Jogeephus":20tngz01 said:
I always thought corn belonged to the family Poaceae which includes all grasses. Seems disqualifying corn's use because it is a grass is rather confusing to me. Or is it that they are eating the seed? If so, do grass fed operations have to take their cows off pastures before they seed out and form seed heads? While I am asking, do black-hided cattle taste better when grass fed too or do red's do better? ;-)
Sorry, just having some fun. Good job marketing, keep up the good work. I would have never believed there would ever be different brands of water either. :lol:
They can graze corn. Have to take them off before the milk stage. I don't have a good answer other than that. Eastern Gamma grass is a close cousin to corn, with no grazing limits.
The red's are by far superior in taste when grassfed
I'll have my marketing man work on this tonight. Thanks for the idea.
Here is a good article on corn for grazing.
A Corn Plant for Grass Fed Beef E-mail
Wednesday, 31 October 2007
Research on tropical corn at the University of Illinois should interest grass fed beef finishers. The Illinois research has found that when tropical varieties of corn are grown in the Midwest, the corn plant does not normally flower or produce grain. Instead, the plant concentrates sugars such as sucrose, fructose and glucose in its stalk and leaves. "In our early trials, we are finding that these plants build up to a level of 25% or higher of sugar in their stalks," researcher John Below said. He said high-sugar, tropical corn could be considered the "Sugarcane of the Midwest."
While the University of Illinois is seeing this plant as a more efficient plant source for ethanol production, Kearney, Nebraska, irrigated pasture consultant, Bob Scriven, sees it as possibly a major breakthrough for summer finishing of grass fed cattle. "We have been looking for a corn that wouldn't flower or make grain for grazing and silage. The fact that this plant is very high in sugar is just an extra added benefit," he said. The new USDA Grass Fed label allows for the grazing of corn as long as it is done before the grain is produced by the plant.
High energy (sugar) forages are needed to create fat in both meat and milk. The Argentines have long used direct-grazed, green leaf corn for this purpose in the summer and early fall. In recent years, some Midwestern graziers have started doing this as well as the average daily gains are exceptional for heavy cattle. With a no-grain corn, Scriven said corn could be grown and left standing in the field for winter-grazing as well and still meet the USDA Grass Fed label restrictions. In the Illinois research, the corn plants grew 14 to 15 feet high, or double the height of traditional corn. "Corn, that will stand above the snow, is where we are going to get year around grass fed beef production in the upper Midwest," he said.
Another added benefit of the tropical corn plant is that it requires much less nitrogen than traditional corn. In fact, the Illinois researchers found that sugar accumulation in the stalk and leaves was actually higher at lower levels of nitrogen. In Argentina, direct-grazed corn is traditionally grown solely from the residual soil nitrogen of grazed permanent pasture and legumes. Tropical corn should lend itself particularly well to this low input, organic method of providing plant nitrogen.
