You are correct about the Sericea Lespedeza. Actually not bad feed for a while but once over mature and stemmy almost worth nothing. With the tannins you have to force them to eat it.
There are good lespedeza types out there with good seed production also but tough to keep it in grazing.
Yeah, he was just yanking my chain about the SL. Although, I
was gonna let that old 50 acre dove field be another quail habitat for us... just put 30-40 Corss over there when we needed to. If I hadn't pulled this
buying-400 - more - Corrs stunt, that SL would actually be good for that. Scott sowed it in rye, wheat, oats, and barley late fall after the last dove season. And the millet we had for the dove field came back, and is about to seed again. The oats/wheat/barley/rye/ seeded again, and might do it again later on, but I doubt it. Scott is actually thinking seriously about what
@Mark Reynolds suggested: Planting perennial peanut for a legume in the Bermuda or bahia pastures. I think we are gonna need all the pasture we can get. so we might plow up and re-do the old dove field in better pasture grass.
Mike wants to send us 8 bulls to use. He has 12 he sends to the 600 producers he has in Fla and LA, and wants us to take those 8. My last Corrs and the 54 I got from him to start with, all finished calving in May. We pulled the bulls about 3 weeks ago when Scott's brother traded me for those 4 Brahma cows, but really, I
would have left them in there til end of July. So I am putting 4 in the Kudzu place this weekend. Will leave them a month, then pull them and put them where ever we decide to keep them and the other 4. No more calves til Sept-Oct so won't really need them til Nov-Dec. Probably gonna have to keep them in that pasture by Mattie's house where I have those 12 Brahmas, and move them over to the Kudzu place. Out of my 176 Kudzu Corrs, I am selling them all except my 72 blacks, as they wean each month. I will sell then too, if Wagyu guy wants them for $2k each. Not bad for him, really..... they gonna have $1500- $1600 Brangus or black Sim calves ( at today's prices) starting in October. That's gonna leave us with 470 or so Corr mommas, and ....now I found out.... eight $10-$15k bulls!
And my 12 Brahmas. And we will have just about 680 acres total for 490+ head. I wish
now that this year, we could have just done the bermuda/Bulldog alfalfa on those 400 crop acres after they are harvested, and waited a whole year for them to get establish good,
then bought 400 cows! Of course, 400 acres of it has irrigation systems, so maybe we will luck out and not have to feed. Scott said that was no problem...he has about 500 rolls each of peanut and bermuda in his steel pole barn now, that he will usually sell near all of it this winter, but he says we can feed it if we need to. But, feeding hay, etc., kinda defeats the purpose of the Corriente-Kudzu operation we have enjoyed for so long. I feel kinda like those people that buy that cute little lion cub, then all of a sudden, they got a full grown, 400 lb lion on their hands. Or the people that buy the baby alligators, that can grow to be 600 lbs and 10 feet! Neither really thought it through when they got the cute baby!!
Sorry to rattle on.. this is kinda how I talk to myself when I am thinking about something that could be a problem. I kinda work it out on "paper". Write what I think, go then back and re-read it. and see if what I wrote is still what I think, or does it need changing. or does it seem totally ridiculous!
