Grazing in Michiana
As I'm writing this article, the last two days we've had some warm rains and all of a sudden, we have a green flush out across the fields. Is this spring greenup happening already on March 8? Two days ago, we had temperatures of 60 to 65 degrees, and it rained so I went out and checked the soil temperature, and it shows 51 degrees at 4 inches deep on the soil thermometer.
When the soil temperature reaches 41 degrees, the grass begins to grow but very slowly, and even at 51 degrees it's very slow.
Grass grows best when the air temperature is 60 to 80 degrees. Of course, the question remains whether it will stay warm long enough to keep it growing. This morning I listened to the weather band radio and it gives a record high and record low for this date. The record low was -13 degrees and the record high was 80 degrees, so that just gives an example of the drastic differences in temperatures at this time of the year. I've seen years when it started growing early and just kept on growing, so we'll have to see what happens.
I'm sure there will be some cold weather in the next three to four weeks, but with these cool-season grasses once they start growing, they keep growing. The other night I was walking out across the fields and the yard, and the worms were out all over the place. This is also an indication that the ground has warmed up some.
This afternoon the cows were out grazing, and the fields are green, though there's not very much growth there. With the rain and warmer temperatures, of course, we're seeing lots of mud. That's normal for this time of the year. We call this the mud season, and I hope it doesn't last very long, but it usually does.
Speaking of winter, we had a really good dose of winter this year. It's been a while since we had winter that seemed to last that long. I think the first significant snowfall happened last November, and then it melted away and came back again, and then there was a lot of cold.
One good thing was that we had enough significant snow cover to protect the grasses and clovers from winter kill. When we are in the mud season like this, we realize again how important it was that we took the time and built good cattle lanes.
The way to construct a good cattle lane is to lay down a layer of geotextile fabric and then cover that with stone and something across the top of that to make it decent for cows to walk on so they don't hurt their feet. We did this a number of years ago on our cattle lanes, and it has made a tremendous difference over the years and is well worth the money to do it.
We will soon be at the point where we can start reseeding a number of the pastures that have suffered a lot of damage this past winter. The goal in reseeding is to have a thick, dense pasture. By having different varieties of grasses and clovers together in the same field, it increases both yield and quality of the forage. In one article, I read that by mixing clovers and grass compared to just grass alone increased the yield by 10-15% and increased the pasture intake of the cattle, which led to a higher milk production per acre.
When milk per acre is calculated, the legume/grass pasture system can produce similar milk yield per acre compared to feeding the stored forages in confinement feeding.
One of the things to think about in managing spring pasture is setting up the grazing rotation for the rest of the season. You do this by getting the cattle out there early when it's fit for them to be grazing and then moving them around rapidly to different paddocks so that most of the fields are at different stages of growth. If you wait too long and the grass gets too big, then it's difficult to set up a good rotation because the grass grows so fast you get behind.
Since we don't have barns for our animals, they're out on the pastures all season long, which makes it easier to set up the rotation. Of course, the drawback with that in the muddy weather is that there's more damage that's created on the field.
Another advantage is that as the grass continues to increase its growth the cows begin to eat more and more and their digestive systems adapt to the fresh, spring grass gradually because it takes a number of weeks for that growth to happen and for the cows' digestive systems to adjust.
One important thing to remember about cool-season grass is that it is like a race horse—it grows like crazy once it warms up and its whole goal is to make a seed head, which is the reproductive stage. The problem with that is that once they reach that stage then they slow down their growth and then it reduces your overall yield for the season. Also, the quality of the feed is reduced because it becomes much more stemmy and not near as digestible for the cattle.
One of the ways to work at that, then, is to start grazing early. This will help keep the grass at different stages of growth. It's also important to have enough animals to control the growth and manage the growth. One way to help control and manage growth is with machinery and mowers because if you don't have enough animals to do that then that's another way to control it.
Spring pasture growth is a tremendous time of the year. The fresh grass is very good feed for cattle and gives lots of opportunities. It's important to learn to manage it well.