Summer and Fall Pasture Annuals

[Stocker Steve]

The Sorghum Sudan is looking good now. A one inch rain really greened it up. I plan to strip graze it till its gone. I but 40# N on the first 2 strips grazed to see if I can get a second crop before frost.
I delayed planting fall oats and finally drilled it as deep as possible into the dust. After 10 days in the 90s it caught the same rain and is now up, but I don't expect much tonnage. The birds are really on it.
I am planting winter rye this week. Rye seed is hard to find in my area.
I plan to estimate the yield for each crop. I expect that the cost/lb will be high - - but some of this is part of a renovation rotation. I spray out native bluegrass in late June and then do recreational rock picking for a couple months.

 

[fargus]

You doing the yield estimate by tons, or by grazing days per acre? I'm surprised winter rye is hard to find up there, we have no shortage of it here, but lots of people grow it as a rotation with tobacco in the sand belts. How much N did the oats get? We've had really good luck planting the oats in August with about 40 lbs of N. Some tremendous yields last fall, and after the 2.5-3" rain we got yesterday we should have some cracker-jack yields again this year.

 

[Stocker Steve]

I am spraying out a native Bluegrass paddock in June, rocking picking for a couple months , applying lime & composted manure, and then fall seeding. So no commercial fertilizer for oats but it looks good now that we got a rain.
A field soil test for oats here will call for 80 plus pounds of N - - but it will usually lodge if you apply more than 20 to 40#. My pastures test surplus for P & K which is much better than the adjoining row crop ground that has been managed by others.
I will have to measure the Sorghum Sudan, but the semi dwarf stuff is hip high and the standard stuff it 2' over the pickup cab. I started in on it a month ago when I thought there was 3+ weeks of grazing but it has gotten ahead of me. Neighbors are all worried I should be chopping it. :cowboy:
I am going to try some straight Sudan grass next year so I don't have to plan around a September frost.

 

[fargus]

That sounds more like it! I remember using sorghum sudan that was 8-10' tall, we turned 30 pairs in on 10 acres of the stuff in August. Kept them busy for the whole month, and not much else was growing during that time. If you are grazing the oats, does it matter if it lodges? Just curious to see if you would get an economic response. Any particular reason you would choose straight sudan grass over some of the millets out there?

 

[Stocker Steve]

You are right - - lodging should not matter for grazing oats. The issue with fall N is water. Most years we are limited by moisture in August and early September so I think the N response would not be cost effective. I did put N on one meadow fescue paddock on Labor Day as a test.

I have grown Jap millet in the past, and I did one small plot with a left over oats/millet/sorgum sudan mix this July. Millets seems to tiller better than some but Minnesota test plots show sudan should yield more DM/acre than millets when planted in late June. They were not grazing so the DM numbers may be a little misleading. They also looked at milk or energy per acre. Silage corn was the best and BMR SS was second.

The highest quality grazing mix I have seen was from no tilling dwarf sorghum sudan into a thin sprayed out alfalfa stand. The alfalfa was burned but it come back and filled in. Looked like a poor man's TMR.