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Pasture and forage grasses will be the focus of much attention by farmers and acreage owners in the next couple of weeks as a new growing season begins.
If you are in a situation where you need more pasture grasses, particularly those grasses that do well in July and August, Bruce Anderson, UNL Extension Forage Specialists, suggests that you might experiment with a new annual forage grass called Teff. You should not gamble the entire farm on it, but consider giving it a try.
Teff is an annual, hot weather cereal and hay crop originally from Ethiopia. It has a reputation for rapid seed germination and fast growth, as well as being well adapted to dry climates. However, it has virtually no tolerance for freezing temperatures. Thus, it needs to be planted between mid-May and early August in the Midwest.
For most farms and ranches, teff is an alternative to growing foxtail millets, such as German and Siberian millet. Compared to millet, teff may be slightly finer stemmed and even faster developing, often starting to head in fifty to sixty days. As a single cutting, it probably won’t yield any more than foxtail millet, but tess will regrow. This can be good or bad, depending on how it fits into the crop rotation.
Teff has very tiny seeds. It only should be planted one-eighth to one-quarter inch deep, so be careful if using a drill. On tilled ground, a cultipacker seeder or even broadcasting probably works better than a drill.
In terms of forage quality, teff tends to contain more crude protein than millets. Its protein level, though, is heavily influenced by nitrogen availability. It could be a good crop for recovering excess nitrates but might not do as well on low fertility soils.
Experience shows that teff makes an excellent horse hay and also is well liked by cattle, sheep and other livestock.
Another question is regarding the fertilization of pastures. According to Bruce Anderson, pasture grasses are stimulated by nitrogen fertilizer just like other crops. By combining fertilizer with efficient harvest of the extra growth, maximum efficiency can be obtained. As an example, if you fertilize pastures in spring and then let animals graze continuously on a single pasture throughout the season, most of the extra growth is wasted. They trample some of the grass, manure and foul more of the grass, bed down on other parts of the pasture, and refuse to eat some of the grass. Eventually, less than one-third of the grass produced will end up in the mouth and stomach of your livestock.
To make fertilizer pay, manage grazing so more of what you grow actually gets eaten. This will happen if you subdivide pastures with some cross-fences and control when and where your animals graze. Animals should be given access to no more than one-fourth of your pasture at a time, and preferably less. Then graze off about one-half of the growth before moving to another subdivision.
Another step is to time fertilization to stimulate grass growth when you need it. Many pastures grow faster than we can use them in spring. Why then should you fertilize everything in early spring to grow more grass than you can use at that time. Instead, fertilize some pasture now, but wait until mid May to fertilizer the other pastures for extra summer growth. If it happens to be dry at that time you can save your fertilizer dollars since they will do little good without rain.
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