from Graze

Since certifying organic our crop rotation on the 200 acres we crop has been pretty regular at three annual crop years and three years of hay, including the establishment year. We have divided our acres into six approximately equal fields, 32 acres each and kept three of them in hay, always a mixture of alfalfa and red clover with several grasses, orchard and fescue and brome. After three years in hay, we typically covered the oldest thirty-two acres with a thick coat of hog hoop house manure, either stockpiled or raw and tilled it in along with hay regrowth after the second cutting about midsummer. This field then went to first year corn, followed the next year by a crop of spring oats, and then the following year into corn again. The year after it is back to hay, newly seeded in the spring. Cornstalks are made up into bedding bales for the hog houses, and cattle are turned out after on the stalks, especially in recent years.


Recently we moved away from developing dairy heifers as a major cattle business and began building a beef herd. The demand for grass fed beef bundles has been steadily growing with the pork customers and we began to realize that a major hurdle for us in grass fed beef production was that our perennial hay crop was testing too low in energy for adequate winter feed. Thinking of the potential for a better energy forage feed with cover crops, we began to wonder if we could change the rotation to allow a better window for annual hay crop production. We decided on a full season cover crop/hay seeding between the two corn years.


This first year's cover/annual hay crop will be our first attempt to harvest a higher energy hay. Plans are to cut and bale and wrap it wet and so far we are planning to seed a combination of mammoth red clover, crimson clover, oats, annual or Italian ryegrass, soybean, field pea and sorghum sudan. We will lean toward a hefty seeding of bmr sorghum sudan, dialing back the other rates just a bit, as we have some experience with the sorghum sudan and like it for feed.


Now we have had trouble with Canadian thistle making it to seed in the oats crop and thus spreading over the farm in the oat straw bedding. With this in mind, and as a trial, we seeded winter rye after the oats crop was off last summer. This was foundation seed and we have an agreement with a seed farm to market the rye for cleaning and bagging as certified organic seed. We will also try the rye in a few hog rations to test that use for the future.


Now the rye will come off perhaps three weeks earlier than the oats did. We hope it will be ahead of the thistles. We will bale the straw, move it off and seed a late fall grazing crop, perhaps rape and oats and turnip. There may be a window there for manure spreading, always a handy thing. Then the next year's crop will be second year corn and we are back into the rotation. The ongoing routine, if it works out, will be hay tilled in fall, then into corn the next year, then to complex cover crop the year after, to be harvested around Labor Day and then the rye seeded after. The following year would be rye harvested, then a window for manure spreading and then a seeding of brassicas for late grazing in conjunction with cornstalks for the cows. Then back to corn and then hay. We will need either to shorten the hay time to two years or extend the rotation to seven years. We haven't figured it out yet. It depends on cattle numbers.


We will be watching the timing of this hay crop. Grazing it will be preferable and we will hope to move in that direction in coming years.

Jim