Triticale Swath Grazing

[perfecho]

Would like input on when best to cut triticale for swath/bale grazing? First year I have used...thinking it is best to do even before milk stage, but....???
Last year I sowed barley July 16th due to no moisture and swathed due to frost before the heads had a chance to fill at all, but found the cattle ate up everything....and it seemed to go further than I expected. think I will do same with oats next time, as cutting during dough stage, leaves a bit of an undesirable stalk.
So...thinking cutting earlier is more beneficial......thoughts anyone???

[grassfarmer]

I found this interesting article that challenges conventional thinking on cutting stage of cereal crops.

[URL="http://www.canadiancattlemen.ca/2013/06/21/mature-cereal-forage-is-better-than-you-might-think/"]http://http://www.canadiancattlemen.ca/2013/06/21/mature-cereal-forage-is-better-than-you-might-think/[/URL]

[perfecho]

Interesting, thanks. With the later matured oats I had done the year before, I found they left more of the straw than I would have liked, where as in the early barley, they cleaned up nicely.....and the triticale doesn't seem quite as appetizing...but then, I won't be the one eating it.

[grassfarmer]

And despite the article I posted earlier may still be better as it never looked at clean up in a swath grazing situation - i'm assuming it was fed to cattle that had nothing else to eat. A friend of mine at Sylvan lake has the best swath grazing system I've ever seen - seeds mainly oats on July 1st and swaths @October 1st. Year after year he gets big crops of high quality feed and high utilisation - his comment about guys seeding and swathing earlier is that his cows wouldn't graze through deep snow to get to straw and grain either. The key part of his strategy is the land he uses is grainland that is wet - usually too wet to seed in May so this gives him enough moisture to seed in July. It wouldn't work on drier land as you likely wouldn't get the yields.
We will bale oat/hairy vetch greenfeed today that wasn't at the milk stage yet. Probably too early but hey, we finally got a dry week so we took the chance. I'm more interested in the regrowth for fall grazing than the crop as we have surplus winter feed already.

[smcgrath76]

Quite a bit of R&D on this in Alberta. Try the AB Ag site. I know some of the triticale swath grazing projects they did around Duffield had yields over 300 cow days per acre, with a better nutrient profile and less risk than corn. I think they were swathing at hard dough, for a little higher E content.

[grassfarmer]

If you check out the winter grazing video series I posted before there were a number featuring Kevin Porter's experiences with swath grazing triticale at Duffield.

Go to: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOUwfF01x2YVXr2cBui0KgskBRwZsKwMr
and look through the playlist on the right hand side.