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Dayton, IA | I do a lot of cover crops and graze them and make feed from them. A neighbor called today to tell me that some leading edge cover crop guys were planting corn in 60" centers so they could get more sunlight to the ground to grow more cover crops for grazing. He though they were not giving up much in corn yield.
I have always taken the approach that a cover crop is secondary and if you get grazing or feed off of it that is great, but make the cash crop and don't mess it up with the cover crop. Doesn't it make more sense to raise as much corn as possible/acre? Cattle eat corn also and chopping silage gets you lots of early sunlight for growing a cover to graze. On the flip side, if you need the grazing for the cows isn't it better off to plant grazing/hay crops for the whole season and maximize the forage production on the forage acres and maximize cash crops on the row crop acres? A few acres of high yielding corn silage can make up for a lot of acres of cover crops.
There are probably a million ways to skin a cat, just thought it would be interesting to hear some different view points. My opinion is on row crop acres do everything I can to reach maximum yield and if you need other feed just dedicate the necessary acres to that feed to maximize its growth.
A.J. | |
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Cover Crop vs Cash Crop
