Rushmore Spring Oats: A Dual-Purpose Cover Crop for Spring Grazing and Forage

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0:05 So this is our mid-March planted Rushmore spring oats test plot. So here now it's middle of June. The oats have they're heading out. They're probably in like a soft dough, just tail end of milk stage.

0:19 If cereal rye is the king of cover crops, oats would be the king of spring cover crops. If you're looking for soil building, weed suppression, or forage in the spring planted, whether that's March or April, you're probably talking about

0:33 Oats or an oat base mix. You know, here at Green Cover, we sell a lot of oats. There's just so many great applications. They're extremely friendly to mycorrhizal fungi and building up those beneficial microbes in our soil.

0:47 You know, forage value is excellent, you know, whether you're grazing this out or you wanted to roll it up in a bale, you know, often we put oats with like some peas and do oats and peas or maybe some oats, peas, and barley. Very versatile crop, low cost, and just.

1:00 Something that we use a lot of here at Green Cover. Yeah, and oats, like Nathan said, is very popular. We can use it in the spring, we can use it in the fall. We've even seen some decent growth in it in the summer. So these Rushmores are

1:13 Coming out of the South Dakota breeding program. They're probably the top oats breeding university in the country. Lots of people used to breed oats. South Dakota is one of the few that's still doing it. So this is one of their newest releases, and because of that, it not

1:27 Only has really good growth, but it also has really good disease suppression. Yeah. And as we look out through here, we see very little signs of rust, we see very little signs of disease. So the disease package on these is really good. And this is what is called

1:58 Excellent forage quality for grazing, for rolling it up in a bale, or for silage. And so you can use it for multiple things. And people do. You know, people will grow this for grain or for forage. And so we really like the versatility of these Rushmores.

2:15 We like the disease package on them as well. Yeah, there are definitely other varieties of oats that get taller, but that doesn't necessarily mean more forage. It just might mean more stem. And so, you know, when you're looking at these Rushmores as they're heading out.

2:29 Like the least spacing is really nice to have these nice long blades on them. So a lot of forage value here. Obviously, if you chopped it up, the stem would also be palatable in a silage pile. But just a really nice dual-purpose oat. Because they're a

2:42 A little bit shorter, they're not going to have better standability, which is why that's kind of bred into them for those larger oat yields. You need something that can hold that up. But also that means in a forage setting, it's not going to go down on you if you're looking to chop it or roll it up in a hay bale because when those aggressive spring thunderstorms roll through, you want your feed to stay up. And they'll be great in a mix with peas, with collards, turnips.

3:04 You can make really nice spring grazing mixes or late summer planted mixes with oats as a base as well.