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Summer annuals are a great insurance policy for when we don't get enough rain. Brad goes over his strategy for what to plant, when to plant, and where to plant to get the most out of your summer annuals for your beef or dairy herd.
Hosted by members of the University of Minnesota Extension Beef and Dairy Teams, The Moos Room discusses relevant topics to help beef and dairy producers be more successful. The information is evidence-based and presented as an informal conversation between the hosts and guests.
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Joe Armstrong: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. The OG3 is here and there are no guests, and it feels strange.
Emily Krekelberg: What-what?
Joe: Right, it feels good.
Emily: OG3.
Joe: Yes, it definitely feels good. Before we started recording, Brad made a good point. We need to almost reintroduce ourselves because it's been guest after guest after guest, so we're going to do a little update. We'll start with Brad. What's going on in your life, man?
Brad Heins: So much stuff. It's just been crazy. As usual, we're in May, cows are going to grass, so we've been calving pretty heavily, working on calving projects, calf housing projects, just calving--
Emily: Spending all that grant money.
Brad: All that grant money, yes. Thank you, USDA, for providing that. It's actually been going well. I'm doing well. Happy to be working with calves and cows and got some good students working for me now, so, hey, the grass is green. I even have some Jersey calves at my house again. For those of you that knew I was milking a cow during the pandemic, we are not going to milk a cow during this summer, but we got some Jersey heifers. I'm glad to be out smelling the fresh air of the pasture and the grass.
Joe: It is good. I got to spend a day with Bradley yesterday working on some stuff and just being around cows. It was wonderful. It's good to hear that Brad's back in the cattle game at home as well. He also has sheep at home-
Brad: Yes, there's sheep too.
Joe: -that he's turning into a true farm and he's just accumulating animals there.
Emily: I feel like the sheep thing is going to turn into one of those like this was a 4-H project that got out of hand, like when we talked to Bradley and Mike for years about it.
Joe: I've got a couple people I know that are like that. Shout out to Tim Goldsmith and all his sheep that he didn't initially--
Brad: There is a date set for market on these weathers, so we will have a lamb feed when we're done.
Joe: Perfect.
Emily: The Moos Room lamb roast.
Joe: Thank you. I like that.
Brad: That's right.
Emily: It works.
Joe: All right, Em, what's going on in your life?
Emily: Oh my gosh. Well, it has been just a crazy year with-- I just wrapped up my first year in my new position as a farm safety and health educator. We're just now getting to go out and do more programming. Today, the day that we're recording this, I was out teaching kids about livestock safety and safe animal handling with a one-eyed Holstein steer. It was a barrel of laughs, but really, it was fun to be back out and be teaching. This is a really critical time of year for farm safety stuff too. I love that I can be out having conversations with people again.
That's been really fun, and of course, still just podcasting away. Also, the really cool thing about today, the day that we are recording, it is my eight-year anniversary with Extension.
Brad: Wow.
Joe: Wow. Congratulations. Eight years.
Emily: Yes, thank you.
Joe: Very nice.
Brad: Congrats. Do more work.
Emily: Yes. [laughs] Congratulations. Get back to work. That's cool. I'll get a little weird and reflective here, but just thinking about eight years ago when I started, if somebody would have told me, "Hey, here's all the things you're going to do and you're going to record this really cool podcast with some really awesome colleagues of yours that you really respect and adore, and then you're going to get to do this incredible series for May Mental Health Awareness Month," I would have thought you were crazy, so it's just cool to think about in eight years how much Extension has changed and how much it hasn't at the same time in a good way. We're still getting to do this really cool, impactful work, but in a new way and on new topic areas.
Joe: Life is busy. The good news is, and I think everyone out there, hopefully, they're excited, is that things are loosening up on the restriction side for travel. I'm vaccinated. Emily's vaccinated. Bradley had COVID, unfortunately, at one point, but he's protected and in a study that allows him to check and make sure he still is safe. We're going to be able to travel, so you'll see us actually out and about and actually getting to meet you. I'm excited. I'm super excited to be out and actually talking to people on farm in person. It's going to be a blast.
Emily: I'm curious, because I think of all the famous podcasts, how they'll do live recordings where people literally just come and watch them record, so if you're interested in that, send us an email because if there's enough demand, I can probably convince these two knuckleheads to do it with me.
