Upland Reed Canary Stand Life?

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Stocker Steve

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There has been a trend to include Reed canary or fescue in upland forage mixes instead of the traditional thimothy and brome. If you have grown reed canary in an upland forage mix:

how much N did you use?
did you include Kura clover?
how long did the stand last?
 
Around here Reed Canary is gaining popularity with cow-calf producers. It is most often seeded with alfalfa, and managed as hay. We just planted some last year in a mix with alfalfa, trefoil and brome grass. What we have learned in this area over the last 10 years is if you DON'T put nitrogen on, (I would say at least 60 lbs per acre) you aren't going to see the benefit of RC's big yield potential. When managed for hay, or intensively managed in a grazing scheme it will last forever. (No joke, it is more aggressive about filling in holes in the stand than brome grass. It will become effectively sod-bound, and still produce tremendous amounts of forage.)

I would like to try some with kura clover, but KC seed is very hard to find around here. The two should compliment each other well. Both very aggressive, but slow to establish. Oftentimes we won't even see the Reed Canary until three years after planting, then the following year it really starts to take over. A cousin of ours made the comment about some Reed Canary/Alfalfa hay he cut inJune '08: "We've cut corn silage that is shorter than this!" It probably outyielded the corn silage that field grew this past year.
 
One interesting RC characteristic is how much the production changes due to harvest interval. I saw some 3 cut/year data where RC far outyielded every other grass. The same study showed RC production was pretty average with a 5 cut/year system.
 
One of the things I really like about RC is it only heads once per year, like orchard grass. If you get that first cut timed properly you get lots of pretty good feed, and all the regrowth is leaf tissue. Good production in the hot/dry part of the summer, and pretty good quality too.
 

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