Great commentary on the benefits of clover. You gave me the nudge I needed; I just tracked down a source and bought some Durana clover seed to overseed our pastures.
Nice work on diluting that k31. I encourage you to experiment with red river crabgrass in your fescue patch to really make it an all season pasture. It pairs very well and is super palatable in its season.
@@DowdleFamilyFarms friend of mine is a really knowledgeable and successful small dairy and egg farmer in VA who swears by the crab grass. I believe its his primary hot season forage for the milk and meat cattle. he sells big dollar boutique raw milk to the richmond richies under his own label. Must be a good grass.
Thank you for the video. This might be an amateur question, how are you weighing the cattle? I would like to weigh then weakly with what I have planted. Thanks. Keep up the good work! 🇺🇸
We have a scale on the farm that we haven't used in years and it needs some work. There are a couple different ways though. The primary information comes from researchers who weighed the cattle over a period of time. It's not practical for us to weigh them regularly and it stirs the cattle up. But when the calves are sold, we get very specific weights that we can use to do the math. Further, with a lot of the cows coming into the spring underweight, we can watch them fill out quite rapidly. Granted, that's more of a guess, but it echoes much of what the research claims. Franky, the researchers got better results than I claimed.
Thank you for that. I appreciate the response. I think my cows on the homestead were not aged right when I bought them and constantly worrying about the weight gain and the paddocks I cut off to grow for winter grazing. I use bucket feed and premium hay. I chain hatrowed the field and put some clover and rye as an overseed on the native grass. It popped up pretty quick but seems stalled. I think the next step is trying fertilize with something non abrasive. Any thoughts on how to get it to pop. I need to move them and seed the smaller one. Thanks for the info!!
my poor attempts: Added 2000 lbs/acre chicken litter on about 9 acres. drilled some triticalle and peas but it got flooded.. drainage control is underemphasized, have cut ditches as needed. Did overseed elbon rye and red clover, Did Hairy Vetch and Silver River clover mix, that did well, now I have pigweed instead of practically bare dirt. Some parts are very lush. Chop and drop for 7 years, no chemicals or synthetics. Would love to watch some animals enjoy but they have to be managed. Maybe when I can watch it full time.
Hey Rob, I'm curious if you notice how it affects deer visiting the field. We are trying to cheaply attract and hold them on our property. Just wondering if some of these practices might translate to our purposes. Thanks Andrew
Hey Andrew! Thanks for watching. The deer eat all of the cover crops we grow. A lot of the Durana clover seed is actually sold for deer plots. The deer tend to prefer crops other than the fescue in the permanent pasture shown in this videos, but they love the annual cover crops.
We let the grass go to seed occasionally, but we cows grazing the seed heads creates problems with the cattle. There's a symbiotic relationship with tall fescue and an endophyte that makes it drought and disease resistant. However, that endophyte can have deleterious effects on livestock. The endophyte is concentrated in the youngest growth (closer to the ground) and in the seed heads.
I guess it depends on what you know or don’t know. If you have a monoculture tall fescue pasture then the cattle performance will be poor compared to a diverse pasture.
Thank you so much for posting about this in such detail. It isn’t easy being new to pasture management! Great information.
You are so welcome! I hope it helped. What livestock are you including in your pastures?
Thank you. Very good and informative. This will help me this year as I am in need of doing this very thing on my small ranch.
Glad it was helpful! Where is your ranch located? Do you have any idea what you can use?
Great commentary on the benefits of clover. You gave me the nudge I needed; I just tracked down a source and bought some Durana clover seed to overseed our pastures.
Glad it was helpful! Clovers can make a huge difference.
Excellent video!
Texas is tough for growing clover but we are trying. Rain has been hard to come by the last few years!
Nice work on diluting that k31.
I encourage you to experiment with red river crabgrass in your fescue patch to really make it an all season pasture. It pairs very well and is super palatable in its season.
Planted red river crabgrass this year, though not in the fescue pasture! Hope to do a video on it soon!
@@DowdleFamilyFarms lookin forward to your results
Just put cows on the RR crabgrass. They are loving it, though there's a lot of stuff in there for them to graze.
@@DowdleFamilyFarms friend of mine is a really knowledgeable and successful small dairy and egg farmer in VA who swears by the crab grass. I believe its his primary hot season forage for the milk and meat cattle. he sells big dollar boutique raw milk to the richmond richies under his own label. Must be a good grass.
Thank you for the video. This might be an amateur question, how are you weighing the cattle? I would like to weigh then weakly with what I have planted. Thanks. Keep up the good work! 🇺🇸
We have a scale on the farm that we haven't used in years and it needs some work. There are a couple different ways though. The primary information comes from researchers who weighed the cattle over a period of time. It's not practical for us to weigh them regularly and it stirs the cattle up. But when the calves are sold, we get very specific weights that we can use to do the math. Further, with a lot of the cows coming into the spring underweight, we can watch them fill out quite rapidly. Granted, that's more of a guess, but it echoes much of what the research claims. Franky, the researchers got better results than I claimed.
Thank you for that. I appreciate the response. I think my cows on the homestead were not aged right when I bought them and constantly worrying about the weight gain and the paddocks I cut off to grow for winter grazing. I use bucket feed and premium hay. I chain hatrowed the field and put some clover and rye as an overseed on the native grass. It popped up pretty quick but seems stalled. I think the next step is trying fertilize with something non abrasive. Any thoughts on how to get it to pop. I need to move them and seed the smaller one. Thanks for the info!!
my poor attempts: Added 2000 lbs/acre chicken litter on about 9 acres. drilled some triticalle and peas but it got flooded.. drainage control is underemphasized, have cut ditches as needed. Did overseed elbon rye and red clover, Did Hairy Vetch and Silver River clover mix, that did well, now I have pigweed instead of practically bare dirt. Some parts are very lush. Chop and drop for 7 years, no chemicals or synthetics. Would love to watch some animals enjoy but they have to be managed. Maybe when I can watch it full time.
Silvo pasture and tree hay?
Silvo pasturesure, but tree hay is a lot of work with little to show for it.
what grass mix is best for horses?
I'm not sure. I don't have horses.
Would adding these plants to pasture benefit chickens?
🇬🇧
Hey Rob, I'm curious if you notice how it affects deer visiting the field. We are trying to cheaply attract and hold them on our property. Just wondering if some of these practices might translate to our purposes.
Thanks Andrew
Hey Andrew! Thanks for watching. The deer eat all of the cover crops we grow. A lot of the Durana clover seed is actually sold for deer plots. The deer tend to prefer crops other than the fescue in the permanent pasture shown in this videos, but they love the annual cover crops.
As much as I love Kentucky, I have never personally had success with it.
Why not to let the grass go to seed?
We let the grass go to seed occasionally, but we cows grazing the seed heads creates problems with the cattle. There's a symbiotic relationship with tall fescue and an endophyte that makes it drought and disease resistant. However, that endophyte can have deleterious effects on livestock. The endophyte is concentrated in the youngest growth (closer to the ground) and in the seed heads.
HI ROB, unfortunately, learnt nothing, good articulate speaker , the original performance of cattle must have been poor.
I guess it depends on what you know or don’t know. If you have a monoculture tall fescue pasture then the cattle performance will be poor compared to a diverse pasture.
Would adding these plants to pasture benefit chickens?
🇬🇧