Midwest Forage Association Meeting & Millet Home Run

[Stocker Steve]

I attended their winter meeting for the first time. Organized by the university and sponsored by 19 seed companies. Alot of senior dairy producers attended, and they had the choice of two flavors of milk and two flavors of ice cream at lunch!!! More than a few carb loaded at lunch and then went home for a nap.

Main sales pitch was planting low lignin alfalfa and making baleage on time. Must not be much money in clover seed. There was one beef annual "cover crop" talk that used alot of SD data. Their home run experiment was double cropping an oats mix for baleage in the spring, followed by a inter seeded German millet mix that they stockpiled for winter grazing. I have usually used SS based mixes but the grazing harvest percentage on mature SS is low, around 20% of DM, and conventional SS leaves you a 10 to 14' stalk to deal with. I have not paid up for the BMR varieties.

Any comments on growing and stockpiling German millet? Looked like a fraction of the cost of hay.

 

[Bigfoot]

Self educating, I just watched a video from Nobel society........It didn't look super productive. If they eat it all, and what your raising now is only seeing 20% utilization, then it might be a more viable option. looks exactly like foxtail to me, and my cows usually won't eat it, except for when its very young.

 

[pdfangus]

I am not a researcher and have no data.....
but german millet is a summer crop and once it is frosted a lot of the nutrients are going to be lost.
I would use the millet as summer grazing and stockpile the cool season grasses for fall and or winter grazing...
the livestock will get a lot more benefit from the green millet than from the dead millet.

 

[Stocker Steve]

Good suggestion pd. Sequence matters. We do feed some wet bales on pasture in September to take pressure off declining cool season production, and to cope with poor fall hay drying conditions. Could also go after warm season cover crop then.

We usually plant alot of meadow fescue or orchard grass in pasture mixes, and they both stockpile OK.

 

[Banjo]

Good suggestion pd. Sequence matters. We do feed some wet bales on pasture in September to take pressure off declining cool season production, and to cope with poor fall hay drying conditions. Could also go after warm season cover crop then.

We usually plant alot of meadow fescue or orchard grass in pasture mixes, and they both stockpile OK.

What is the difference between meadow fescue and Ky31 fescue? Just curious.

 

[Stocker Steve]

Ky31 is an old tall fescue variety selected for high DM production.

Meadow fescue family has lower DM production than tall fescues, but will produce more pounds of beef per acre than tall fescues, because it is much more palatable.