Winter Annual Monocultures for Grazing and Soil Health

0:00 [Music]

0:09 Okay, yeah, well, we'll go through the monoculture species real quick, but then we'll kind of come out here and look for the grazing. Occurred first off, we have here is Willow Creek wheat. If you look at your sheets, Willow Creek is a northern variety. It was developed in Montana, one of the few wheats that haven't been bred to be a dwarf for semi-dwarf.

0:34 And that's a big thing when we start looking at cover crops. We're really after that root system, not just biomass up top, but the root system. A lot of people, probably one of the most common questions I get in the South is, 'Well, can I just use wheat as a cover crop?' And you can. It makes a great cover crop. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you're really after organic matter, building the soil, and getting that root system, we tend to look at things that haven't been bred out for grain production because we took a lot of that residue away. When we took that residue away, we took a lot of that root system away.

1:08 So Willow Creek is one that's been bred more for forage, a little higher biomass. It is a beardless variety. It's also going to be one of your later species. So if you're looking at the grazing aspect, having staggered species and staggered maturity, we can balance that animal's diet a lot better. But it also gets you through some of those gaps. Say if you have winter wheat that's maturing out or rye or triticale is maturing out three weeks early. If you have something that's more later maturity to get you up until your warm season grasses come on, so that's something that we would use, utilizing that in that scenario.

1:50 Obviously, we have monoculture strips here, but we're really about diversity today. This is just really for our identification. So you have anything out of that, or if you give me an opening, you're not going to take up the first twenty minutes. Okay, so here we'll have. If I miss anything, feel free to pitch in here. This is more of a southern wheat. This is an unleaded beardless wheat public variety that we use in the South. One thing that you'd pay attention to, if you're looking at the forage aspect of it, the beard trait is linked to the tillering trait. So when you have beardless, you have less tillering than a

2:39 Bearded species, but if you're looking at the hay production or grazing later or some, we kind of want to get away from that beard. And you'll see that with the barleys and stuff, why white beards are such a problem when you're grazing in later maturity. But this is something that's more southern, a variety I wouldn't say this is a very consistent variety in Nebraska and probably northern Kansas because of this windbreak that we have here. And we see some of that with some species. That's why monument wheat, that is another forage wheat that we're using as you can see, we have a lot more tillering than here because it's bearded. But you know, it's kind of talking about that weed aspect again. If you're really looking for biomass, I'm really not for wheat. But you know, there's some guys that we're not confident in using shredded kales and rides and their rotation. So you know, that kind of keeps that in mind.

3:48 So as a grazing aspect, we'll move on down here to the triticale that we're looking at. This is something that we don't have in production yet, but we're looking at the Montague triticale. It is a beardless triticale, something that's going to be pretty high biomass. I would say if you're looking at rolling a triticale to get something on the ground, this would be necessary, really good. I wouldn't say that it's any leafier than the other varieties even though that it's slightly taller. But if we're also looking at production, say if we were looking at a grain production standpoint, it is standing up pretty good compared to even some of the shorter varieties. So that's something that we like to see. But if you're grazing or you're trying to get that biomass on the ground, that's not such a huge deal.

4:34 With the fridge triticale, this is a public variety, it's been around for a long time. This plot up here did pretty good. It compares very well with 813, which is a protected variety. But that's something that we're going to start running a lot more because of that early forage in the South. A lot of guys are after that early forage up to December where that 813 really stands out. My plots in Oklahoma, they did the 813, got around eight to ten inches tall. And I'm not going to say that's for everybody that's going to get that tall, but it definitely outperformed the fridge, but it's been.

5:25 Bred for a higher biomass so we're stuck. We're looking at that as more production comes on but if you're looking at cheap triticale fringe, it's probably going to be typically your cheapest ridiculous to utilize so give it some recovery time.

