grassfarmer?

[cowman]

About two or three weeks ago there was an article in the Western Producer concerning annual crops and grazing?
The article was about tests done on grazing production vs. mechanical production with a variety of crops such as ryes, barley, oats, triticale as well as some warm season crops like German millet etc.
I found the article interesting in that the findings were that crops grown out to soft dough stage before being taken(mechanical harvest)yielded a much heavier mass than grazed crops(by the way the "grazing" was actually clipping)! In fact about the best grazed crop(barley/oats mix) was only 57% of the grown out crop!
Now that is a big difference?
I wonder if anyone has ever done a comparison on perrenial type grasses? Perhaps this whole grazing thing isn't all its cracked up to be? Maybe it makes more sense to drylot cows and harvest the more mature crop? The article seemed to suggest that for annual grasses there was a definite cost advantage to mature harvest compared to grazing.
Yours thoughts please?

[Yusishen]

cowman, one thing to factor in is the amount of work and input costs to drylot the cows. There is certainly a cost saving to having them out grazing.

[grassfarmer]

Not too clear on the results you speak of Cowman without reading the whole article. I'm reminded of the Scottish Ag college project in the 1980's when they thought they were getting so good at making silage they would try to reverse compensatory gain by shutting the cattle up tight all summer with no grass and feeding them quality silage in a barn all winter and harvesting the compensatory growth then instead. A contendor for the "financial madness award".
The book you should read is "grass productivity" by Andre Voison (sp?)written in 1950's France.
I only read that recently and was amazed at the ignorance of grass most of us have. He prove time and again that well managed "rational" grazing outyields any other crop - even grain. Imagine that - well managed perenial pasture with legumes and no nitrogen input will outyield a barley crop and produce close to a sugar beet crop on a starch equivilant yield basis which have all the costs of seeding and fertilising attached to them.

[cswilson]

Clipping trials can't mimic all the benefits of grazing-hoof action-manure appilication etc. I think with the price of fuel and steel I'll stick with hoof and hide. In fact I sat down one rainy day and did a cashflow projection on buying feed and drylotting a 1,000 cowherd-I was hypothesizing using straw and grain with a short graze period every day to supplement their protein requirement.The problem with drylotting a cowherd too would be the facilities you'd need way more square feet per head than with regular feedlot cattle.

[rkaiser]

Ant of you guys seen this perenial cereal rye? I saw some underseeded in a barley crop in the Eckville Alberta country. Looked like a fantastic catch. The fellow proposes to use it in rotational grazing for about 5 years.

[Cattleman]

The other thing to look at is how efficient are we at harvesting and feeding crops mechanically. When we harvest a crop, how much is left in the field, in the feed yard, and then in the corral or bunk or wherever it was fed out. To do all that work of mechanically harvesting crops to only have 80% of make it into the cattles' rumen, is not that great either. And dry forages fed in a corral are probably even less efficient with all the waste.

[FarmKid]

I think the primary difference between the grazing and silage in this trial is the stage when it was removed. If it was clipped once or more before soft dough, those annual spring cereals won't yield as much and will have little regrowth. If it was grazed at soft dough, it would have very similar forage yield and lower cost. Spring cereals don't produce much regrowth after grazing - perennial grasses and also winter cereals are much better suited to that sort of scenario. Interpretation of research results is very important, because in this case they seem to be comparing apples and oranges.

[cowman]

Well maybe I didn't phrase this whole thing right about how I was thinking. I was wondering if we are defacto eliminating the most productive growth a plant can make by clipping it off before it attempts to make seed? Most gardeners know how a plant "stretches" once it buds and starts to reproduce? Consider grain? Barley at 100 bu/acre produces about 5,000 lb. of very dry matter...just in the head? Not sure about silage in the milk or soft dough stage but I think in my area they are right in that 11 ton area at 60% moisture which equates to about the same dry weight of close to 5,000 lb. dried to 13% moisture? But consider how much the straw weighs? has to be close to another ton/acre?
It seems to me as the plant matures it pounds a lot more weight into itself?
I know my old dad used to never get too excited about cutting hay very early. He figured a cow doesn't need 18% alphalfa and the extra volume(which can be considerable) of 12% was more what he wanted.
I wonder quite often about things like this? I have a quarter of prairie wool that I swear just adds the pounds in November better than any tame lush grass might do in July! I also wonder just how much protein a nursing cow really needs(and actually uses)? I have a whole lot of books on this subject but in reality I have found from personal experience a lot of it is BS!
Back in the seventies I had a field of Timothy,that had been heavily fertilized, cut fairly early and yielded close to 4 tons(it was hard to get it dry and probably baled real borderline tough). Took a feed sample in to my local lab and it came back a very dissappointing 8% protein. I have never had cows do so well and pack on weight like they did from that hay! An old timer told me they never could keep horses working hard on the roads...unless they fed straight timothy! I sometimes question this whole protein thing?

[grassfarmer]

FarmKid that's a very good point about stage of clipping. Voison highlighted a case in his book where some experts conducted an experiment similar to this - a once a year crop harvested against a field grazed by clipping. The parameters they set up were a joke - they clipped the field every 21 days which was fine in May but woefully short of rest later in the season - they were effectively overgrazing a field by clipping it by hand. This was used to "prove" that cutting out yielded grazing. Of course it also doesn't address the animal impact and nutrient cycling contribution that grazing animals make as cswilson pointed out.

