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Post by tarsallat on May 30, 2013 18:41:38 GMT -5
Not familiar with fescue, but could you have got a tractor onto the field and topped the swathe, thereby slowing down maturity and keeping it in the vegetative state, therefore higher protein and higher digestibility? Lower than 55% digestibility and it requires more energy to digest the hay than the energy it produces. Definitely would need a protein and energy supp. Lactating cows need 65 and up %(preferably higher 70%) digestibility and at least 14% protein to do well. Could the pasture be salvaged for any use at all. Maybe cut and used as green manure, ploughed back into the soil. What variety of fescue did you plant Mike? I'll steer clear of it.
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Post by rezzfullacres on May 30, 2013 22:33:00 GMT -5
Since we seem to need to have a paper to validate everything how about this one: extension.missouri.edu/p/AGW1003Even if you do not like fescue it can be and is a valuable commodity and when utilized correctly can be very beneficial, If you have an open mind to reality.......from your friendly flat earther edited lander to earther edited a second time to say that we used this process, stacked a little higher, with barley straw, it works but it does have a distinct aroma when you uncover the stack...
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Post by rezzfullacres on May 30, 2013 22:36:24 GMT -5
....the Flat Earthers launched a robust, erroneous opinion romp through my information.....and I was there to run them out. . BTW the above is your opinion the fact is you are wront You ran nobody out, please realize that simple fact.....
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Post by rezzfullacres on May 31, 2013 7:04:55 GMT -5
Here is another paper: www.caes.uga.edu/commodities/fieldcrops/forages/documents/GC9505.pdfIf you go to the section of Hay Testing it will tell you a very valuable use for some lower quality hay. Every farmer at some point, either due to natural diasater or nature or simple operator error, WILL be short of the best high quality hay to make it through a tough winter or an over extended feeding period. It is during that time that you will realize the importance of harvesting everything you can and than manage your herd accordingly...It is not a question of if, it is a quaestion of when, if they stay farmer long enough.... RFA
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Gorignak
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Post by Gorignak on May 31, 2013 7:32:02 GMT -5
tarsallat.....you got all the ducks lined up. Fescue has a remarkable protein crash as it passes initial maturity. Your observations on the nutritional requirements really make the point. Like trying to drive 60 mph into an 80 mph headwind. AND, fescue was found, after 40 years of encouraging its planting, to harbor an "endophyte" fungus. www.caf.wvu.edu/~forage/fescue_endophtye/story.htmKentucky 31 is the worst culprit. THERE ARE endophyte free fescues, but, why bother. There are far better forages to plant. On to our story...Arkansas.... THIN soil....annual, periodic drought every summer......and a starting PH of 5.6 on all my land. FESCUE GROWS WELL IN ACID SOIL... soil that the broomsedge is the primary opportunistic growth. Endophyte infected fescue (FOR REASONS YET UNKNOWN) IS very DROUGHT TOLERANT. A marriage made in heaven....best time to broadcast fescue is on a moderate snowfall....it follows the melt into the frost fractures and, bingo !!! The first year it looks like a waste of time and money....second year a carpet of verdant green grass that thickens for 4-5 years and persists through any weather. Lime.....yes, lime is the answer to solving the problem...BUT...our situation is scattered steep fields and rocky bluffs, creeks and washes, and scrub timber on the South and West slopes. Better timber North and East. Many fields in a 640 acre farm would be accessible only to logging skidders, bulldozers, goats and cattle. My neighbor, in an almost unbearably heartbreaking gesture, has a spot in the passenger seat of his pickup where he secures the urn with his wife's ashes in it. She was killed in a tractor rollover, trying to bale hay on a too-steep slope. Anyway....2.5 tons/acre of lime will sweeten our soil for 5 years ....then the next 2.5 tons/acre will last 7-10 years. At $400. for a 14 yd load.... Most of the poorer farmers just sow the fescue and go on. PLUS.... for years, helicopter planting services offered a package of 2-4-D spray, and distribution of pelletized seed and starter fertilizer for as little as $125. / acre. Kill the timber and plant grass in one fell swoop. Yes....my intention was to cut the field back to low grass and spring tillers, and then regrow better. We have had abundant rain, and that plan is working.....but the cows still eat the abundant rye and new Bermuda grass first. Many of the locals have caught on....but immense fields of fescue will only slowly transition to other grasses. Clovers last 3 years here, at best, before the need to re-seed. That is a lot of money. Not commenting on the value...it IS there, but it is a lot of time, money and equipment to re-seed pastures every 3 years. Other options, like bluestem, are surfacing. Each has its own limitations and benefits. Knowledgeable producers are selling their fescue to the less knowledgeable and buying Coastal Bermuda, or Prairie hays. Others are ammoniating the fescue hay with Anhydrous Ammonia....BUT, that is a interim choice...it will also raise oat straw to 14% "protein". For now, the best small stock owner choice, if stuck with fescue, is to supplement with molasses tubs....both all-natural and urea based protein sources. My 5 cattle went through 4, 220 lb tubs last year. 2 were 25% all natural, and 2 were 37%, with 11% of that coming from urea. Unfortunately...that is a lot of supplementation. My cattle pulled through well.
