forage choice

[SJB]

keeping in mind i'm in upper east tennessee, what would your ideal pasture mix of perennial and warm and cold season annual forage be?

my priorities are, in order:

1. growing the healthiest and best tasting beef (i ain't tried everything, but so far i've liked grass fed and grain finished the best)
2. highest yield
3. lowest time and money input

go ahead, i want to hear all your "if i had it to do over again, i'da planted xyz" advice, or "man, i'm glad i planted xyz" testimonials.

from my other thread on breeds, i'm gathering that as long as i stick to a decent beef breed, there won't be much difference in taste, and in fact what they eat may have more to do with it than pedigree. so if you were raising a beef to serve your family for Christmas dinner, what would you feed the beef, if you had a blank slate.

 

[dun]

With the small acreage, if there is already fescue growing I would go with KY31, Orchard Grass, and red or white clover. If there isn't any grass growing now I would go with one of the friendly endophyte fescyes and the same mix of OG and clovers.

 

[A.J.]

With the small acreage, if there is already fescue growing I would go with KY31, Orchard Grass, and red or white clover. If there isn't any grass growing now I would go with one of the friendly endophyte fescyes and the same mix of OG and clovers.

+1. All those Dun mentioned are the most prevelant in our area, and your cattle would do well on them.

 

[AllForage]

Max Q fescue for your area

 

[dun]

Max Q fescue for your area

If there isn;t fescue already that would be my choice for the freindly/novel endophyte. I have no exeperience with the friendly endophyte varaties but that seems the most common one around here. If there is already KY31 (high endophyte) growing it will eventually take over from the Max Q. Or so I have been told by people that spent a lot of money planting it.

 

[SJB]

I'm going to take a good look around again, but I'm certain I saw at least some fescue. And if so I'd bet it's ky31.

Looks like ky31 can be successfully eradicated, although it's tedious. But in my situation it might actually be more practical than some.

http://www.cattletoday.com/archive/2009 ... 1908.shtml

 

[dun]

Interesting but I don;t buy the 3/4 pound a day loss. If the endophyte is diluted with a good mixture of clover or lespedeza you can mitigate the problems of endophyte. It also takes cows that are tolerant of the endophyte which does take some time. He is also assuming that the seed bank of the infected stuff will be gone in a couple of years. My experience is that it stays around a lot longer then that. We have one field of WSG that is really only productive a couple of months a year. It was planted to sudan/sudex for a number of years and baled. Then we had 2 years of winter wheat which was also baled. The field was burned down twice then no tilled to WSG which didn;t take. Burned it down again and ni tilled WSG again which took off like gang busters. WSG isn;t a sod forming grass it more of a bunch/clump type of grass. I noticed volunteer clover started showing after the second planting of WSG. The next year a small amount of fescue showed up. Now ten years later it's a fescue clover field with WSG in it. Our WWs run in the high 6s to mid 7s most years, that is straight bred Red Angus with a few Red Angus Gelbvieh or Simmenthal or Herefordcrosses in the momma cows. They are all usually bred to a Red Angus bull unless I want to try something different with a few of the cross bred cows. Those aren;t great WWs but they sure are above the average for the folks with fescue and no legumes.
When we first moved here I wanted to eliminate all of the fescue, that was before the friendly endophyte stuff was available. We just learned to live with it and dilute it's affect. We bale our own hay, these fields were orginally established with fescue around 100 years ago. There is a lab that will test your fescue for endophyte but the gathering of the stuff to test is tedious and the last I checked ran 35 bucks per sample.
I guess I'm just too old to be trying to fix something that isn;t really broken.

 

[SJB]

That makes perfect sense, and is exactly what some of the other posters have said on this thread. As you say, I'm dead certain there's been fescue in this pasture a LONG time if it's there. Heck, people around here use ky31 in their yards.

So just so I understand, fescue is good forage as long as I've got a good mix of legumes to balance out (counter act?) the endophyte issue. There is definitely good clover there, both red and white.