Joe: Oh yes, we'll get out there for sure.
Brad: Hey, we could do a live podcast on somebody's farm. It'd be cool.
Joe: That'd be wonderful.
Emily: Yes.
Joe: I'd do it. The Moos Room On the Farm.
Brad: The Moos Room From the Parlor or something.
Emily: Yes.
Joe: Yes, from the parlor, I like that.
Emily: I love this. [crosstalk]
Brad: Parlor Chats with The Moos Room.
Joe: I like that. That's a good idea.
Emily: Themoosroom@umn.edu. Send us an email.
Joe: Send us the email. All right. Well, let's get into the topic today. As everyone is fully aware, rain has been short this year and that means that grass is short as well. That goes for grazing dairies. That goes for hay production. That goes for all the beef farmers out there that are just waiting to kick cattle on the grass and there's nothing out there.
Emily: Turf grass growers.
Joe: Yes.
Brad: Everyone.
Joe: Thanks, Em.
Emily: I'll stop now.
Joe: [laughs] Today, we're going to really get into it with Bradley. One of the things that he's doing up at Morris to help them figure out that situation, and that's planting summer annuals. Brad, first of all, let's just talk about what the strategy is for you guys up at Morris when you're using summer annuals.
Brad: I like to think about summer annuals as an insurance policy because you just can't know what the weather is going to be like in July or August. Here we sit on recording day, May 20th, and there's not much rain. It drizzles every now and then out here in Western Minnesota, but we haven't had rain. Our cool season pastures are growing. Alfalfa is growing, but we might not chop alfalfa for silage for another three weeks yet. It's going to get into June and no rain means no regrowth.
I think about it from pasture standpoint with if there's very little rain and pastures are going to be slow to regrowth, what can we do to combat that? Summer annuals are a great thing to plant. We're planting them about now. The last week of May, you can plant them well into second week of June to provide some sort of feed for summertime if we really don't get any rain because that's really what these grass species do, is grow on little rain. That's why we call them warm-season grasses because they grow well in the summertime.
Emily: Is that something that you do, Bradley, every year, or just when you see we have a year coming where we might be a little low on forage available on the pasture?
Brad: We've tried to do it almost every year. Back a while ago, I got some grant money-
Emily: Grant money, grant money, grant money.
Brad: -to study warm season grasses in combination with the cool season. That was seven, eight years ago. Ever since we started to do that, I've seen the benefits of warm-season grasses. We've tried a few different species, but we've been doing it almost every year and we like to have at least 10 acres or so. Some years, we have a lot more of warm-season grasses depending on what we want to do with it. I'm a firm believer in having those options because you just don't know. If a farmer, whether you're beef or dairy, if you have to go buy hay in the middle of summer, especially if now if prices are going to go up oh, man, that's going to be hard on the pocketbook.
Emily: Who says pocketbook anymore?
Brad: Oh, sorry. Am I too old? Am I old-fashioned?
Emily: Yes, we already knew that. Another question that I have, and maybe you were getting there, Joe, and I'm jumping the gun here, cart before the horse, but what are your go-to annuals that you do plant during the warm weather?
Brad: In the past, we've worked with predominantly sorghum-sudangrass and we've worked with teff grass. I like sorghum-sudangrass. That's our go-to right now. It's what we really use a lot in our pastures. It grows fast. It out-competes weeds. For our organic pastures, we need something that will out-compete weeds. It provides a lot of forage and high-quality forage. We use a BMR, so highly digestible forage.
I said teff grass earlier. I like teff. Teff gets weather finicky. If the summer is really hot and dry and you get a little bit of rain, teff grass grows wonderful if the sun comes out. If it's cloudy and the sun doesn't come out, teff grass doesn't do well. If it's cool, teff grass does not do well. That one was a little bit harder. Sorghum-sudangrass will grow if it's cool and rainy too. Not as well as if it's hot and dry. That's been our go-to. I've worked with other producers that have used millets instead of using sorghum-sudangrass. I think there's a lot of different options out there.
Joe: The question to me is where are you planting it? At some point, you don't really want to put it in your established pastures. Where are you planting this annual grass to help yourself out?
