|
Ridgway, IL | My experience is with grazing fall covers. Our normal crop rotation on irrigated ground, that over time has made us the most money would be 2-3 yrs continuous corn followed by wheat and double crop soybeans. In our area, the thing that time and time again makes for the best yields is planting early. So spring grazing of covers is definitely at the expense of likely lower grain yields.
On the continuous corn years, i don’t think fall grazing covers make sense. Our harvest date is largely influenced by the corn market, if there are big early premiums we will shell at 30% in late aug and dry corn. When the carryout is large though, those premiums are rare so we will let the corn dry in field and begin harvest around Labor Day. That puts me drilling covers sep 15, and turning out oct 15. By the time we graze those down for 45 days we are to thanksgiving when we can expect a frost and regrowth to slow way down. Airplane seeding is a crap shoot. Unless I can drill the seed I don’t want anything to do with it. So without going into the numbers, I feel like it’s a lot of work for 45 days grazing.
Maybe we could try lightly grazing wheat, but for us... wheat is an intensely managed crop. We shoot for yields in the 90-100bpa range. It seems to me that grazing could affect that, and even if it’s 10bpa it’s not worth it for the cattle gain.
On years, like this coming one, where soybeans seem to be favorable... we will abandoned corn on corn acres and plant full season beans. We will start on the irrigated circles with 2.4s to 3.2s to 3.8s, to 4.0, to 4.2s then on to 4.6s and 4.8s on the double crops. On those early planted 2.4s, we can harvest in August, drill a cover by sep 1 and turn out oct 1 and graze for 60 days. Remember we aren’t gonna get any spring gains because we will want to terminate and come back with corn late March/early April. Still seems like an aweful lot of work setting up hot wires, and tending to the project for 60 days grazing.
I guess what I’m getting at is I feel like to adapt cover grazing in a serious way would come at some cost to our cropping revenue, so I have avoided it.
We have already adapted cropping strategies to take advantage of the resources we have. Now, there are guys around here that plant full season group 4 beans on irrigated circles, and I would say if I were in that situation I could see how you might graze in the spring, plant the beans the end of may and not take as big of a yield hit compared with our current system.
As far as grazing summer annuals, I think UnL makes a good point that a lot of costs simply do not change for the occasional grazer. We sure wouldn’t be selling any equipment, and land cost is still the same. There are so many variables I’ve never really had a good grip on the comparison of corn yield to beef gain. I.e 200 bpa corn yield would have put x lbs on 2 500lb steers during the same growing season. The stakes seem too high for me to attempt to try it.
For me, time and capital is best invested in our current operations. Making sure cropping is done right and timely and continuing to expand at the feedlot.
Irrigated grazing is really a beatiful sight. But I don’t think we can make sense of the economics here just yet.
 (F38F74DA-264E-45AB-A345-2FB129386708.jpeg)
Attachments
----------------
 F38F74DA-264E-45AB-A345-2FB129386708.jpeg (98KB - 49 downloads)
| |
|
converting good irrigated circles to annual grazing vs corn