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Post by Gorignak on May 31, 2013 8:37:32 GMT -5
Here is the link from the above post again. I had just skim read it previously, but I completed it this morning. www.caf.wvu.edu/~forage/fescue_endophtye/story.htmIT IS ABSOLUTELY PHENOMENAL (opinion) IN ITS PRESENTATION OF THE MISERABLE, DELETERIOUS EFFECTS (fact) OF ENDOPHYTE FUNGUS INFECTED FESCUE. AND, THAT IS ON TOP OF THE PROTEIN LOSS THAT OCCURS WITH OVERMATURITY. Most should assume that their fescue is endophyte infected. There is little endophyte free fescue planted. Okay....I am stunned.....I am NEVER going to plant another fescue seed...anyone who wants it can have an unopened, 50 lb bag of K-31 seed just for stopping by ....a $49. value, free. I'm going to go bang my head with a hammer for a while....D**n, I'm smarter than that. The article is depressing beyond measure.
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Post by lavacaw on May 31, 2013 9:16:42 GMT -5
We don't grow fescue here because it is not heat and drought tolerant enough and tends to grow fungus too badly to make it a good grass. What the cows love is Bahia grass. It makes lousy hay because it is too low in protein. During the drought two years ago and last year, I would have paid good money for some! ANY HAY that would fill their bellies could and was supplemented with minerals and molasses tubs to try to maintain condition. Bale what you can get when you can get it and worry about dumping it as you can get better. Our worst drought year started with rain in the early spring and then it quit - for months on end. If you think cows can't eat snowballs, try feeding them dust!
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Post by rezzfullacres on May 31, 2013 21:51:24 GMT -5
ANY HAY that would fill their bellies could and was supplemented with minerals and molasses tubs to try to maintain condition. Bale what you can get when you can get it and worry about dumping it as you can get better. Our worst drought year started with rain in the early spring and then it quit - for months on end. If you think cows can't eat snowballs, try feeding them dust! Exactly my point, from a farmer who has recently lived it......Lavacow I hope you made it out OK, I know of many that did not........
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Post by rezzfullacres on May 31, 2013 22:04:48 GMT -5
Here is an ineesting article forages.oregonstate.edu/php/fact_sheet_print_grass.php?SpecID=8&use=most all fescue sold today is labeled as to the endophyte status, to buy endophyte free is a little more expensive but not difficult, All it takes is reading the label before you buy, knowing what to buy AND knowing that anything worth doing is worth doing right the first time!!!!!!! We have primarily fescue hay fields, they contain some blue grass, several clovers, some other grasses but probably 75-80% fescue and our cattle, sheep, horses, mules and pigs all do well on it........An educated consumer is worth thier weight in gold........
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Post by lakeportfarms on Jun 1, 2013 4:25:12 GMT -5
Mike,
I'm going to side with the others on this one. Without fescue, we'd get about one cutting of hay per year around here. First cutting (which typically takes place the last two weeks of June , yields primarily fescue hay, while the second (and usually last) cutting of hay might be a timothy/alfalfa or clover mix. Some who heavily fertilize their pastures will get three cuttings, starting a little earlier in June, and once in a while I'll actually see someone cut their hay around early September, but they're not getting much hay for the effort and there's a chance it won't be warm or dry enough to bale it. Furthermore, I wouldn't be storing wet or slightly damp baled hay in any kind of structure over an extended period of time unless you're looking for the insurance company to build you a new one. I wouldn't be surprised if they exclude that kind of coverage in the first place.
For grazing, properly managed fescue, endophyte infected or not, recovers quickly and allows us to get the herd into the pasture earlier and keep them in later than we otherwise would. Other cool season grasses just don't recover quickly enough to re-graze in a season. Though more tolerant varieties are now being developed, endophyte fescue is more tolerant to insect and other stresses that would impair growth and production. Productive land around us presently runs $7000-8000/acre, and taxes on our property WITH the agricultural exemption (which is generous) are close to $2000/year. Taking out pasture to re-seed with other grasses or endophyte free fescue, and waiting for it to be able to be grazed gets expensive pretty fast with a short growing season. Factor that into your statements.
If you have a newly planted pasture of fescue, rather than killing it and planting something else, I'd advise you to figure out a way to manage it so that you can use it for early and late season grazing. If that means clipping the growth in the spring to keep the seed heads at bay, while rotating them through the less mature growth before the endophyte becomes a more serious problem.
