Kentucky 32 Tall Fescue

[coachg]

Anyone have pasture planted with Ky 32 ? We may have to replant some pasture due to the drought. Thanks !

 

[dun]

It is an endophye free type of fescue. Calims to have all of tha advantages of endophyte infected fescue with none of the drawbacks. Claims to be as persistent and drought tolerant as KY31. Persoanlly I would just stick with one of the friendly endophyte varities that have been proven. Or just stick with KY31 and learn to deal with it.

 

[Lucky_P]

personal experience with endophyte-free TF was... great stand, grew great that first year... first hint of drought or overgrazing... it was gone.

 

[dun]

personal experience with endophyte-free TF was... great stand, grew great that first year... first hint of drought or overgrazing... it was gone.

That's the endophyte free, novel endophyte is different. I would hope that now that they know about the pitfalls of the free stuff that htey can figure out better methods. Although I don;t see much advantage to a endophyte free vs novel endophyte unless it has some real sgnificant advantages.

 

[TN Cattle Man]

We sell a lot of seed at our store... I was talking to the seed rep about the KY-32 (we get a lot of requests for it) and he indicated that unlike traditional 31, the 32 takes a lot of maintenance and upkeep to get a yearly crop. Around us, there are KY-31 fields that are probably 30+ years old and still producing grass... the stuff is very hearty. What we are hearing about the 32 is quite different... as mentioned above, the first sign of any difficulties and you could be loosing your grass.

 

[Lucky_P]

Right, dun.
Endophyte free... mighty risky. Novel/'friendly' endophyte... a much better choice.
I still don't know that I could recommend anyone kill out a good stand of KY-31 to replant to novel endophyte TF - but I did it, and everything here is now Max-Q.
Understand that there's a new novel endophyte TF (named after our friend Dr. Gary Lacefield) from breeding at UofKY, that should be on the market next year. Some paddocks here need thickening up a bit, so I may try drilling some of that into those thin stands next fall, if I can get seed.

 

[dun]

Right, dun.
Endophyte free... mighty risky. Novel/'friendly' endophyte... a much better choice.
I still don't know that I could recommend anyone kill out a good stand of KY-31 to replant to novel endophyte TF - but I did it, and everything here is now Max-Q.
Understand that there's a new novel endophyte TF (named after our friend Dr. Gary Lacefield) from breeding at UofKY, that should be on the market next year. Some paddocks here need thickening up a bit, so I may try drilling some of that into those thin stands next fall, if I can get seed.

When we first moved to MOI hated KY31. Was all set to kill it all and put in free, then we had a short drought and the KY31 all came back pretty well. A couple of years later after the novel stuff had gotten pretty well accepted, along came another drought. A neighbor had put in about 50 acres of (I think MaxQ), the noel stuff came back somewhat, his KY31 that he hadn;t been able to afford to replace came back pretty much like before. That pretty well decided me to stick with KY31 and dilute it with clover. This farm was orgianlly cleared around 100 years ago. Don;t know when the KY31 was put it but it had to have been whenever it first became available. When I reseed an area or seed a new cleared area we use seed that came from this farm. Never have bought any outside seed. We concentrated on cow genetics that have prven to work on this farm with out fescue and it seems to have worked out well for us. KY31 does take some managment what with the clover and rotational grazing but it's been worth while for us.

 

[Ebenezer]

The right genetics and diluted KY31 is the only way to go. KY32 is like an annual if it gets dry. Friendly endophytes are still being trialed to find the best one. I talked with the breeder and he says that there are better but just have not been used yet. That is an expensive deal beyond today's cattle prices.

 

[Lucky_P]

Agree.
If I had it to do over again, I would not have killed out the KY-31 I had.
About half the pasture here was corn/soybean ground that i converted back to grass - sowing it to E-, and later, novel-endophyte + orchardgrass/clover was probably the way to go, but killing off the established KY-31 on upland ground, rather than just keeping clovers/lespedeza in the mix to dilute it, was a mistake.