5:52 Come back yeah it isn't uncommon to get three of them yeah yeah and our environment yeah and triticale, it's something you can see, you know it is going to cost more than wheat, you know especially if you're using like a public comparing it to like a public wheat variety if you're crazy. The reason why we're here today is we're looking at soil health when we have this extra biomass to work with we have kind of a buffer of issues of overgrazing so you can see by behind yourself how well they laid it down when we got it the densities up how many we'll go ahead and lay it on our hand and balance it playing the midpoint and then you got your eye so when you come in with your livestock you got a real good idea that's your eye.

6:40 And we've done all the analysis for many years and only every species you have out here and sent it on top half bottom half so if your custom grazing right and so there's no law against sticking that bottom portion but the nutrition.

7:09 And that kind of leads into you know talking about bricks and some rexes amino acids sugars your micronutrients in your plant when your grazing if your grazing in the morning versus the afternoon your bricks will vary throughout the day and I'll change my climates to in the conditions but trying to reach peak bricks will give us the most nutrition for the animal and animal gains and a lot of people when they can get to managing where they're moving every day and moving in the afternoon versus moving in the morning they can gain typically around a half a pound extra per day because you're getting that most nutritious plant part of that plant and at the right time so peak photosynthesis what dictates a lot of the bricks plant maturity also dictates a lot of the plant bricks as well have a refractometer along.

8:14 They're going to move their livestock again there's no law against moving under 704 none but you're praying you're moving.

8:21 Them daily, think about this. You're moving them daily morning, what are they gonna do when they get in that bad grades? Right, they're gonna fill up, then they're gonna lay it down, coffee in the afternoon, and they're going to chew their cud and relax and do things that they do. So then you miss the beep.

8:41 Now if you're coming in there for a week, ten days, maybe not as critical if you came in in the morning in the afternoon, but if you're moving daily or moving multiple moves, then all of a sudden it's different in here. And remember it, when that animal's ruminating, he's also producing more heat. So if he's ruminating in the peak afternoon because he grazed in the morning, he's getting that much more heat load because he's doing it. You're grazing in the afternoon, he's ruminating towards the evening, he's cooling off a little bit more. And then next morning, usually typically what Alan Williams and a lot of the other guys, they're trying to get it so they're still a little too hot to rest in the evening, but then they're resting the next morning, and then by eleven o'clock, they are ready to roll again. Once they get into that system, you'll see that they work with that system. But the heat tolerance on moving daily can really change that animal's performance.

9:42 So we'll move down through the species. Brothers party more, yeah okay, you do it opposite to keep them warm. This is a graze all triticale, so this is a bearded triticale. You can see it's not quite as tall as the other species, but it is, it does have a few more leaves even though that it's not as much stamp.

10:09 That's something that we used as a filler in our system. There are species that we run short of occasionally, so it's something that we have leaned on and we want to compare it in our plots. So Winter Max triticale is another one. It's what we call a non-headed variety, and you can see that it'll have a quarter inch to a half inch of a beard on there versus with your regular bearded. So your non-headed varieties are gonna have a shorter beard. Fridge would be considered a non-headed. Your 815 is actually a real beardless. And then we have this down here, this is our spring trip. So these are something that we look at now. These were planted in the fall, and typically you know, we look at spring, spring species, but triticale.

11:01 The spring triticale is particularly have really good cold tolerance and we see this pretty consistently without the shoulder belt that they will overwinter, but spring triticale don't need the vernalization or that cold period to go reproductive so they can get planted in the spring or the fall time. If you have like a corn system and you're looking at switching to a grain system and you didn't get anything in the fall, that's where you could be looking in that February to March timeframe to be getting a spring triticale in because it still has the cold tolerance. But it doesn't necessarily, because some years we warm up in March and we never get cold again, some years we get cold all the way till May so there's something that you can look at in that spring timeframe and it does pretty consistently from Nebraska south. I don't know how it would perform in North Dakota, but yeah, so that's something that we like to utilize a lot in our spring mixtures, but it does do well in the fall as well.

