seed heads - dun

[inyati13]

dun, you are in the crowd that clips pastures but you wait until the seed head is ripe. I read the other threads but you did not say exactly how you determine when the head is ready. How do I determine when it is ripe enough to clip?

I have clipped some pasture but most of it I am letting go to make sure I am leaving some seed. I would like to clip it but not too soon.

 

[skyhightree1]

I clip when its brown or wait till end of june and that should be plenty of time for it to get ripe.

 

[Nesikep]

I think with many grasses you can see them flowering (OG especially), I figure 2 weeks after that the seed should be ripe

 

[dun]

I just grab a seed stem lightly between 2 fingers and run it up to the top. If any seed falls I know it's ripe. The reason I wait until the seed shatters off the stem is so that the seed is spread rather thern just laying there still roughly connected to the stem.

 

[regolith]

I think with many grasses you can see them flowering (OG especially), I figure 2 weeks after that the seed should be ripe

Takes a lot longer than that here. Most of our ryegrass starts flowering late October or sometime in November. I don't think the seed falls till Jan/Feb.

I'm certainly curious on the answers to this thread, as I know hay fields don't drop significant amounts of seed and rotational grazing at optimal intervals doesn't allow it to happen... lax rotational grazing allows for some seeding but also reduces the overall quality of the pasture.
A lot of new grass came up with the autumn rains here so there must have been some seed dropped recently, other than where hay has been fed out.

 

[inyati13]

I think with many grasses you can see them flowering (OG especially), I figure 2 weeks after that the seed should be ripe

Takes a lot longer than that here. Most of our ryegrass starts flowering late October or sometime in November. I don't think the seed falls till Jan/Feb.

I'm certainly curious on the answers to this thread, as I know hay fields don't drop significant amounts of seed and rotational grazing at optimal intervals doesn't allow it to happen... lax rotational grazing allows for some seeding but also reduces the overall quality of the pasture.
A lot of new grass came up with the autumn rains here so there must have been some seed dropped recently, other than where hay has been fed out.

Your message brings a question to mind. If one employs the practice of mowing pasture before seed maturity, will the grasses die out from lack of reseeding? Yards don't. I have fairly new pastures and the more I mow, the thicker and better the pasture gets. I have observed that the clovers are more scarce this year but that is a trend everywhere in the region due to the weather this spring. Like you say, hay is properly managed to leave the seed head on and cows eat the longer grasses with rotational grazing.

 

[regolith]

Well that's really my question too. Styles of grazing have changed in recent years, now swinging back a little to leaving longer grass covers and feeding cows better; old-time farmers would likely leave some paddocks rough to allow seeding.
I don't stay on farms long enough to see whether the pasture deteriorates over time under tightly controlled grazing, but the fact that so much new grass came up when the drought broke this autumn... maybe I'm worrying about nothing.
I know this farm has been under closely controlled grazing for the last eight years at least.

 

[dun]

Your message brings a question to mind. If one employs the practice of mowing pasture before seed maturity, will the grasses die out from lack of reseeding? Yards don't. I have fairly new pastures and the more I mow, the thicker and better the pasture gets. I have observed that the clovers are more scarce this year but that is a trend everywhere in the region due to the weather this spring. Like you say, hay is properly managed to leave the seed head on and cows eat the longer grasses with rotational grazing.

Once again it depends on the type of grasses. Typically lawns and pastures aren;t the same grasses. If you have tall fescue (KY31) for lawn it will die out over the years if kept mowed a lot as alawn is. Our lawn used to be pasture, but my wife wanted more lawn so I moved fences to accomodate her. Those KY31 lawn areas are now mostly clover, fescue has thinned out through the past 10 years. This year in the hay fields I tried mowing them higher (left more residual) then is considred normal. They haf grown a good deal since cutting but they grass is still more sparse then it was when it was hayed. We usually leave a hay field fallow every couple of years so that the grass replenishes from thr seed drop. Some years we'll graze it in the winter rotation, some years just let it go and mow it fairly short during the winter. As in everything else in the cow/hay business, one size does not fit all. The weather and the usuage it is put to all has a varying affect. Fescue is better cut in the early to mid boot stage. The feed quality is higher and the endophyte level is lower. The closer to maturity it is the seed heads are much higher in endophyte and the grass itself is less palatable and less digestable. Other then clover we have proabably close to 90 percent fescue. Very little timothy, brome or OG. This has been an ideal year for clover apparantly. The neighbor has a field that was planted in alfalfa several years ago. The yeild of alfalfa has dropped but the fescue has started being more prevalent. He's never seeded red clover in that field but this year there is more red clover then anything else including alflafa, weeds and fescue. The clover has kept it from curing even as well as it did when it was almost all alfalfa.

We have clover all over the place too, some fields as much as 75-80% clover. Cows are loving it almost to the exclusion of eating the fescue. The almost look like macys parade ballons in the afternoons.

 

[mab_va]

We have clover all over the place too, some fields as much as 75-80% clover. Cows are loving it almost to the exclusion of eating the fescue. The almost look like macys parade ballons in the afternoons.

hey dun do you do anything to prevent bloat? i have a pasture that is 75% white clover and i want to turn them loose in there but ive been holding back because i dont want anyone to bloat. also, might wait til hottest part of summer when cool seasons go tough and the clover is still good.

 

[dun]

We have clover all over the place too, some fields as much as 75-80% clover. Cows are loving it almost to the exclusion of eating the fescue. The almost look like macys parade ballons in the afternoons.

hey dun do you do anything to prevent bloat? i have a pasture that is 75% white clover and i want to turn them loose in there but ive been holding back because i dont want anyone to bloat. also, might wait til hottest part of summer when cool seasons go tough and the clover is still good.

I used to worry about it, maybe our cows are conditioned to it because it's never been an issue. Some of them have blwn up like balloons but a good fart or belch generally takes care of it.

 

[Dave]

There is some pretty good information on cool season grasses that is allowed to go to seed. The seed head causes the plant to release a hormone that stops regrowth. Once the seed head is removed it stops releasing that hormone which cause the plant to start growth of new apical meristems. Graze it off or mow it off but I do my best to remove as soon as possible to stimulate vegetative regrowth.

 

[mab_va]

We have clover all over the place too, some fields as much as 75-80% clover. Cows are loving it almost to the exclusion of eating the fescue. The almost look like macys parade ballons in the afternoons.

hey dun do you do anything to prevent bloat? i have a pasture that is 75% white clover and i want to turn them loose in there but ive been holding back because i dont want anyone to bloat. also, might wait til hottest part of summer when cool seasons go tough and the clover is still good.

I used to worry about it, maybe our cows are conditioned to it because it's never been an issue. Some of them have blwn up like balloons but a good fart or belch generally takes care of it.

:lol2: ha! my goats never bloat and they fart and burp and sneeze 24/7. Maybe thats the secret