|
NE Iowa | I'm in NE Iowa and I did exactly what you are talking about doing this year. Lost a rented pasture, landlord wanted me to plant it into corn so really didn't lose it. Anyway I took a small tillable field next to my permanenet pasture and converted it to pasture. This field is odd shaped and hilly but can get 200 bu corn and 60 bu beans off of it. I seeded it with 2 bu/ acre of cereal rye about October 10th last year. Last spring was late in coming. Typically there is enough rye growth to graze by April 10th. This year it was 10 days to 2 weeks late. I grazed the rye heavy from end of April until about May 25th. At that point I rotated the cows through my traditional pastures that were 4' tall and headed out. I applied N to the pastures back in April. I seeded the rye field to sudangrass on May 25th. From May 25th to about July 1st the cows "hogged" down the stockpiled pasture. About July 1st the sudangrass was 3' and ready to be grazed. I rotationally grazed it and my cows ate it better than I expected. There was very little waste surprisingly. Since then I've been going back and forth between the sudangrass and regular pasture. I plan on seeding it back to rye October first and starting the process over. Winter rye and sudangrass is the best combination that I can think of for grazing. Rye grows great in April and May. The sudangrass grows like crazy June through September. I have large 1400# Simmental cows that eat a lot and they have late March / early April calves on them. Based on what I'm seeing this year it takes about 0.8 acres of this rye/sudangrass for one pair. So I think your 8 acre field could net you 10 pairs worth of grazing. I applied some potash to my field last fall. It then had a shot of N in April, end of May, and mid July. If you have anymore questions let me know.
Here is a link to a post I had with some pics from about 3 weeks ago. In the third pic even though my permanent pasture had 4' stockpiled grass on June 1st it got cleaned pretty well with no mowing. Every time they rotate through it they eat some of the older growth so it wasn't wasted.
http://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=492322&posts=5... | |
|
Am I Crazy: Converting 200bpa corn ground to rotational grazing?
