Alfalfa Varieties: Choosing the Right Type for Your Operation

0:03 There's some difference in alfalfa varieties that we use for different purposes. This one is a common variety it's something we have grown on contract forest. When you buy common variety not stated alfalfa you really do take your chances. You really need to know.

0:25 Your source. I've learned some real horror stories of people that bought an alfalfa variety it was completely unsuited. They just bought ENS common alfalfa and ended up with something that just yielded miserably. This is something we have grown forests in South Dakota we do know its origin it's a it's been a.

0:50 Decent performer for us it may not be top of the line but it is very economical and not a bad alfalfa. I am consistently impressed with how well it does for the money.

1:07 As we move over here this next variety, this is our nitro graze alfalfa. This has a recessed crown where the crown is.

1:18 Below ground which makes it more tolerant of hoof traffic and also vehicle traffic. So this tends to hold up better under grazing pressure than either alfalfa. This next alfalfa is our low league. If you are interested in production, the claim to fame of this variety is that it maintains lower.

1:45 Levels of lignin and maturity than other alfalfa types so it's going to be better testing alfalfa if you let it get up to a bloom stage. Very good yield. It has performed very well for us at this point. So if your goal is dry bale hay I would probably gravitate towards this product. There's a definite difference here.

2:14 Is a branch tree. Alfalfa and the idea that you know alfalfa typically has a very deep taproot that nails it down in the soil and seek moisture. What if you have a situation where you have a high water table? Plant can obtain moisture really easily, but once that water table brown.

2:35 Says roots out, then you're left with just a little short tap root that really makes that plant very vulnerable to future droughts and you end up with a shallow rooted alfalfa. So the idea behind the branch root alfalfa plant is that instead of it just short, you'll have lots of side branches on.

3:22 This is an option to give you a little extra margin of wet tolerance now.

3:32 Another alfalfa and you guys can kind of pan around here and maybe look right down at the gap between this is our Australian FL. This is a recessed crown variety but whereas our common is a full dormancy to the Nitro graze and.

3:57 Low leg or fall dormancy for alfalfa and the higher the fall dormancy score, the more productive that alfalfa is, everything else equal. But also everything else equal, the lower the winter hardiness becomes. So fall dormant 7, which this Australian alfalfa is in the past, we would have assumed that this.

4:25 Would never kill you gain a lot of productivity with a Paul Dorman 7 but you also gain a lot of risk of winter kill but this remember is in recessed crown alfalfa so that crown is dead be an above ground where it's exposed to the elements it's below the soil surface so this becomes.

4:51 Winter, look at the height on this. The difference between these two alfalfa types gets bigger and bigger as the season progresses. You had a very severe winter this year, a lot of things winter killed, and this came through our winter like a trooper. So at this moment in time, I'm very excited about the potential for this. Like I said, this type of package in the past has carried a very high risk of winter kill. Me, not paid to gain extra productivity, was the risk of winter kill. I think the recessed crown gives you that little bit of extra margin of safety that we can start pursuing some higher alfalfa yields with this type of product our tradition.