The Indiana Forage Council held its annual meeting and conference last Thursday in Indianapolis, where new research about sorghum-sudangrass was revealed and the winner of IFC's annual Outstanding Producer Award was announced.
The meeting was a postponement of the original Feb. 24 date due to potentially hazardous weather conditions. The highlight of the event was a presentation by Purdue post-doctoral researcher Shelby Gruss on a grazing trial that ran throughout 2021 using cattle from the farm at the Southern Indiana Purdue Ag Center (SIPAC).
Gruss and her research team evaluated a hybrid version of sorghum-sudangrass they developed using a mutation in the plant's DNA that eliminated the toxic factor of dhurrin. Dhurrin, which increases within the plant during times of frost or drought stress can cause hydrogen cyanide poisoning and death in grazing livestock.
Through mutation and breeding, Gruss' team knocked out an enzyme called 279A1, resulting in a nonfunctional pathway within the plant, and no dhurrin is created.
"This trait has been incorporated into sorghum lines and this is where I got to have a fun time with my PhD and test different aspects of this in forage production," Gruss said. "What is really happening is that it's going to be actually very beneficial to animals."
While her PhD work revolved around creating the hybrid, Gruss said other trials such as an insect study and the impact of making the plant into hay were also tested in her post-doc work.
"Here in Indiana, after frost hits, everyone is scrambling to get cattle off of their pastures," she said, "What we wanted to do with this research was make sure the sorghum-sudangrass didn't for any reason revert back to producing dhurrin."
Her group also wanted to know if animals actually found the hybrid palatable.
"We can make it effective and not producing dhurrin, but if they're not going to eat it, it's useless." Gruss said.
What they found using a small flock of sheep in this study is that the ewes actually preferred the dhurrin-free hybrid, potentially because it has a comparatively less bitter taste to it.
"That brought us to the summer of 2021, where we wanted to actually know how well cattle could perform on our hybrid."
Gruss's team had 24 calves allocated to six different paddocks, and 34 days in, the animals gained about 50 to 60 pounds—an average of 1.62 pounds per day. Towards the end of the trial, however, the cattle were gaining an average of over 2 pounds per day.
"We were super excited to see these gains keeping up," Gruss said. "Because I've got to admit, ever since I started working on the dhurrin-free hybrid, I'm just like 'what is the one thing about this that's going to just fail,' but this thing has continued to work out."
Gruss said she expects that the dhurrin-free hybrid will be available commercially in the next three years.
Ronnie Boehm, a cattle producer from southern Indiana, received IFC's Outstanding Producer Award this year, which recognizes people within the organization that do an outstanding job and have exemplified excitement on their operations.
"What Ronnie's done is really amazing," said Jason Tower, an Extension agent who also operates Purdue's SIPAC farm. "We talk about pastures and doing all this and how everybody thinks they have to have a lot of numbers and space to do rotational grazing. Ronnie doesn't have a large number of acres, and now he's a custom grazer. It's been a good fit for him and it's opened the eyes to the producers that he worked with as well which is an awesome benefit."
Tower, who handed over the award, said Boehm is a great example of someone who can make a rotational grazing system work on small acreage with a lot of benefit for his operation and for the environment.
"First of all, thank you Keith Johnson for all the skills and knowledge you shared with me and with you all across the state," Boehm said. "And Jason, I can't thank you enough for the skills you provided me to help me get everything refined down to where it needs to be."
Boehm continued to praise others on the Board for their help with his grazing situation.
"People ask me, 'how do you have that much time to go out there and move the cattle every day?'" he said. "Well, good animal husbandry is you're going to check those animals every day, so what's another 10 minutes to open the tape to the next paddock? For all the help the IFC group has given me, thank you, and I hope to share that training with other individuals here in Indiana and across the Board, so thank you."