native grass

[dun]

I see people are looking to plant bermuda, fescue, orchard grass, timothy, etc., why do people not consider the native grasses for their region, at least in some of their pastures? Am I wrong in thinking they could stand up to a drought situation better and provide better nutrition because they are native?
Yes, it has to managed differently during drought than other times, but it doesn't require fertilizing and all of that other stuff.

 

[milesvb]

It's the management part. People around here would let the natives get grazed out. I have some unimproved pasture that I'm letting get reestablished in native grasses and forbes along with some old fields I'm trying to plant back to native. The neighbor shakes his head when he sees all that tall grass and thinks I'm way understocked. But as the improved pastures go dormant from drought I'll still have forage if I can arrange for stock water. This same neighbor incidentally had about ten acres of native prairie that had never seen a plow. He cut it for hay a number of years and then decided to Roundup the whole thing, plowed it under and planted an oat patch to hunt deer over! I could have cried, he didn't think anything of it.

 

[dun]

From the lack of replys can I assume that nobody has consiodered the pros and cons of native grasses so they don;t have any opinions?

dun

 

[msscamp]

Our pastures have always been native grasses. I was hoping for more responses.

 

[Saltydawg]

Well around here....New York state.....everything is dairy.

They plant corn as much as possible...90% of which is turned into silage for cows.

So you have to follow up a corn field by plowing the old stalks under and replanting with something....cause if you just let it grow up naturally you'll have a useless field for several years while you're trying to work the weeds out of it.

I don't plant corn....but I let the Amish guys down the road plant a few acres every year on my property.
In return they have a sawmill and chop up whatever logs i drag down to them for free.

So I don't reseed as much as most people around here but I usually have a few acres to reseed every year.

Orchard grass and clover is native here.

 

[Stocker Steve]

From the lack of replys can I assume that nobody has consiodered the pros and cons of native grasses so they don;t have any opinions?

Most of my grass is native. I think a different question is why not more warm season grasses:

Pro - increases summer forage

Pro - good for some types of wildlife

Con - slow and costly to establish. One guy suggusted that I put some CRP acres into warm season grasses so the goverment can subsidize the establishment cost...

Con - more management initially and different management later. Perhaps we can get some Round up ready native grass in addition to corn? ;-)

 

[Crowderfarms]

Here they are paying 100.00 an acre per year for the re-establishment of Native Grasses.I think it's great.

 

[Stocker Steve]

Here they are paying 100.00 an acre per year for the re-establishment of Native Grasses.I think it's great.

What program is this? Does corn qualify?

 

[dun]

Orchard grass and clover is native here.

Orchard grass is not native unless you're in Europe. Red clovers aren't native to the US either. The may be naturalized, but they aren't native.

dun

 

[tom4018]

Orchard grass and clover is native here.

Orchard grass is not native unless you're in Europe. Red clovers aren't native to the US either. The may be naturalized, but they aren't native.

dun

Are switch grass and bluestem considered native?

This is one topic I don't know about but would like to consider some use of native grasses.

 

[Beefy]

cows wreak havoc on wiregrass and it needs fire to reseed

 

[mnmtranching]

Switch grass and Big and Little Bluestem are native North American warm season grasses, they have a deep root system and are drought resistent., doesn't hold up well to heavy grazing. good for wildlife becouse of good cover. A little corse for livestock. Some are going to dissagree but I've tried it all.
Not as good for forage a Orchard Grass, Timothy, and Brome.

mnmt

 

[Saltydawg]

Orchard grass and clover is native here.

Orchard grass is not native unless you're in Europe. Red clovers aren't native to the US either. The may be naturalized, but they aren't native.

dun

Yea I knew originally it didn't grow here but didn't know the right word to use.

If you mow an overgrown field around here for a couple years you'll end up with lots of red clover and orchard grass. The clover shows up the first year pretty quickly....the orchard grass takes a while longer to establish itself.

edit: I think the orchard grass does good here cause it tolerates shade pretty well and most of the fields around here are small, hilly, and have tall tree lines so much of the grass is shaded for parts of the day.

