stockpiled grass, best varieties to use?

[max]

Hi I was wondering what your opinions were on the best types of grass mixtures to use to stockpile grass for early spring grazing. We live in central Alberta South of Stettler.
We were hoping to implement a plan that consist of turning pairs onto old grass in late April and graze for 3-4 weeks then rest the grass until next spring.
Any comments would be welcomed
Thanks.

[per]

I am a long ways from an expert on this subject because I have plenty of native pasture that stockpiles nice and have fall rye and crested wheat to go on early in the spring. We have banked meadow brome and but I am not sure of the nutrition and it seems that if we hit it early it is pretty slow to recover. I have a neighbor that for several years has banked a brome (both smooth and meadow)/cicer milkvetch paddock that looks excellent from the road. You need to get Grassfarmers attention on this subject.

[grassfarmer]

I'm a long ways from an expert too Per and we are talking quite different country than mine. What works here is pretty much anything that grows - the species will adapt to your management and the ones that do well will thrive and the ones that don't will die out. Given that you are in drier country than me the full year rest is probably a good idea. We always lightly graze the "calving grass" in late June/early July the previous year to ensure it's regrowth they will be eating the next spring. I never do the same thing on a piece of land two years running so we always alternate pastures. You might run into problems grazing the same pasture every spring depending how hard you graze it. They will happily eat all the grass - old and new as well as all your litter if you aren't careful and that might take too much off in a drier climate.
If you have dry area species like crested wheatgrass I wonder because they grow early in the season if the quality of the held over grass would be low? The legumes are generally poor choices from a nutrition point of view as you lose the leafs but it provides an excellent way to reseed the legumes and they will still contribute their N fixing role.
Certainly seems a good idea to bank grass for the spring - we turned cows onto it on March 28th this year and they will remain on banked until June 1st to let the other pastures recover from some drought stress.