Safflower for Cover Crops and Grazing: Baldy vs. Standard

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0:12 All right let's look at safflower now. Dale we've got two different kinds of safflower here. First of all just safflower in general, is it's a little bit like sunflower in that it's kind of that heat tolerant.

0:25 Season and like you talked about it, probably has a little flower. It's an oilseed crop just like sunflowers are. Also that's the commercial use of growing this. Everybody's probably cooked with safflower oil. It's a very good cooking oil.

0:42 Safflower has some good characteristics like that it's got a good root system, probably not quite as massive as a sunflower but I think it's close. It does some really good characteristics in the soil with the root system. The thing that has always kind of held people back I

0:57 I think maybe from using a lot of safflower is that when this stuff is fully mature it really kind of looks like a thistle. I mean this isn't quite so bad to spin safflower over here but it's starting to get kind of prickly and that's why I'm letting you hold it.

1:12 Yeah and I'm holding this one. It's good to be the boss. Yeah, when safflower really gets mature, normally safflower gets very spiny, prickly, almost like a missile. So this one, it is called Baldy, and it's completely smooth. I mean, I can just go like this and even all the.

1:28 Way up to recede production I can go like this and not burn my hands at all. It does not have those projections, those spines, and so this is what it's called Baldy through for a reason because it doesn't have all those little sharp hairlike projections. This was developed.

1:44 A few years ago by Montana State University and we've always liked safflower. It's a nutritious plant, it's highly fine so we wanted always put it in grazing mixes but always kind of hesitated because guys think they're gray's and thistles and you can't really.

2:16 Smooth leaf, it's palatable, it's nutritious, and so we would use this one if we're going to put it out in a grazing situation. We could use either one if you're going to do it in a cover crop situation. I will tell you if you're one of those guys that likes walking.

2:30 Through your cover crop fields a lot. Especially later on you'll want to have this one because this stuff when it's mature plants have spines for the same reason. There's something desirable inside. So when you take safflower and you remove the spines you make a very.

2:55 Palpable turn livestock in this is one of the very first plants that they'll go and select. It really is very, very powerful and you know, for an April planet it's got some decent biomass and decent growth. You could plant this in March or April like we did here but you.

3:18 Could also plant this would be a great plant to put out in a normal planted mix as well because this is not going to freeze out until it probably drops into the low 20s. So you're going to get extended growth into November on this plant planted with some oats and some peas, turnips, really a good addition to that late summer play. That nice happening to make seed. The seed is high in protein, high in oil, very nutritious to livestock foliage and seed.