 

[cowtrek]

I guess it just depends on what you want to do. Most guys here go for Jiggs or Tifton 85 bermuda. Anybody you talk to, they act like that is the only grass in the world. You ask university types and they'll try to talk you out of natives everytime (around here). Guys love the bermudas and other improved grasses because of the tonnage and protien levels, and digestibility, TDN, etc. They also love it because it looks pretty. Problem is the tons of fertilizer you have to put on it to get those yields and protien. And fertilizer ain't exactly cheap anymore.
Natives, on the other hand, save you all that fertilizer. I saw on a seed website lately that bluestem will produce it's maximum potential on 50 lb/acre of N a year. Sure beats 300+ top yields of bermuda. BUT, the protien on natives is probably half to a third what it is of fertilized improved grass. TDN, digestibility, etc are all usually lower with natives too.
Seems to me that lots of folks focus only on the numbers nowdays. It's like,"WOW! Look how much that improved grass is going to make compared to natives!" or "Man look at the protien/ TDN/ etc. levels of that grass compared to the old standby", etc. There is more to it than that. Cost of production, for one thing. If you can produce a field of native grass using clover to make your nitrogen for you during the fall and spring, you sure will have more money in your pocket than spending it all on N-P-K. Even when you factor less protien, less digestibility, etc. into the equation. Aside from the numbers, like somebody said, management is a big deal too. You can't graze natives into the ground and watch em spring back up like improved grasses. But you'd be surprised what a native mixed stand can do.
I've got 14 acres of mixed native with some dallisgrass and some bahia (I hate bahia) invading. It has never seen the plow. It has never seen a fertilizer cart either. In a wet year, I have baled as many as 85 5x6 rounds off of it. WITH NO FERTILIZER! It doesn't even have clover on it! I told the NRCS guys about it and they were just floored! I wish I had the other 65 acres of the place just like it, but they were in cotton for the last 100 years. I also told them how my Great-Grandad used to bale hay on the same field 100 years ago and it's never been fertilized to my knowledge. He sold hay to the Army in WW I for $1 a bale and got rich.
So, depending on what you want to do, everything has it's place. If you want 8 ton bermuda with 25% protien, etc. you're gonna pay the fertilizer guy to get it. But if you're selling enough hay, feeding enough stockers or whatever to pencil out, great! If you can live with 6 ton bluestem with 8% protien etc. and can run a little "understocked" (by neighbor's thinking, anyway) you can sure get by a lot cheaper with natives. Personally, I plan to use a little of both. Diversity is the best idea. But with costs like they are for NPK, like grandpa used to say, "it's not what you make but what you save". Course he also said, "you gotta spend money to make money" too. Guess a bit of both is good. Good luck! JR

 

[LonghornRanch]

cowtrek, is correct. The way land keeps getting cut up, people are trying to make smaller pieces of land more productive. 4000 acres if native grass is great. Try running native grass on 400 acres and make a living.

 

[andybob]

As my past experience has been adapted cattle on native grass,with a planned rotational grazing system, that is what I am starting here as well although there is some vetch in my pastures.
The company farm is mostly Bermuda, which is needed to utilise the pig slurry and grazed with two herds, one Hereford the other Angus, both producing Baldies.

 

[msscamp]

cowtrek, is correct. The way land keeps getting cut up, people are trying to make smaller pieces of land more productive. 4000 acres if native grass is great. Try running native grass on 400 acres and make a living.

Perhaps I've misunderstood your post, but overgrazing is overgrazing - regardless of whether it's native grasses or not. The only difference that I can see is non-native grass is going to require a boatload of fertilizer to come back where native grass simply requires time because it is adapted to the local environment, conditions, and will re-seed itself.

 

[dun]

cowtrek, is correct. The way land keeps getting cut up, people are trying to make smaller pieces of land more productive. 4000 acres if native grass is great. Try running native grass on 400 acres and make a living.

Perhaps I've misunderstood your post, but overgrazing is overgrazing - regardless of whether it's native grasses or not. The only difference that I can see is non-native grass is going to require a boatload of fertilizer to come back where native grass simply requires time because it is adapted to the local environment, conditions, and will re-seed itself.

If any grass is overgrazed it usually doesn;t get the opportunity to reseed. Depending on where the growth point is and the time of year, overgrazing can deplete the root reserves to the point where the grass will die out. That's the reason different grasses have differnt grazing/mowing heights. The reason good pastures can be overgrazed and turn to less desierable plants is because the animals will ocntinue ot eat the good stuff and weaken the plants till the eventually die or are so weak they can;t compete.

dun

 

[msscamp]

Thank you, Dun. LonghornRanch, my mistake and I retract my statement.

 

[3MR]

Orchard grass and clover is native here.

Orchard grass is not native unless you're in Europe. Red clovers aren't native to the US either. The may be naturalized, but they aren't native.

dun

Are switch grass and bluestem considered native?

This is one topic I don't know about but would like to consider some use of native grasses.

I cant tell you if Switchgrass is native for you or not, but it does make excellent summer forage. It will get upwards of 14+ inches come July and August. The only thing is you cant graze it to close or your stand will decline (less than 9 or 10 inches), but you still get a lot of bang for your buck and it grows well into Aug. If you graze it early and it comes back you can graze it down to 5 or 6 inches the second time.