Twister Hybrid Turnip for Spring and Summer Grazing
Walk through a Twister hybrid turnip test plot planted in mid-April and see how this rapeseed x turnip cross performs by late June. Learn why hybrid turnips produce more leaf and less bulb than purple top varieties, how they regrow after grazing, and why pairing them with grasses or cereals makes them work better in a grazing mix.
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0:00 [Music]
0:05 All right. Well, this is our Twister hybrid turnup test plot. This plot was planted mid-April. It's now late June, and the plot looks really good. This is a new product for us.
0:17 In general, your hybrid turnips are a fair bit different, but they're still a turnip. So it's still a true biannual. This is going to grow vegetatively all summer long. If you were to graze it, it would regrow really.
0:28 Planted in a monoculture like this, we're going to start seeing some heat stress as we head into July and August in the hot summers here in Nebraska. Turnips don't love that. They would be much better off.
0:39 If they had some companion plants like some sorghums or a millet to shade them. This is a great product on the forage side of things if you're looking for grazing, especially on the regrowth.
0:52 The hybrid turnups are really something. We've really liked how they performed. The Twister specifically, it's replaced in our Vivvant hybrid turnup and we look forward to carrying this product going forward. We think
1:02 There's some improved benefits to it. And what makes this such a great grazing plant is they take a purple top turnup and they cross it with a kind of an Asian leaf lettuce and they get mostly leaf and no bulb. In fact, if you
1:16 Compare it to a purple top turnip, you can see the difference in the bulbs. And again, if you're concerned about this being a choking hazard for animals, this is not going to be a choking hazard at all. You know, leaf size very
1:43 Genetics. And in New Zealand, they graze sheep and they regraze sheep and they regraze and regraze. That's just part of their program. So they developed these brassicas for extreme ability to regrow, high nutritional content. Going to cost.
1:58 A little bit more than just your regular old purple top. But if you're really grazing and managing your grazing well, definitely worth the extra money.
2:07 Likely this is not something you're going to want to plant though as a
2:09 Monoculture in a grazing setting because your animals are going to get pretty washy. This is very high protein, high moisture. So you're going to want to put this in a mix with some other things, likely some cereals.
2:18 Or in the summertime warm season grasses to balance that ration out. But yes, if we were to graze this off or mow this off, this plot would come roaring back and aggressively regrowing. The turnups, you know, they winter kill around that 10° mark. So here in Nebraska, they're really not going to survive your winter. They're going to be more of an annual. As you go farther south, though, this would then start to be more of a biannual, and you'd have to contend with the spring growth as well.