Following is an article written by John Thyssen the former Barenbrug Forage Manager who was born and raised on a Holland Dairy. It brings forth some excellent points and is well worth the read:
“Age old discussions of what species and varieties to plant in a pasture continue to occupy the thoughts and comments of pasture farmers. And although these discussions are always very site specific we think we can hand out some useful tools to help you make the right decision. Often, people believe that planting a pasture to a mixture of many grasses and legumes will result in something nice. It is thought that if you plant enough different species, some of them will work. This has resulted in many very complex mixtures with 15 or more components and as little as 2 or 3 percent of certain ingredients. However, if you plant all the grasses, and all the legumes in all the paddocks, you will end up with the ones that your management dictates. An example is work done by Andre Voisin. He planted two pastures to white clover, orchardgrass, and perennial ryegrass. On one pasture he grazed it every 10 days. The other one he harvested as hay. After a few years, the heavy grazed pasture was mostly perennial ryegrass and white clover. The pasture that was allowed to grow and mature as hay was predominately orchardgrass. The management, soil type, fertility, drainage, and forage species planted will dictate what you end up with.
Other thoughts are that you should not try to improve a pasture at all. “Whatever Mother Nature has provided is best”. And although this might be true from a persistence perspective, it is rarely true from a production perspective. Experience has taught us that improving an old pasture can result in a pay back period of less than a year.
Pasture Differentiation
We look at a farm to supply needs for grazing livestock. We can divide this need into four categories: The need for high energy swards of forage, the need for drought and heat tolerance, the need for a place to graze in wet weather, and a need for harvesting forage for the winter months.
1. The need for high-energy paddocks is for milk production with dairy cows, and for high rates of gain with stocker cattle, and lambs. These are the paddocks that will return the highest profit. These paddocks need to be on the best land that you have. This will allow you to maximize production at the lowest costs. The species of grasses that fit this land are perennial ryegrass, meadow fescue, and timothy. Add white clover and chicory and you have created a pasture that has high energy, high digestibility, and high yields, is dense, and palatable. If you have a dairy farm or are in the stocker business you need to have as many of these paddocks as you think you can. You manage these paddocks intensely, grazing very tight and often. That is the best management for these forages. They have similar growing rhythms and will persist together.
2. Every farm also needs to have paddocks that are drought and heat tolerant. The high-energy paddocks will suffer in the summer and so you will need to have ones that will tolerate the lack of moisture and heat. Tall Fescue is drought tolerant because it can send its roots deeper to reach moisture. Orchardgrass is heat tolerant. In a hot summer with enough rain, Orchardgrass will grow rapidly. In a summer with low rain and high temperature Tall Fescue will last longer. Alfalfa is a very drought tolerant high quality legume. On soils that are more subject to drought and heat, plant Alfalfa with Tall Fescue or Orchardgrass. In the Spring, when there is excess forage production you can harvest these grasses for hay or silage, there by allowing you to graze the high production type paddocks more often. In the summer when the high-energy paddocks slow down you can graze the drought tolerant paddocks.
3. Every farm is subject to a time when there is too much rain. If you have a sandy farm it is not as big a problem, but if you have poorly drained soils it can be a big problem. Plant some paddocks that will create a dense sod. Bluegrass, Smooth brome, and Reed Canary grass will regenerate after being pugged, because they are rhizominous, quickly reforming the sod, whereas the high energy, and drought tolerant paddocks would be severely damaged. If you get dryer than normal weather, you can harvest these for hay and silage.
4. The final group is a group of forages that are termed Annuals. Forages like corn, sorghum-sudan, millets, or brassicas. These are designed to fill in holes of forage production thru out the year, add to the drought protection, or to harvest for winter feed. Some farms would not grow any of these, rather choosing to purchase any forage need that pasture does not provide.“
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