12:06 So we're going to get here to a rye, and rye is the number one cover crop that's used on a large acreage basis, particularly for the corn soybean rotation that's out there. Why is a hardy plant—it's a dirty word in the south, but it's a very hearty plant. It's something that we can plant late. Now, when you're planting late, I wouldn't always expect the biomass out of it, so it's something that if you're trying to achieve cover, rye is something that can accomplish even when you're planting late. Some years we're warm in December, we can get something started and growing in December in Nebraska and it's worked pretty well with rye. But this Aroostook rye, Elbon rye—these are southern variety ryes. The northern rye for us hasn't worked as well in biomass if we're looking at a biomass standpoint. Now up north, the northern rye—that's what they're going to use because it's a lot harder. But the Elbon and the Aroostook seem to have plenty of winning for winter hardiness for us and achieve a lot of biomass. Some people say they've seen differences between the Aroostook and the Elbon. We haven't really noticed, so we'll run kind of both of them simultaneously. It kind of depends on the region that they got developed into because Elbon got developed by the Nobel Research Institute and in Oklahoma.

13:38 Probably the most common one that we run with but there are some places where the rootstock got developed before they knew about El Vaughn or something like that so we'll see some preferences over one over the other but very similar in biomass. Rye is something that's going to tolerate a lot more cold or growing point. It's gonna grow at the coldest point versus these other cereals. It can grow a couple degrees more than your other species but it's not uncommon for us to plant this in December January in the South after really late crop and get it up by February and still fertilize so that's something that we really rely on for getting some root mass and getting some weed control.

14:24 Rye is going to have some of your stronger allelopathy for your weed control. They are working on some developing more triticale and wheats for allelopathy for weed suppression but the allelopathy is leaked out through the roots and it suppresses the weed at germination. Now it won't do large seeds. A lot of people are worried about, you know, is it going to affect my crop? Can I plant close? A lot of your large seeds have a lot of stored energy in that seed so that the more stored energy in that seed allows it to grow through that allelopathy of corn soybeans. We typically don't see that from there. May be some suppression and that may be more carbon to nitrogen ratio early on but typically later we'll see it grow out of it.

15:17 But the allelopathy really affects the germination of small seeded weeds because small seeded weeds like pigweeds, mare's tail, they need available nitrogen right away. They need available moisture right away and they need available sunlight so rye really does a good job of covering that for the early stage, especially your early flushes of pigweeds and mare's tail. And you can come out here and browse around look. I mean you really can't find any other weeds out here. But Jay, anything to add on rye?

15:53 So Yankee right here, this is one that we've kind of developed or came across. It is a little later maturity rye. It's gonna be week to two weeks later, kind of like your triticale. Rye's gonna be the first to head out but it's going to turn rank and you can kind of see over here where the animals graze they did more trampling than they did grazing because it turned rank so once it heads out it.

16:21 Starts losing its quality really fast versus a trend of kale does keep its quality longer and wheat and barley do much better even after they're headed out on quality it just matters whether it's bearded or not but the Yankee rye we came across it, it's a little later maturity so even if you're wanting that late planting December and get the cold tolerance that you wouldn't get out of a barley or a wheat and still kind of prolong your grazing season you can kind of do that with Yankee or I so that's something that we're looking at there.

16:56 You can see here, here's the VNS northern this plot and it's a little bit shorter but it's not a huge difference in this plot but typically on average it's going to produce less than your southern rise in this region.

17:14 Next we get into the Barley's. Barley's it depends on where you're at if you have a high pH high salt. Barley's are really really good option because they tolerate a lot of alkaline soils we'll see this more towards the mountainous regions that the UI's barley is a grain crop particularly because the high pH so if you're looking at a forage standpoint barley is really high in forage but you can see that we run into the beard issue and they'll break off but they just cause a lot of issues once they're headed out so we have to be aware of that and we are utilizing beardless Barley's like here so this is P9 19 we've ran some other varieties very similar to P9 19 but you can see that we just don't run into that issue.

