Pasture?

[Mona Howard]

Can anybody recommend a permanent pasture grass mix that they like?

We would like to put one of our pastures into permanant pasture. If we like

the way that goes, maybe do some others. We are in Central Virginia but areas

like NC and such would probably have similar conditions. Someone said they liked

one of the Southern States brand mixes but I have been to the website and can't

find anything. Help?

[Cynthia P]

Call your extension agent or local ag store and ask for a recommendation for your area. Find someone that grazes sheep in your area and see what they use. We use current pasture and have overseeded with orchard grass, ladino clover, red clover, white clover, birdsfoot trefoil and some perrenial rye grass.

 

It will depend on how you manage your pasture as well, grazing rotationally or continual grazing.

 

Any thoughts from those of you inthe area? Bill F do you have any suggestions for seed companies in that area? I'm sure the Canadian ones are different so i'm hesitant to recommend anything

 

cynthia

[Bill Fosher]

What species to use is going to depend on how you want to manage the land and what is there now, combined with climate, soil types, wetness, etc., etc.

 

If you go and buy a bag of "pasture mix" from a farm store, you're going to get a lot of cheap stuff that comes up quickly and may not last (such as annual ryegrass) and some that you might wish wouldn't last but is virtually impossible to get rid of (such as tall fescue). Each of these species have their specific uses, but can be a royal pain in the butt if you're not after their particular qualities. Most pasture mixes are the agronomic equivalent of throwing a lot of stuff at the wall and hoping that enough sticks.

 

If the site is currently in a sod, the least expensive way to renovate it will be to lime it (if needed, and it almost always is -- a soil test will confirm), spread a little bit of clover seed (3 lbs to the acre or so), and then mob stock it, letting the sheep or cattle trample the seed into the sod. Mob stocking requires at least 500 ewes to the acre, and 1000 would be better. But you can do it with much smaller numbers of animals by fencing them in very small paddocks -- 100 ewes on a tenth of an acre is the same as 1000 ewes to the acre. You'll probably need to move them daily or even twice a day at that sort of stocking rate. What will regrow will be the native plants and grasses that can stand grazing pressure, plus some clover to provide them with a source of nitrogen. In my experience, this has always produced very productive pasture.

 

If the site is currently crop land, you're in for a longer and more expensive renovation cycle, and you'd be much better off to contact your extension office or the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, which may even have some cost sharing available if your proposed practices meet their criteria.

 

My strongest advice is to avoid tillage if you possibly can. It's expensive, leaves a soil that is fragile and vulnerable, and costs you organic matter.

[Rebecca, Irena Farm]

You can get much of the benefit of "true" mob stocking by just overstocking non-productive sheep (dry ewes, "school sheep", even open replacement ewes) until the effect you want is achieved. Not everyone has thousands of sheep.

 

We've renovated our pastures by grazing them until they are flat, then resting for at least two months, then grazing hard again, then resting. No seeding, although I'd love to put down a hardy improved legume of some sort to raise the protein levels. That will be the next step towards a true grass-based operation here. It's true that standard pasture fare isn't that great, but there's something to be said for decent forage that you can always count on to be there, even if you have a bad year and can't do anything but move sheep around proactively.

 

Anyway, we follow a program of liming and fertilizing lightly every four months - lime, wait two months, then do fertilizing. I actually just do it with a tow-behind spreader because I've got the fields on separate schedules, so I'm only doing a three-acre field. If I possibly can, I follow the sheep with lime. Lime+disintegrating plant roots+worms/sheep poop critters=organic matter, your best friend in the pasture renovation game.

 

This is the scheme I developed to work with our crazy weather here. You have very similar weather, I think (I'm near Danville). It also saves the fragile clay soil here from compaction by a heavy tractor or dump truck.

 

When we first started, or when we open a new paddock, the "grass" is almost solid broomstraw. I offer a high-protein feed in small amounts, put out a block and minerals high in calcium, and let the sheep do the rest. I mow right to the ground when the sheep have grazed it down to an inch or so and we've moved them out. In two months we do it again - usually there's only half as much broomstraw, if that.

 

In the two years we've been doing this, the paddocks have turned from solid broomstraw in most places. Even places where we've only briefly strip grazed a couple of times, and haven't put down any soil enhancements, it's vastly improved - our landlord remarked on this the first time he mowed the top field. He thought we had overseeded. He was amazed that noobs like us actually knew what we were doing. Well, we don't, I just had a good mentor in this respect when we first got into it (although he didn't believe in lime).

[Bill Fosher]

Becca,

 

I'm not familiar with broom straw; it sounds like you've come up with a system that works very well to eliminate it though. If you can do it without daily moves, then hurray!

 

As I pointed out, you don't need thousands of sheep to get a mob stocking effect, you just need a high stocking density. Theoretically, if you could make enclosures small enough, you could get all the benefits of mob stocking out of 10 or so sheep. Below that point, there might not be enough hoof action to break up thatch and ensure good ground contact with dead grass and seed.

