White Clover Types for Pasture and Food Plots: Ladino, Intermediate, and Dutch Strains
Dale Strickler walks you through different white clover varieties—Dutch, Ladino, intermediate hybrids, Louisiana, and Renovation—and shows how they perform in both irrigated and dryland conditions. You'll see why white clover is a forage quality standard for livestock and wildlife, and learn how to use it as a living mulch in your mixes.
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0:03 Okay what we have here is a number of different types of white clover and these are all considered either giant or ladino strains or intermediate strains which is accommodate as a hybrid between Dutch white clover and a
0:23 Dynamite Dinah clover is about three times as productive as the Dutch white clover. We do use quite a bit of Dutch white clover as a ground cover for vineyards or vegetable crops, very non-productive.
0:39 Low growing, let's persistent, and people that want a perennial ground cover but don't want to have to plow or manage that vegetation really like Dutch white clover. Very tough, very effective for that.
0:56 Purpose for pasture purposes however white clover types and towards either removing the Dino or the intermediate types. This is the typical the Dino here, this middle one here is Louisiana more heat tolerant clover and this one is.
1:25 Renovation which came out of the Nobel Research Foundation. Now you can see they're very similar plants where they have water but if you pan around and guys you can get your camera over there and see that's where our sprinkler or.
1:52 Center-pivot sprinkler did not reach, so that is true dryland. This has been irrigated and you can see the difference in the establishment and the production. The especially the renovation formed a very good stand, seem to tolerate the dry.
2:11 Conditions much better than the other white flowers and that's one reason we're very excited about renovation white clover. White clover as a species is a standard for forage quality among legumes. It has a
2:51 High protein content, high attractiveness rating to deer because of its extreme palatability, very nutritious, builds good antlers. One other advantage of the white ladino clovers is that it spreads by stolons, that's these little runners that.
3:13 creep along the ground and take root every so often and so a thin stand of Ladino clover or any other white clover over time will thicken up and fill in and one reason that people like it as a living mulch you can see there is no
3:33 Room for a weed seedling to get started in here so it's very competitive against weeds but not very competitive against other established forage grasses so it's really a. I try to put a little bit of a Latino or white clover and just about.
3:50 Every forage mix I established about a pound or so an acre is plenty, doesn't cost very much. And you can see there is not a single photon of wasted sunlight that's striking this. Every little bit of sunlight is being utilized. You mix this with some tall forage, some taller forage species, you get a really effective canopy. This never seems to detract from the yield of the other components. It only adds yield to the system. Not very high tonnage by itself, doesn't have very good drought or heat tolerance, but it always fills in the gaps that the other species leave between.