18:07 You can kind of see by it behind that they really did graze pretty good on the Barley's they trampled some but the quality of barley is really really nice even still after it heads out it's just whether it has a beard or not so Saturn barley now we brought that one in as a forage variety I don't know if we're going to stick with it or not because we do have the beard on it but Barley's do tiller really good especially early forage they're very similar and tillering like oats for that early biomass they grow a little faster earlier then your rising your turtles and wheats.

18:47 Another one of those species that we are kind of shocked on average a winter oats 1/2 times out of 10 that winter oats are going to overwinter in Nebraska. There just hasn't been Oaks have been developed for cold tolerance yet they'll

21:57 This is another species that I wouldn't necessarily count on overwintering except for Paulie Austin has a really good job of getting him planted deeper and does and gets him to overwinter there in Lincoln but what he's doing he's planted about two to three inches deep getting as many nodes below the soil as possible.

22:21 See Austrian winter peas is are one of our main ones while winters is another one that we're looking at both of them done very well. I know while winters they're trying to really develop to get them to overwinter.

22:34 Snow coverage can really affect how well winter peas will overwinter if we have a very hard and cold winter that's dry no snow cover they typically will winter kill a lot harder than say if we get a lot of snow cover get them covered early they get insulated in the ground from the snow they can overwinter.

22:59 But forage wise pies are really good to add you can plant winters in the spring and typically that's how they're produced in montana is they plant them early spring they still will get that vernalization to go reproductive but they're a lot longer season than a spring pea so they'll stretch out the full season. If you're looking at planting in the spring you lean more towards a forty ten spring pea that would grow much quicker and get out of the ground quicker.

23:18 So Jay do you have anything to add on peas?

23:40 In the mixer were you using a lot of the bees as pollinators? It's not always about the flower when we're talking pollinators or insects there's nectaries on a lot of peas and they'll have little ports around the leaves and stems where they insects can come and get nectar without having to go to the flower and peas are one of those cow peas have them there's a lot of other legumes that have those nectary sources for pollinators without actually having a flower that they're going to be utilizing so we still yield using the peas quite a bit in our pollinators.

24:30 So right grass this is something that we commonly use in the south with the eastern part of the state in Oklahoma this is something we like for over seeding warm season pastures where it's higher rainfall we can broadcast it if you're utilizing annual ryegrass in a crop production system up here realize you have a smaller window to getting it.

24:53 Terminated because once it makes a head like this and you still terminate it, it's going to make viable seed because annual ryegrass has such a huge root system on it that you have, and you have less biomass to utilize for your chemical application up here. Annual ryegrass is not going to roll if you're looking at trying to roll versus your cereal rye.

25:16 So that's one of the downsides of annual ryegrass if you're looking at the rolling and getting around the chemical, but it is a great soil builder. But realize if it's overwintering you have a smaller window for termination because once it's headed out it will make viable seed versus where cereal rye gets headed out, it's still in the flowering stage you can terminate it pretty easily.

25:40 So Chris, you and Chris Teate out, he does a lot of studies in Iowa. If you have anything to say, I mean feel free to add what you're doing. He's doing a lot of corn in her seating, so feel free to speak up on any of these pieces. I know annual ryegrass has been utilized a lot with Dean on looking at interseeding into corn in that V6 stage to try to get something there in the fall. Has annual ryegrass done pretty well in your plots?

26:22 Better than the rye, and we'll probably. And part of that is annual ryegrass doesn't also need the vernalization, so cereal rye if it gets seeded in March—and some people use this in orchard—you seed cereal rye in March, it needs that vernalization. If it doesn't get that vernalization it will only stay six inches tall all summer long. So where it still may fix that root, but the annual ryegrass would definitely give you that biomass. Grazing-wise, annual ryegrass is a great forage. It's really high in sugar content, however if you have horses you better be careful because of the high sugar content.

