cover crops

[grassfarmer]

We were trying for that 3 crops in two years Sean - sweetclover to silage first summer, the Italian/clover regrowth for fall grazing, silage the sweetclover in June of the 2nd year followed by seeding millet right away.
I think moisture will usually be the challenge with this though. Then you have seeding costs, hence my use of a biennial so that I only need to seed twice in 2 years versus 3 times. I want to zero till and doing that custom is not cheap!
Seed cost is another factor as WR says and that affects my growing choices.

It is a factor with corn too and maybe what you guys are talking about with the high cost of growing corn? We have seed ordered for next year - open pollinated variety at $27 acre versus RR hybrids at close to $90. Will yield less but at substantially less cost and with higher digestability and hence should be way less wastage. Don't see the point in growing extra tons if its all in the stalks and they have the feed value of dead trees.
At least we are in a real good corn growing area now where yields on hybrid corns should be 250 days/acre. I reckon I could potentially get 200 days/acre at a $100/acre less cost

WR try thewholebuncher.com

[smcgrath76]

GF - a large part of our seeding costs are fertilizer. One downside as well is the need for weed control. Seed cost is right around $85 per acre. Our grain crops are not all that high, depending on the mix. Oats are about $4.50, Barley about $5.50, and fall rye has been around $3.25 an acre for a total cost of 13.25 to as high as $20 when grain prices were soaring. The vetch has added another couple of dollars.
I do like corn for breaking the disease cycle of C3 plants, but have not really seen the fertility benefit or OM benefit many others claim. I guess it depends on your starting point.
This year might be our best corn yet, and we are thinking it should run 200 AUGD or maybe more. Still too expensive per day. The difference here is that some of the grain guys are paying amazingly high rents and it makes the land cost out of reach for gaining more acres (I have heard over $100 and up to $140 an acre rents north of town). So far the cost of corn has been too high per AUGD, but the experiment has taught me lots.