Do any of you broadcast or no-till drill any specific warm or cold season annuals?

 

[dun]

That makes perfect sense, and is exactly what some of the other posters have said on this thread. As you say, I'm dead certain there's been fescue in this pasture a LONG time if it's there. Heck, people around here use ky31 in their yards.

So just so I understand, fescue is good forage as long as I've got a good mix of legumes to balance out (counter act?) the endophyte issue. There is definitely good clover there, both red and white.

Do any of you broadcast or no-till drill any specific warm or cold season annuals?

I don;t think you can ever completely eliminate the effects of KY31, but having it be around 50% or so of the forage seems to work well for us. Some pastures are probably closer to 75% KY31 and we haven;t had any identifiable issues with it. Our hay fields are more like 95% KY31 and we feed hay during the coldest parts of the winter and I haven;t seen the affexts like losing their switch, hoofs falling off, etc. Our girls typically lose around 100 lbs from calving in the spring to weaning in the fall. They normally gain that all back in a month or so.
I do know that some cattle are really susceptible to the endophyte. A lady I knew years ago moved her herd from Colorado to SE Missouri and had cows dying from eating the fescue hay she bought. She put them on bermuda hay and the problems went away. But those cows had never eaten a bite of fescue before moving to MO. She ended up selllng out and buying local produced cattle and the problem didn;t reappear with the new cows. 3way had some real serious issues with a bull a couple of years ago that he sent to MO. The ladys cows were the most serious issues I've heard about with fescue. A cow coming here from up north typically take 2 years to adapt to it, if they ever do.
Keep your clover component up and you should be ok. We just graze stockpiled fescue and don;t plant any winter annuals except for the deer (turnips, rape). I've tried no tilling winter annuals into the fescue pastures and the fescue shokes them out.
Check you PMs

 

[Red Bull Breeder]

A good mineral with CTC also helps with the fescue.

 

[hillbilly beef man]

Embrace KY fescue instead of fighting it and your life will be much easier. Frost seed red or white clover every three years into the fescue and enjoy the results. Endophyte fescue is too prevelant in our area to avoid it for very long. Most of the problems with endophyte fescue are worse in extreme heat, which we are blessed to rarely have.

 

[SJB]

i really appreciate everybody that took the time to try and help me.

 

[dun]

i really appreciate everybody that took the time to try and help me.

That's what these forums are for, shareing knowledge and experiences.

 

[SJB]

Anybody ever use durana white clover? I planted it in deer plots, and have some stands that are still healthy after 8 years. It's more expensive than ladino, but it lasts longer I think.

 

[tnwalkingred]

I frost seeded some durana clover into some fescue pasture last year and have had great results! I'll be frost seeding it in all my pastures this winter. It takes well in my climate and grows really thick. My cattle have never looked better.

KW

 

[Kell-inKY]

something different about this spring, seems the white clover in our area is on steroids. Glad I only sprayed 2,4-d in spots because the clover is HUGE! Cows are going nuts over it. This is my 3rd spring on this farm and have never planted one single seed of clover, but it is so thick it's choking out some of my problem weeds in spots, I've never seen it this tall? Due to overly wet spring? I don't know what's going on but I am thankful, and so are the cows.

 

[dun]

something different about this spring, seems the white clover in our area is on steroids. Glad I only sprayed 2,4-d in spots because the clover is HUGE! Cows are going nuts over it. This is my 3rd spring on this farm and have never planted one single seed of clover, but it is so thick it's choking out some of my problem weeds in spots, I've never seen it this tall? Due to overly wet spring? I don't know what's going on but I am thankful, and so are the cows.

You will probably find that every spring things a somehat different. I've decided that normal is you never see the same conditons twice. In 15 years on this farm it's always different, if not the spring, then it's th summer or the fall or winter. Never a dull moment

 

[pappy6]

SJB...attempted to post reply and it didn't go thru...try again...agree with all said...try adding some lespedeza and crabgrass when you can and it will take up the summer slack from fescue/clover...good luck