400 BMR Sorghum: Male Sterile Forage for Hay, Grazing & Silage
See why 400 BMR's male sterile trait makes it one of the most flexible sorghum options. Learn how it keeps sugars in the stems instead of locking them in hard seed coats, why animals prefer it for grazing and winter feed, and how you can use it for hay, silage, or standing forage—all at a price cheaper than conventional sorghums.
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0:00 [Music]
0:12 Hey I'm standing in front of our 400 BMR. It's a fairly versatile product here.
0:20 All of our sorghum's—this is one of our highest quality products because it is a male sterile. And you say, wait a minute, don't I want grain on the product? Well it—
0:33 Depends, problem with having grain on a forage sorghum is that so much of the nutrition is locked inside these hard berries and you say well I thought you said this was.
0:45 Sterile, how come you have green on it? What's sterile on this product is the male part, the anthers that produce the pollen. So this does not produce its own fertile pollen. So because we're in a
1:00 Plot surrounded by other sorghums that can pollinate it. You can change a male sterile into a grain producing hybrids. So it's flexible. You can mix some other product in with it and to serve as a
1:15 Poland owner and make it a grain producer you can see it puts on a really nice grain head if grain is your goal.
1:23 The problem with grain production is that sorghums have this hard seed coat.
1:30 And a lot of your nutrition is locked inside that hard seed coat. A male sterile will photosynthesize at the same rate as a grain producer produces sugar, just as much, but instead of locking that.
2:02 So with a male sterile, this can be put up for hay, it can be grazed, or it can be chopped and put up for silage. It has a lot of flexibility that way.
2:15 Another nice thing about a male sterile.
2:18 Is that if you don't have this big weight up at the top of the plant it stands a lot better because this is a very sweet stem product animals tend to eat the stems.
2:33 It's used quite a bit for standing winter feed. It's also one of our least expensive BM ours on a per acre basis, so a very very flexible product has a lot of uses and it's priced right.
2:53 Said very economical for a brown midrib and actually priced cheaper than a lot of conventional products so you can get that high quality at it and a lot of flexibility for a very minimal cost.