 

The system you're advocating will work in humid areas like the East Coast. It'll work best if it's done when the grass is dormant or growing slowly so that the sheep don't do too much damage to the desirable plants by grazing regrowth.

[Rebecca, Irena Farm]

Old pasture are here typically has the following characteristics:

 

Open growth, exposed, inorganic, compacted soil from cycles of rain and warmth, all through the year (no winter rest)

Broomstraw - I think it's called broomsedge other places, this stuff:

Low soil calcium levels and low pH

Brushy growth such as brambles, sweet gums, and evergreens, requiring longer stocking times (and hungrier sheep) to graze down

Native forage plants that thrive during multiple stress seasons, but are low nutritive value (such as native lespedeza)

 

All this means that drastically lower stocking rates achieve the same results, with some adjustments as I've mentioned (offering a high protein ration in small amounts is important to get them craving the bulk of the low nutritive value forage). The other key is to get the icky plants to work for you as they die back, to add organic matter. Then remember that OM is your lifeblood - and you lose OM at a rapid rate every time the daytime temps are above, uh, I think it's the mid-60sF. Which is a lot of the year here!

 

Your enemies are tillage and compaction. Mechanical compaction is, of course, stuff like driving vehicles over your soil. Natural compaction happens as the soil loses humus (humus is different from compost - it's what's left after compost has reached a relatively stable state). Clay particles are so small and relatively heavy for their size that they compact quickly without the assist of OM to decrease the soil density.

 

Even if you're luck enough to have a heavy thatch, resist the urge to till. It's well worth it. It takes pasture many years to recover from tillage unless you've got a TON of money to put in regular soil enhancement and my crunchy nature cringes at the thought of that (depending on brought in enhancements) unless there's just no saving the land otherwise.

 

With all this in mind, you have to pick your overseeding stock carefully, as Bill mentioned. It has to be able to start rapidly to take advantage of the short season of cool wet weather we have. It's basically now, assuming we get sufficient rain to establish anything. A lot of people I know actually start with an annual cool season grass first to establish an OM base, then overseed the following season that will meet the requirements you have for a perennial in that pasture.

 

Good luck!

[TAC2]

Hi Mona! We're in Central Virginia too. The extension agent (VA Tech Extension) has lots of good information on their website. Unfortunately, most of it is for cattle. And they most often recommend fescue --- which I personally don't like. It can and often does contain an endophyte which can be bad for pregnant mares and ewes. You can buy endophyte free fescue seed, but it is much more expensive.

 

Timothy is nice, but doesn't grow too well here. Orchard grass blends are nice too, but it is a clumping grass and horses will munch it down and/or pull it up. Sheep don't seem to like it much. Lespedeza is a spreading legume that the goats and sheep like, but it is weed that will spread to lawn areas and can be hard to eradicate.

 

To further complicate matters there are cool season and warm season grasses. You will need to know when you will utilize this pasture, what its microclimate is like and if you want to make hay. Once you figure this out, you can then find the appropriate grass.

 

A local old timer used to say we are grass farmers, not livestock farmers...and to an extent that is true. Read information on the VA Tech site, ask questions of your local extension officer and visit the local feed stores that carry pasture blends. Most often the available blends are fescue/orchard grass/clover; orchard grass, orchard grass/clover, endophyte free fescue, and fescue/clover. There are several internet sites that will also provide other prairie type grasses like little and big bluestem (clumping, makes hay), sheep fescue (warm season, no hay), bermuda, bluegrass (cool season, shade tolerant, no hay), sedges (shade tolerant, no hay, may have "burr" seed heads), genetically modified grasses and patented grasses like the "World Feeder Bermuda."

 

~ Tru

Laingcroft

[Mona Howard]

Thank you Tru,

We asked around from people in this area and then tried to make our best pick. For one pasture we

threw together two different pasture mixes.

(1) 64/93% Orchardgrass

19.86% Timothy

9.12% Bluegrass

.34% Other crop seed ( in other words: Surprise!!)

(2) 28.09% Orchardgrass

19.83% Bluegrass

18.28% Perennial Rye

14.95% Tall Fescue

9.99% Timothy

3.28% Ladino clover

1.69% Surprise!

To this we added some more perennial rye.

We had a nice rain and it has come up and looks promising but we'll have to see. We will let this pasture sit till

next spring or summer depending.

The second pasture we fell back on our old routine of annual rye. We threw in some perennial this year just to

see if it does come back next year by itself. It's come on nicely too. Usually this will support out small flock most

of the winter if we rotate them around. Right now they are on an endophyte free pasture that is doing well just now.

This particular blend is a bit of a dissappointment. It grows fantastic for about six weeks in fall and spring and just

sits there the rest of the year. It doesn't like heat or cold. It needs cool and moist to do anything at all. It's indestructable

though. We always throw the sheep on it when we have no rain and have to feed hay. They pick at what little there is

but never manage to kill it. Mona