Grazing in Michiana
A little over a week ago I thought, "Wow, the frost is out of the ground and the fields are starting to dry up." There was a little green starting to show as the grass began to wake up from winter. I also thought we were done with the mud season and spring was here. So I decided to hook up the tine seeder and try adding some seed to a few patches where the stand was a bit thin.
The tine seeder has six rows of tines that work the top couple inches of soil then an air seeder mounted on it blows the seed out through tubes evenly across the width of it so the tines can work it in. I was able to add seed to about seven paddocks before some rain came through. We had about an inch of rain, and I felt pretty good about that. It seemed to soak in pretty good.
Then here came more rain and we got another inch. Here we are today, March 24, and the mud is back! Well, I guess the weather gets to do as it pleases. So much for the mud season being over.
In my last grazing article, I mentioned several things that needed to be done soon. The first was training the heifers that will be calving for the first time this spring, to walk through the milking parlor as they go to the feed bunk. We do this so it is easier to get them into the parlor to be milked once they have their calf.
This year my wife, Sue, strongly encouraged me to try training them to go through both sides of the parlor so they would come in either side with no hesitation. I was reluctant to take the time to do that and thought they might bang up the doors as they pushed through. But my wife and Abby, one of our employees, decided it would be best and went ahead and set it up to make them go through the other side. They will now go through either side with no problems.
The other important task I mentioned last time was finalizing what grass and clover seeds were needed for seeding this spring. I decided to use 100 pounds per acre of oats and 35 pounds per acre Italian ryegrass on the paddocks that received the most damage this past winter. I use oats because it does well in the cool spring weather and produces a very high-quality forage. The oats only hang in there about two grazing rotations.
I use the Italian ryegrass because it starts fast, and it also produces high quality forage all season long. On the paddocks that only have a little winter damage I use a mixture of 5 pounds per acre perennial rye grass, 5 pounds per acre Italian ryegrass and 2 pounds per acre of white clover. This is the mix I applied with the tine seeder.
Fertilizing was another thing to do. We applied ammonium sulfate in early March to get the pasture off to a quick start. We do this because of our very high stocking rate. With the high fertilizer prices this year we decided to go with 50 pounds per acre rather than our usual 100 pounds per acre.
A couple years ago I wrote about some things to do when we begin grazing in the spring to set up the pasture rotation for the rest of the season. I think it is good to emphasize these points again.
1. It is important to start grazing early. By early I mean as soon as the grass begins to green up. This allows the cows' digestive system to adjust slowly. Which is better for the cow because they don't handle abrupt changes in their diet.
2. We need to realize that the grass has been resting all winter and once it begins to grow it grows very rapidly. Its drive is to produce a seed head and once it does that, it slows its growth. By starting to graze early we have a better chance of keeping the plant in a vegetative stage of growth (mostly leaves and very few stems), causing the plant to grow more aggressively.
3. Setting up the staggered growth of all the paddocks also begins by starting to graze when the grass is just starting to grow. Each paddock is then at a different stage of growth. If you wait till the grass is all 8 inches tall, then the last paddocks will be too tall and mature till you get to them. In the spring it takes about 20 different paddocks. Then you will be back to graze again in the first one in about 20 days. One thing I have learned is to use larger areas to begin with, and as the grass gets taller, I can use smaller areas because there is more grass available.
4. Encouraging the grass to tiller, thicken the stand, and be more productive for the grazing season is another benefit of starting early. You need to keep the grass from getting too tall because the sun needs to be able to get to the base of the plant where the new leaves form—this is what causes the grass to thicken or spread out and fill in the bare places.
5. Be prepared to harvest some or clip it if the animals can't control it when the grass is growing fast, to avoid having it produce a seed head and slow its growth.
If we can accomplish keeping the plant in a vegetative state of growth, we will have a higher yield of higher quality feed and have higher animal performance.