[dferguson]

Very interested in this topic! A few years ago, round baled oats for silage at the dough stage, following a tremendous growth spurt. Just begining to turn colour, thought everything was just right. Began to feed it in late fall to lengthen milking season and started the damndest wreck you ever saw. Had it tested and found it was very low in protien and perhaps high in nitrates. Fed it out at low percentage of daily intake and so got rid of it. What was wrong, has anyone else had this experience?

[cswilson]

Cowman the oldtimers called that native pasture a hardening pasture-up here if the fescue gets a light frost it sweetens a bit and cattle really go after it. The old boys used to ship when the manure quits being a 'pie' and starts to stack. Think how easy life would be if we went back the long two's off grass-weren't many needles used then and alot of the marginal grainland would be taken care of-not to mention how good the beef tastes.

[nicolaas]

In my area some of the farmers swathed and baled some of their excess pastures and got about 3/4 bales per acre. WHat is that, not even 1/2 tonne per acre? Pretty dismal return for a $100000 dollar quarter. Say if that 1/4 is financed, you have to make payments of about say $10000 dollars per year. If you can graze a 1/4 for a month total with 200 head, 6000 grazing days - you would have to charge custom grazing fees of $1.67 per cow to break even. I know it cost me $.85 per day /cow for the feed costs of grain,silage,straw,- includes custom silage with a 15% profit to my grain operation. Even add $.40 per day yardage to that, and it still is cheaper. I do not know where all this good pasture is where you can make all this money on, but I know mine cannot seem to match the value of a good silage crop, and you tie up less land- or conversly you can have more cows. It may be better for some people to feed their cows all summer on a sacrificial 1/2 section or so. BUt I guess grazing works for some people - if you have your land paid for and are not a new farmer.

[grassfarmer]

nicolaas, I guess it does depend where you are and the amount of precipitation you normally get. The stocking rate you quote of 6000 AUDs per quarter is only 37.5 AUDs/acre. In my area land that yields this little grass likely wouldn't grow a good silage crop either. Here with intensively managed pasture our best parts are providing over 100 AUD's per acre without fertiliser. That kind of production excites me as someday my whole place can maybe produce that or more - year after year with no fertiliser, reseeding or machinery costs. I don't know about your area but I have heard people around here say you get more production from silage than grass. They don't usually manage their grass, permanently overgraze what they have and don't use fertiliser. But on the silage land they seed with $1/2 million of machinery, put on a pile of fertiliser and harvest when they can get maximum yield. It's not really a fair comparison to say that silage always outyields the grazing in these conditions.

[kpb]

grassfarmer I agree with much of what you have written on this post. However in your last thread you mentioned seeding and silaging with half a million dollars worth of equipment. This does not have to be the case. For many years I have neither seeded nor cut nor silaged my crop--all is custom done. My costs are around $20 per ton in the pit, including seeding, fertilizer, trucking, packing, everything. The only thing I do is cover the pit.

Now if you assume I get 8 tons to the acre, that's 16,000 pounds wet and about 8,000 pounds dry. There is nobody around here that I know of that gets that sort of yield from their grass.

Also I will feed about 5 tons to each of my poor old cows over the winter so it will cost me about $100 to feed them and maybe another $10 for straw so they feel fat. That works out to 50 pounds of silage per day, roughly, and some straw. They don't get fat but they calve fine and re-breed well on the grass. That doesn't include yardage but it's still cheaper than grazing at $30 per month?? It works out to well less than $.70 per day (less than $21 per month) to feed them silage and I don't own any silaging or cultivating machinery. I know it sounds crazy but there you go.

As I said earlier I agree with most of your thoughts about grass and grazing but the numbers I've given sure make me think sometimes.

kpb

[farmers_son]

When you compare your cost of winter feeding to custom grazing you are not only ignoring the cost of yardage but the cost of the land to grow your 8 tons per acre not to mention seed and fertilizer, spray. Based on your costs of hiring custom at $20 in the pit and your yields of 8 tons per acre your custom costs just for putting up silage is a whopping $160 per acre. I have just assumed some costs for seed, land rent or use of your own land, fert and spray which suggest your total costs could be between $275 and $300 per acre. Or the cost of your silage landed in the pit is about $37 per ton or $74 per ton on a dry matter basis . Using these number your winter feed costs would approach $200 per cow. Your winter feeding costs would be about $40 per month without yardage.

I just worked out these numbers because I was interested in how costs looked in a different area.

There is page at Ropin the Web that compares various costs of wintering cows with corn but it compares cereal costs as well:

http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/newslett.nsf/all/wfbg7469

Basically anytime we can eliminate the costs of mechanical harvesting and let the cows harvest the crop themselves there is a cost benefit. It is my impression that kpb also backgrounds calves so wintering your cows with silage may involve some convenience since you are using the tractor and silage wagon anyway. But it sure looks like if you saved some acres for winter grazing for at least part of the winter you could save some of that $160 per acre custom harvesting or reduce your actual cash costs of wintering your cows by $50 per head if you swath grazed for between 2 and 3 months of the winter.