Noble Research Institute Offers Refresher on Effective Winter Supplementation with Pasture and Hay

The following article entitled, "Offsetting Winter Supplementation With Pasture" by Noble Research Institute Associate Professor James Rogers, Ph.D., was published in the latest edition of Noble News. The article discusses how producers can get the most out of their winter nutrition program for their cattle, using hay as a nutritional supplement. This article refers to several tables and graphs included in the original article. You can view those for more information by clicking here.

 

Feeding a beef cow herd through winter with stored feed and hay is time consuming and can make for a long winter feeding period and if you are overstocked it can make for a long feeding period. It is a common management practice to test hay for its nutritive value so you can properly supplement it or, in a best-case scenario with a high-quality hay, not supplement at all. What you may not be doing is testing the nutritive value of your pastures. If you are properly stocked and have a good bermudagrass fertility program, those bermudagrass pastures may be able to carry you a lot farther into the winter than you may think.

 

 

Here at Noble, we have been looking at two methods in cow-calf production to extend the grazing season on bermudagrass-based pastures and reduce winter feeding of stored feeds. In our cow-calf study, all pastures receive 75 pounds of nitrogen (N) per acre (Spring N) in May as a base fertility treatment.

 

The first treatment is a combination of stockpiled bermudagrass (Stockpile) where 50 pounds of N per acre is applied to bermudagrass in August or September, with grazing deferred until after frost. To further extend grazing beyond the stockpile, wheat is no-till interseeded into bermudagrass in the fall (Interseed wheat) and fertilized with 50 to 60 pounds of N per acre. Both stockpiled bermudagrass and interseeded wheat are allocated at 1 acre per cow. The second treatment is wheat planted no-till as a winter pasture monoculture (Wheat) and fertilized with 50 to 60 pounds of N per acre and allocated at 0.7 acres per cow.

 

 

As part of the study, we follow a few basic management practices.

 

1 We soil test all of our pastures. Based on the test results, lime, phosphorus and potassium are applied to ensure the grass response to the applied nitrogen is not limited by deficiencies in other nutrients.

 

2 We control weeds. A good grass canopy is a big deterrent to weeds, but we apply chemical control when needed.

 

3. We rotate pastures and use cows to manage the frequency and intensity of grazing. This helps set up our pastures for treatments such as stockpiling or interseeding.

 

4. We have a proper stocking rate based on the forage amount our pastures are capable of producing and cow herd forage demand.

 

If these practices are followed, forage production is likely to increase over time. When we see increases in perennial pasture production, our mindset is often to purchase more animals to consume excess production. An alternative to increasing grazing animal numbers is to use this forage to graze deeper into the fall and winter to help offset winter feeding costs.

 

 

To make grazing season extension work, you need to know the forage nutritive value. Since the study began in 2015, we have taken grab samples of these pastures from November through February and analyzed them for nutritive value so we can supplement the cow herd accurately and when needed.

 

Table 1 provides the nutritive value results of the bermudagrass pastures (Spring N, Stockpile) compared to wheat only (Wheat) or bermudagrass pastures interseeded with wheat (Interseed wheat). Note in Table 1 the quality of pasture that was available from November to February from our Spring N and Stockpile pastures and compare these values to the nutrient requirements for a 1,200-pound beef cow in Table 2. In our case, pasture quality was much better than the hay on hand that was tested and contained 7.0 percent crude protein (CP) and 57.0 percent total digestible nutrients (TDN). In our cow-calf study during winter 2017-18, we were able to feed some cows on a supplement of 30 percent range cubes and Spring N pasture with no hay.

 

 

Grazing season extension takes good management and a favorable environment. Each year is different, and some years will work better than others; as a manager, you must have enough flexibility to adjust accordingly. In the Spring N pastures, rainfall was favorable during 2017 so the excess forage was produced at the right time and could be used through fall and winter 2017-18.