27:16 That's probably all I have on annual ryegrass. Next we have the vention, and I really really like vetches. Some people hate them, but I really like them because they are another species that's hardy, that's something that I can rely on and be pretty consistent. It just, they may come back a couple years, and we're looking at other species that are lower hard dormant seed, and that's what's really going on is there's hard dormant.

27:42 Seed anywhere from two to five percent typically in hairy vetches so they can come back if you're in a wheat rotation and you're trying to get around the chemical applications that's something to take into consideration with vetches and a lot of clovers are going to have hard dormant seed so we want to take that into consideration in a corn soybean you know a lot of our chemical applications are taking it out or it's burning it back to the crown and it's coming back later.

28:10 Hairy vetch this is one that we're looking at this was a the AU Merritt so it's an Australian batch we're really kind of interested in looking at trying to get this into production because it seems to have more leafs it also has a lot more blossoms one thing about your batches and your peas most of your nitrogen reduction is going to be done up until it blooms once it starts blooming your nitrogen production is done down here at the end we have wooly pods we fetch.

28:44 And down south when you start getting into Kansas it can overwinter but it's not going to be as high biomass but it's going to bloom about six weeks earlier four to six weeks earlier than a hairy vetch so if you're trying to get something in sooner and get all your your bang for your buck you may look at a wooly pod fetch but it's not going to be as weed suppressing as a regular hairy batch so realize that but if we're staggering species if we're looking at pollinators we may want to look at staggering a woolly pod and a hairy vetch to get that blooming all year round get those predator insects in.

29:21 Montana hairy vetch is one of our main ones it's just a VNS variety but it's produced very well for us it's done well in the south it's done well here in Nebraska and it's something that will probably keep running for a while put the bounty hairy vetch there's another one purple bounty is the one of the earliest blooming of the hairy patches but it's still not as early as fully potty so but you really can't tell the difference of watt if you're looking at planting in the spring wooly pod will be opposite of this plot right now if your plant in the spring wad will out produce hairy vetch when planted in the spring because hairy vetch needs that vernalization they'll sit there forever building a rut before it goes reproductive we're walling pod takes off.

30:15 Faster and that's what we see with species that overwinter. Stuff that grows faster doesn't fix its root right away, so it's not going to be as winter hardy. So pay attention if you're trying to get a really quick forage out there. Realize that you may be giving up some winter hardiness because it's not putting that energy into that root system first. So that's something that we want to take consideration in grazing plans and cover crop plans—how fast that plant's growing. Is it building a root system for us or not? So that's something we want to look at.

30:53 Typically, the more biomass you get in any legume is going to be your higher production in nitrogen, but part of it's going to be tied up in that plant residue as well. We typically say 50/50—50 is going to be in the soil, 50 is going to be in the plant in a mixture. It may be different because it may share with the cereals more, but your woolly pods probably going to produce. If you plant both of them in the winter, woolly pods gonna produce less nitrogen than the hairy vetch because of biomass. Plant woolly pod in the spring, then the hairy vetch the woolly pods probably gonna produce the nitrogen the quickest and the most in the springtime, unless you let the hairy vetch go all year round or all summer long. And then long term it would out produce. But typically, the more biomass peas, spring peas particularly and winter peas—I know I've seen some really good articles in Kansas of guys utilizing peas. Peas will fix about 75% of their nitrogen in the first 75 to 80 days. Now it's not gonna be as much nitrogen as a hairy vetch can produce, but if you can get 40 pounds, 50 pounds of nitrogen roughly in 70 days, that's pretty good. So I've seen some articles in Kansas of guys using fertilizing. That so we'll get moving through here.

32:21 Ten minutes when winter lentils. I don't think they really overwinter very well. They'll still overwinter down south, but they're gonna be lower biomass. They're cheaper per pound than your vetches, but they're going to be lower biomass, lower nitrogen production. And canned really, I really, I'm more about biomass. Even though you have to pay more, you really get more bang for your buck in the vetches. That's pretty much it for this plot.