It’s not too late to double-crop a cool-season forage seeding onto available land to capture some more feed tonnage and/or establish a winter cover crop.
Daniel Olson, Founder of Forage Innovations, Lena, Wis., advises seeding cool-season annuals 30-45 days before the anticipated first frost date. “So, if you typically have your first frost in the first week of October, you’re looking at seeding in the second half of August,” Olson suggested.
With today’s high grain prices and tight forage supply, Olson said a fall forage seeding is one way to stretch feed stocks following harvest of wheat, seed corn and even corn silage. He suggested late-summer planting is actually preferrable for cool-season forages, because too-warm conditions will encourage them to channel their resources to reproduction. “We want to be heading into cooler conditions when we plant these forages, so they build sugars and plant mass instead of seed heads,” explained Olson.
The choice and variety of fall forage will depend on the type of feed desired, and the goal for the crop. “What you don’t want to do is make a lot of feed that you can’t use,” Olson said. Options for the Midwest and Northeast include oats, wheat, triticale, barley, cereal rye and dwarf brassicas (turnips, radishes, kale).
According to a University of Nebraska agronomy bulletin, fall forage yields for small-grain forages are negatively correlated with winter hardiness. So, if the goal is to take a fall cutting or create a small fall grazing window, growers would be best-served planting oats or spring varieties of triticale, wheat or barley.
When the calendar flips to September, forage seeding still is possible, but the Nebraska experts suggest switching to winter-hardy species for spring harvest or no-till applications. They cited research indicating that 1,000 growing degree days (base 32°F) following fall planting will maximize spring yield potential of either winter triticale or cereal rye. Using Nebraska climate data, that would suggest a planting date no later than September 16.
Olson noted it is possible to seed fall forages even later, but at the expense of spring yield. “Winter rye literally can be seeded until the ground freezes, even in December,” he said. “But because it will have little time to establish root tillering, it cannot be expected to have yields equivalent to those of a stand planted earlier in the fall.” He added spring yields of all forages are dependent on their degree of tillering, and that most tillering occurs in the fall.
Cereal rye matures faster than winter triticale or wheat. For all of these species, feed quality is highly influenced by maturity. As dry matter and tonnage go up, nutritional quality goes down. Total digestible nutrients (TDN) of small-grain forages at boot stage is about 70-80%. But by early dough stage, the TDN drops to 50-60%.
Finally, growth performance of double-cropped forages is dependent on nitrogen availability. If the previous crop did not leave adequate nitrogen stores, biomass yield will be improved with nitrogen fertilization. The Nebraska experts suggest forages will significantly respond to the first 30-50 lb. N/acre under normal growing conditions.