You say your ground is too hard for temporary posts? Figure something out! A cordless drill with a masonry bit, for example, and then stick a short piece of PVC into the ground to accept a fiberglass post, as an example. Just like we who have other challenges have had to do, in our own and best way possible.
Yes, there are a lot of "Guest" hits on this site. Not all of us "log in" when we are flipping to the page to see what's new. I might check here and then dash off to do something with the browser still open and on the page. Be careful about stating something as fact without the disclaimer about your location and that there probably are circumstances that LIKELY make the facts you state for your location different for somebody else located in another part of the country.
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Post by Gorignak on Jun 1, 2013 9:35:37 GMT -5
Because, RedRidge.....testing reveals the truth. The responses here, on a thread that is intended to reveal the deficiencies of fescue, are back-and-forth about "better than a snowball" and "you don't know nuthin". And my favorite..... "University Studies are (pick one of the following)....unrealistic....stupid.....not really real......not unbiased.....not done by farmers.......meaningless...." The truth concerning the low RFV of overmature fescue and the terrible toll that the endophyte takes on the cattle have been avoided at all cost.
In the 70's I remember parting philosophical ways with the Rodale's concerning commercial fertilizer...Oh, I was committed to Organic Farming.....But it would take many thousands of tons of manure to increase my soil's organic matter incrementally. BUT....if I judiciously applied a balanced commercial fertilizer mix, and reaped the "green manure" bonus......those thousands of tons of "manure" became possible. On the original fields that we cleared first, in the late 70's, I religiously applied commercial fertilizer.....a very light, not full "production" amount....and then I brush hogged the grass down, year after year. We applied Cal-Phos (organic rock phosphate) to everything in the 80's, so that we could skip the complete fertilizer, and just Ammonium Nitrate or Urea as weather permitted.
Fast forward to this week...and this tedious thread......MAN, do I have some pretty fescue for this thin mountain soil. I am mowing and overseeding at every possible opportunity. The monster that has surfaced is the incredibly short period in which fescue goes from 14% protein to 6% protein. I am going to replace with other forages that have longer windows of top RFV/TDN/Protein. Plus, the endophyte penalty is obvious to me .....visually obvious every day of the year as I drive past my neighbors cattle....and watch mine avoid the overmature fescue.
Keep testing RedRidge....you will be in business far longer than those who don't.
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Post by cddexter on Jun 1, 2013 13:38:39 GMT -5
Here in the pacific northwest, we get a lot of rain. We are lucky to get hay in by July--not a big enough window to get the grass cut and dried in May when it's at its best. Mostly local hay is 1/2 mature grass and 1/2 regrowth, protein content around 4 or 5% at best. If you're buying it from someone else, the going rate is around $8/55 lb bale. That's why I buy eastern WA hay at $19/80 lb bale and feed both, along with free choice minerals mixed to meet local conditions (low selenium), and about 2 lbs of dairy ration/COB each daily. My fields are mostly orchard grass and wild grasses and weeds. Second cut? HA! not likely without irrigation. The local boffins do suggest fescue but I wasn't convinced. Good thing, too.
Gene's right about the weather gods, and Mike's right about the commercial hay people going for volume. The combo makes for iffy hay a lot of the time. I just keep on trucking. cheers, c.
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Post by Olga on Jun 1, 2013 18:28:03 GMT -5
"<...> some producers who planted endophyte-free fescue seed found that after a few years they had fescue stands that were mostly endophyte-infected, and the performance of their livestock was once again negatively affected. How could this have happened?There are two possible scenarios. One is that if there had already been a stand of infected fescue in a field, the fescue plants may not have all been killed before endophyte-free fescue was planted. Sometimes a herbicide treatment is not 100% effective in killing a stand of fescue, and tillage is even less reliable. The other possibility is that endophyte-infected fescue seed containing viable endophyte was in the soil when endophyte-free seed was planted, or that such seed were introduced sometime thereafter. Regardless of the source of the toxic fescue, where there was a mixed stand of endophyte-infected and endophyte-free plants, the infected plants were often able to eventually dominate due to greater seed production, better seedling vigor, and more tolerance to drought and other stresses." Read more at: www.aces.edu/dept/forages/fescue/EndophyteStatus.htm
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Post by Gorignak on Jun 2, 2013 8:05:18 GMT -5
Hmmmmm....good choice in Universities and Departments....I don't doubt one of my sister's studies or articles will pop up some day. She is a PhD, Soil & Agronomy Professor in the Same Dept. at Auburn as this article came from.... Good people.
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Post by rezzfullacres on Jun 2, 2013 17:42:56 GMT -5
Gorignak; Since you failed to respond to the 2 university papers that I posted links too that directly contridict your stance that fescue is useless and should never be planted or harvested I was wondering if instead you would answer this question,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Do you actually feed a hay product you produce or are you just a purchaser of someone else's work? Just a question from your freindly flat earther to the freindly tin foil hat wearer.......
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