Impact Forage Collards for Grazing: Cold and Heat Tolerance in One Brassica

0:00 [Music]

0:06 All right. Well, we are standing in one of our brassica test plots here in our April 15th planted test plots. This is impact forage collards. So this is a true biannual plant. So planted April 15th, it's now tail end of June.

0:23 This plant is still just growing leaves. The collards cannot and will not make a seed head in the first year. They have to over winter. Now collards winterkill around 5 to 10°. So here in Nebraska, they're never going to make a seed head. They're going to winterkill.

0:37 Out and be done. But they will be green deep into the fall. And so this is a product that honestly I use a lot of collards and this particular plot is probably drilled a little too thick. We were just talking about, we just the seed all the seeds we put out came up. So.

0:55 They are a little thick, but where you can see the proper looking plant, you know, they can just get these really nice big leaves. And so if you're looking for a forage option, I think collards have a lot of fits, you know, whether we're talking about a spring.

1:10 Forage option, something in the fall for a stockpile mix, or honestly even in warm season kind of summer forage mixes, I often put a little collards in those because they seem to tolerate the heat pretty well and they bring that brassica component and just really good forage.

1:23 with a lot of regrowth ability.

1:25 Yeah. And the reason they tolerate the heat really well is this is a hybrid collard. So it has components from a Georgia southern collard which as its name implies comes from Georgia.

1:37 They took a Georgia southern collard and it got crossed with either a kale or a rape seed which brings in more cold tolerance. So this probably has as big a range of both cold and heat tolerance as anything that we have. And given the fact that it's so highly nutritious and

2:10 Choking concerns. You don't have any issues with having giant holes in the ground when these things rot and decompose. All of the energy is going into these leaves and it regrows really well too. So most of these brassicas will do that. But these hybrids like

2:26 The collards, like some of our hybrid turnips and kale have really been bred to regrow very well. So if you're doing any type of rotational grazing, you really want to spend just a little extra. It's not that much more. You're talking, you know, you're talking, you

2:40 Know, a few dimes per acre more. Get these hybrids in your mixes because they're going to regrow really well and the nutritional component is just going to be hard to beat.

2:51 Yeah, that's the great thing about Brass is when we're putting them in a mix.

2:53 We're not talking about more than like a pound per acre. So, you know, you upgrade a little bit and you get a lot of bang for the buck. So it's definitely a good deal. This is something to consider in your next forage mix.