Mainstar & Spitfire Forage Rape - Agricom Spring 2020

Choosing the right winter feed can really make the difference to your winter lamb or cattle finishing programme. Holly Stirling, Agricom’s Extension Agronomist talks you through two of Agricom’s top forage rape performers - Spitfire and Mainstar.
Mainstar is a modern early maturity rape. Traditionally rape has been used as a summer lamb-finishing crop and ewe-flushing feed. Mainstar has excellent regrowth potential and good frost tolerance extending grazing times from early summer to late winter.
Mainstar has extremely good aphid tolerance. While it’s use won’t completely remove the need to spray for aphids, it will greatly reduce the need within many crops.
Mainstar is a very versatile brassica, being suitable across a wide range of soil fertility and environmental conditions, stock classes and sowing times.
Due to Mainstar’s potential to have an earlier first graze than most other rapes, it has the ability to be grazed up to three times through summer and early autumn, at which time it is typically shut up and carried into winter as a winter feed. The direct drilling of annual ryegrass into this regrowth Mainstar in early-mid autumn is an attractive option. This differs from many existing rapes, which often have longer ripening requirements and are grazed later, providing less opportunity for multiple regrowths.
Due to its early grazing and multiple opportunities to graze regrowth,Mainstar can be sown with AgriTonic plantain, Choice chicory and Relish red clover, providing a spring-sown crop that may last at least 12, if not 18 months.
Spitfire is a modern multi-purpose rape that can be sown in spring for lamb or for cattle finishing or summer dairy grazing, or sown in mid summer to early autumn for autumn and winter grazing.
High yielding, intermediate-height rape
Low stem DM% and a plant maturity of 13-14 weeks
Suitable for summer, autumn and early winter feeding
Excellent aphid tolerance
Spitfire is an intermediate-height rape with a 90-100 day maturity that has excellent yield at first grazing and Spitfire is characterised by three key features; it has excellent aphid tolerance for a rape and has an unusually low stem drymatter (DM %). This characteristic is so pronounced that you can break the stem of Spitfire `close to the ground by hand, with most other rapes you would need a pocket knife to do this. Thirdly, when Spitfire goes to seed it has a pale yellow flower unlike the bright yellow flowers found on traditional rapes.
If using cattle to graze spring sown Spitfire, plan for a single graze as the treading of cattle can reduce regrowth ability. With sheep, plan for at least two grazings, as a third summer grazing may not always occur. If more than two summer grazings are required then Winfred is the better option, especially with cattle.
Key Tips
Grazing stem to the desired level at first grazing is essential as it will never be at a higher quality or easier to graze than at first grazing
Graze Spitfire down removing the leaf and stem to at least a 30 cm stalk residual, this will optimise animal intake and performance per hectare while ensuring plant survival for future drymatter production
Spitfire can be sown with other species such as Tonic plantain, Relish red clover and Asset Italian ryegrass however the higher the yield potential from the paddock at first grazing the more variable the result will be, e.g. this is very successful where the conditions may lead to a lower yielding rape crop