Brad: We have a sacrifice area, an out wintering lot, some areas where we out winter heifers or dry cows on some pastures. It works great for reestablishing pastures. We go out into those areas and plant sorghum-sudangrass. You want to go into a worked up ground, you don't want to-- it doesn't do well if you try to no-till it into other existing pasture. I've tried that and it just doesn't work.
You want to go into freshly plowed ground that's been worked up and plant that. You can do that in pastures. We've planted it in fields, there's lots of things you can do. We've had drowned out areas in our crop fields where we have corn silage or alfalfa or something and we can plant some sorghum-sudangrass in the middle of that on a few acres. It grows there as well. There's a lot of different options that you can plant it in. There's not one set thing where you have to plant it and there's lots of different uses that you can do. You can graze it or you can chop it and harvest it really.
Joe: That was my next question is plant it, it's a backup policy basically. Sometimes you don't need it. Your pasture's doing well and you don't need it to graze so you can harvest it. Do you do both? Walk me through what are all the different options you can do with it?
Brad: Well, there's lots of things. You can graze it and you can keep grazing it. If we're going to graze sorghum-sudangrass through the whole summer, we maybe get three good grazings, once in a while we'll get four, but three good grazings throughout the year, typically around the 4th of July, if we plant in mid-May and we'll get one in August and maybe early September. You can also harvest it. If your cool season pastures are doing well, you might be able to chop harvest for silage, maybe that first cutting and then you can let it grow and you can graze it later on in the year. You can do both. It will regrow or you can just let it grow for silage and harvest a good sorghum-sudan silage, which we've done as well.
The stuff grows 11 to 12 feet tall if you plant it now and harvest it at time when you harvest corn silage, maybe end of August, early September. It's tall stuff and provides a lot of forage. It's really good quality it in silo as well. One thing I like to check for is nitrate. I do a nitrate test when we ensile the sorghum-sudan just to make sure that there's not a lot of nitrates. Otherwise, we have lots of issues with nitrate poisoning in cattle. We haven't had any issues though. We've done both, grazed it and chopped it.
Joe: I didn't realize it could grow that tall, and it would still be good to harvest at that time.
Brad: Still good to harvest. Yes, we've mixed some with corn silage, like I said, some drowned out areas. You maybe have five or six acres of drowned out areas as well. We just chop through it and it just gets mixed in with the corn silage. It is good stuff.
Joe: That's cool. That's a good way to use it. Well, I don't know if we need to know a whole lot else. What else is there to know?
Brad: Well, one last thing, some people might get concerned about sorghum-sudangrass. We hear about prussic acid poisoning, or poisoning in cattle. The biggest thing for that in the fall is-- and during the whole year is we graze it, it has to be at least three feet tall. Then you shouldn't have any issues. If you're grazing more than three feet tall, and if you have a frost in the fall, you should wait at least two weeks to graze it and then you won't have any issue. We've done it every year. If it freezes, it'll kill off or set back the sorghum-sudangrass, but you can go in there and graze it a couple of weeks after a killing frost and all the prussic acid has gone out of there.
Haven't had any issues. That's why people use Japanese millet or pearl millet, things like that because they don't have to worry about that prussic acid poisoning. I think if you manage it well there's no big issue and it provides good feed and lots of it.
Joe: Yes, I'm a big fan and yes, the prussic acid, if you follow those two rules, I've never seen anyone have a problem. Well, there you go. That's a strategy for helping you and having insurance policy from when we are short on grass, when we are short on rain. Summer annuals, especially in those sacrifice areas that you probably all have anyway. Great technique, great way to go. We'll cut it there. If you have questions, comments, scathing rebuttals about this episode or anything else, or if you want to see a live show as we get back out in the world, please email themoossroom@umn.edu.
Emily: That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu.
Joe: You can catch us on Facebook @umnbeef and @umndairy. We have two YouTube channels, University of Minnesota Extension Dairy and Beef Channel, and University of Minnesota Farm Safety and Health, two YouTube channels to check us out on. Twitter. We also have Twitter @umnfarmsafety and @umnmoosroom. Thank you for listening, everybody. We'll catch you next week.
Emily: Oh my gosh, bye.
Brad: Bye.
Emily: Ooh, short and sweet. Of course, for the last month, we've been recording five-day long episodes.
[laughter]
Brad: I know, exactly.
Joe: Every time someone's listening, they're like, "Are they ever going to stop talking?"
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