Country Folks classifieds for March 19 lists 28 hay for sale ads. In addition to that section are three more hay ads on the “farmer-to-farmer” page. None of those ads mentions forage analysis.
Almost without exception, any farmer I’ve talked to who has purchased out-of-region hay has been provided forage test results by a respected laboratory (granted, of the seller’s choosing). This way buyers know what they’re getting. Sometimes buyers retest to confirm the sellers’ test results.
This is the biggest number of hay ads that I’ve seen in Country Folks this time of year. It is great for prospective hay buyers to have this many wannabe sellers of livestock forage to choose from. All the while they’re praying for their own grazeable roughages to be knee-high by mid-April – and also for winter to not boomerang back.
Launched by that phrase, let’s go to the land where that tool was developed by native people. Aborigines perfected the boomerang. Australian cattlemen were some of the first farmers to use the phrase “sacrifice paddock.” Online, I found: “In Australian agriculture, a ‘sacrifice paddock’ is a designated area, often with a run-down pasture, used to temporarily house livestock, particularly during wet conditions, to protect the main pastures from overgrazing and damage. The primary function of a sacrifice paddock is to allow livestock to be kept off the main pastures during periods when the ground is wet and prone to damage from trampling and pugging – the compaction of soil by hooves.”
Returning to the Northeast, graziers can sacrifice one paddock for the benefit of several others. They do this by delivering harvested hay crop to the sacrificial parcel, thus protecting other parcels from potentially destructive grazing pressure. If farmers don’t have enough of their own hay to stock the sacrificial paddock, my column readers can easily find 31 phone numbers of hay sellers willing to help fill this gap.
In the Northeast, by May 1 pasture is advanced enough to be grazed. There’s abundant browsing before vegetation is munched down to that critical four-inch level. The general recommendation for when to start grazing the most advanced paddocks is when mostly legume stands are 10 to 12 inches tall, or when mostly grass stands are six to eight inches tall.
Regarding the correct time to pull ruminants off a paddock, most grazing gurus believe that four inches tall is the rock-bottom minimum height.
These experts don’t feel that it’s mandatory to graze swards down this short. To them, the four inches is a warning bell. Grazing shorter than that lengthens recovery time, delaying when animals can be returned to the same paddock. Grazing too short reduces that growing season’s total potential mouth-harvestable forage. One successful pasture management practice involves ruminants eating the top third of vegetation, then being moved to the next paddock. In most situations, this avoids hitting that four-inch minimum and it ensures that later-grazed paddocks don’t get too far ahead of their browsing guests.
Uncertain whether pasture will come on slower than normal this year, it’s wise to keep feeding cattle in the barn until pastures achieve the heights mentioned earlier. Often when pasture managers put their livestock on paddocks too early, they actually think their pastures are ready for ruminant guests. They’re wrong.
Grazing gurus generally agree that pastures should not be grazed until plants achieve three or four leaves or six to eight inches’ height. Again, in mostly legume pastures, plants need to be 10 to 12 inches tall. Land grant institution research shows that grazing plants before the third leaf stage reduces total potential mouth-harvested forage yield for that growing season by at least half.
Often grazing one week too early in spring causes a boomerang effect in which three weeks of autumn grazing are lost. The main reason graziers start pasturing their animals prematurely is that they’re running low on feed.
They believe that any way to avoid purchasing someone else’s hay to make it through winter is good business. Let’s agree that shocking pastures when they’re too immature for hoof traffic is a bad idea – then buying someone else’s hay becomes the much lesser of two evils.
Here livestock owners accept that sacrificial paddocks will be chewed up by hooves, with some feed being wasted, trampled into the ground. Wasted feed self-composts into the soil mass, contributing to its health, allowing other paddocks to achieve more desirable height.
I back up this statement with a quote from grazing guru Greg Brann: “A bale fed in early spring – and waiting till the grass is ready – will be worth four bales of summer grass production later, not to mention the fertility transfer back to the soil.” That fertility can come from nutrients produced on someone else’s farm. Four for one is a 300% return on investment even if you have to first buy those bales.
Brann, a second-generation farmer and owner/operator of Big Spring Farm in Kentucky, emphasizes overall diversity on his farm. His efforts to increase diversity apply to livestock as well as forages. He rotationally grazes cattle, sheep and goats in one large herd. A large variety of forages, including both cool- and warm-season species, is strategically seeded for grazing and land management.
His bachelor’s degree in plant and soil science comes from University of Tennessee-Knoxville, with special emphasis on livestock production. In addition to overseeing his own farming operation, he runs a livestock management consulting service, often lecturing at livestock conferences.
Brann explained, “The starting grazing height will vary some according to the species. But generally, you want a minimum of eight inches of growth for most species, and rarely do you want to graze it down any lower than four inches. Maintaining adequate live plant material is critical in keeping the plant growing and thriving.”
He defines over-grazing as “grazing below where most carbohydrates are stored. This results in high utilization, but production can be reduced by as much as two-thirds.”
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