 85 was also develped there by the same gentlemen - Dr. Glen Burton. I heard Dr. Burton speak at a field day in Texas. He said "I fell Tifton 85 is better than Coastal and I should know since I bred both of them". T-85 is better for grazing purposes as it is higher in digestibility. It appears to have better drought tolerance here in East Texas than Coastal. The only thing seeded varieties have to offer is they are a little easier to plant.
 
BC":1fc99afb said:
Coastal bermuda was develped in Georgia at the Tifton Experiement Station. Tifton 85 was also develped there by the same gentlemen - Dr. Glen Burton. I heard Dr. Burton speak at a field day in Texas. He said "I fell Tifton 85 is better than Coastal and I should know since I bred both of them". T-85 is better for grazing purposes as it is higher in digestibility. It appears to have better drought tolerance here in East Texas than Coastal. The only thing seeded varieties have to offer is they are a little easier to plant.
I'd say that too since T85 is 3-4 times the money.
 
i'm not planting tift 85. granted it looks yummy and the cows like it and all but i cant handle the big dead spots in it. and that was just in a semipampered test plot a retired professor has here. so i know it couldnt handle my neglect.
 
All of my research on coastal v.s. Tifton 85 is that the Tifton is not cost effective for the beef producer. It's just too expensive to plant. If you were a hay producer and were selling dairy quality or horse quality hay, ok. Otherwise stick with coastal
 
I just got my place sprigged with Tifton85 about a month ago and the coastal spots I had before grew back so fast that it overtook the Tifton85 sprigs. However, you can see the Tifton85 is coming out strong and thick but seems slower than the coastal. It better get with the program since I spend over $6K to sprig 32 acres :shock: . That's including the soil preparation, sprigs, sprigging and fertilizer.
To add insult to injury, it hasn't rained much here in North Cental TX and the weeds+Johnson grass are starting to expand. :mad: :mad: :mad:

Andrew
 
Ever notice that whenever forage studies are conducted they always compare the latest and greatest to coastal? I have, that's why I chose coastal. It has proven itself for a lot of years. To me it was like choosing between a bull with unproven EPD acc. vs. a proven one.
 
Ten year dry forage yield in lbs per acre from the Noble Foundation at Ardmore OK:

Variety Ten Year Avg (1996 -2005)
Tifton 85 8,992
Coastal 8,550
Ozark 8,224
Midland 99 8,128
Hardie 7,999
Russell 7,972
STW 15-11 7,875
Jiggs 7,103
Tifton 44 7,055
Mildland 6,139
Quickstand 4,421

Average across all varieties 7,496
 
we planted Wrangler bermuda from seed and it has done good so far. It was an awful dry summer last year , but it made a little hay still. It really looks good this spring.
 
I like Russell for hay fields. It seems to bounce back a little faster after cutting and grows faster.
 
I'd go with whatever is making the most in your particular soils/climate ecotype. If everyone agreed there wouldn't be a gazillion different varieties of bermuda. Jiggs seems to be the most popular by far around here so that's what I'm going with. It always seems to look good where the T85 seems to need babying to keep it in good shape. A neighbor has Jiggs waist high where his hay rings were tho he never had anything but native grasses and bahia on his place-- stuff sprouted from the trampled cured hay! I tried a little T85 from tops, hand planted it and disked it in about ten minutes before a four inch rain and it still looked dead for the rest of the summer. It finally came in somewhat, but seems like everything else wants to outrun it. Everybody here says Jiggs is the way to go with planting tops, T85 is too slow from tops and often fails. Don't know about root sprigs. We plant tops to keep the $$$ down. Good luck! JR
 

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