Cool Season Sheep and Goat Grazing Mix: What to Plant and How to Graze It

0:04 All right. So, this is our cool season sheep and goat mix. You know, here at Green Cover, we work with all sorts of different customers and a large segment of our customers have those small ruminants on their operation. And so, if that's you and

0:18 You're looking for spring or fall forage options, this is the mix for you. So it's a fairly diverse mix, but when we're talking about sheep and goats specifically, we're going to design those mixes to be heavier on the broadleaves, on the forbs. In this case, it's annuals, so we're talking

0:35 More about brassicas and broadleaves because that's what those animals crave. Now, we still have the oats and the barley out here because sheep and goats graze grass as well, but compared to maybe a mix designed to graze cattle, we're going to see a lot higher representation in the broadleaves.

0:50 This is a really nice-looking collard plant. The phacelia, there's some turnips out here, there's a pretty strong rate of the spring peas as well, and I think maybe some clover.

1:00 We're bringing a lot of diversity to the table. We're looking to produce a lot of forage. This mix.

1:06 Was planted middle of April. It's now middle of June. I would have been wanting to graze this probably a month ago almost already. You know, plant, give it 30 to 45 days, start grazing. This mix would regrow really well, and you could probably graze it pretty well into the summer. So, as we take it.

1:22 Farther north, your grazing into the summer can go longer. But it's probably going to pretty well peter out here at the end of the month of June, and you'd be looking to go to the kind of the next mix in the system, but you know, if you're a sheep and goat producer and you're looking for

1:35 That annual forage for the spring, so either spring or fall, this is a really good mix to consider. Yeah, and it's not going to get so tall, you know, so like doesn't have triticale or rye in it or something that's going to get tall and, you know, they those animals will feel a little

2:05 The barley and the oats, but the brassicas look really good. I mean, you can hardly tell they've been mowed. They just regrowed that well. So brassicas tend to really have an excellent ability to regrow, and for that reason they're really good for the small ruminants where we want to get

2:22 Multiple grazings if possible. But a lot of that is going to depend on how you graze it. If the first time you graze it, you take it clear down to the ground, it's just going to take a lot longer to come back. It's not going to have near as much energy to do that.

2:36 Proper grazing management is going to be the key to really maximizing the forage potential of these mixes. And that's, you know, that's true when we're talking about any livestock class, but especially sheep and goats because if you stay on something and you allow them to graze that regrowth, with those small

2:51 Mouths, sheep and goats are able to browse off every little bit of regrowth, and they will because that's high-energy grazing, but it really hurts the plants. So proper rotational grazing is important. And I think you tend to get a lot more parasite issues too when they're grazing so close to the ground. So again, cover crop mixes are great, but it still requires really high-level management to properly utilize them.