Feeding cattle in fall to prep for winter

[Andy Carson]

The leaves are starting to change here and I have been thinking about how to transition my cattle to thier winter digs and some other details. A few questions have come up.

1) How do you modify a rotational grazing system when you know you won’t get another “rotation” before winter hits? I have still been advancing a temperorary fenceline into new grass daily, but haven’t been moving the follow-up line. I figure that if they are not going to get back to this ground again this year, then why move it? I wonder, though, how having a short spurt of continuous grazing in the fall will effect growth in the spring. What do others do?

2) It seems that no matter how I store grass of crop residue, there is some loss of quality over time. This makes me think that perhaps it would be wise to fatten up my cattle for winter to some degree. Is this a common practice? How fat is too fat? It seems to go on easier than it comes off…

3) I have a bunch of sunflower stalks that I am planning on feeding as fodder of some sort this winter. I get different numbers on how much nutrition this actually provides. The general consensus puts it somewhere between wheat straw and corn stover in nutritional value. High fiber, low protein. I have two questions here. I have been throwing a few stalks over the fence as I harvest the sunflowers, they tend to eat the leaves (still green) and ignore the stalks… I am thinking I will have to chop or shred this to make it interesting. Or perhaps it will become more intersting when there isn’t green grass too… Do cattle people usually chop corn stover? Next, I am curious how I ought to determine how to ration this feed with the hay I already have. I suppose I give them as much stalks as they want (it’s free) and ration in a small amount of hay? I can adjust up of down on the hay if they look like they are loosing weight… If I have a diet that is too low in protein, will they loose muscle faster than fat and then I have more work to do in spring before I need to do spring work? I am curious waht others do.

[bendube]

Hi andy,
Is the grass regrowing at all? Are the cattle going back to graze it? If they are, it may be worth backfencing. In the fall, grasses are focusing their energies of initiating new tillers and building up sugar reserves for the winter, so interfering with this process could reduce growth next spring, or increase winterkill or weed competition. If the grass is done growing (which it shouldn’t be for a few more weeks) you can’t really “overgraze” it, though pugging or too short of a residual could still damage your stand.

On the other hand, overgrazing some areas in the fall could have some benefits, for instance if you plan to frost-seed clover or other legumes, or if you don’t make hay and want to reduce excess growth from the spring flush. You could try to build your “Grazing wedge” in the fall by leaving a greater residual in some places than others.

These things also depend a lot on species composition: legumes tend to be much more affected by late-fall grazing than grasses, and some grasses tend to better utilize late fall reserves for greening up earlier in the spring. Brome grass, for us at least, will green up extremely early if it gets substantial fall rest.
I’m not quite sure how grazing it after dormancy will affect this.

Our working cattle eat only hay (the lowest quality that we have) over the winter so they tend to maintain or gain in condition over winter, even if its late-cut grass.
Are your animals full grown or still growing?

Hope some of that helps, or at least gets you thinking about some of these issues.

Best,
Ben

[Carl Russell]

Andy, I think it is important to think of grazing as a soil management tool, not just an animal feeding tool. Making small paddocks certainly rations the feed, but more importantly it helps to spread out the nutrient cycling so that the grazing doesn’t deplete fertility in one area and build it up in others.

To that end when the regrowth falls behind consumption, it is legitimate to start feeding your animals from other sources. This way the impact from keeping animals on the site is minimized by the fact that you are importing nutrients and continuing to distribute them with the animals.

The other reason to start feeding them is that if they do clip it down too far, then the desirable species will have depleted stores in the spring, which will give advantage to your undesirables.

If your desire is to have your land feed your animals for a longer growing season, fertility is a very big component to that. Taking measures to utilize this growing season and your rotation to import nutrients may add cost now, but will pay dividends in the future. Getting all you can out of what is there now can actually set you back on attaining the long term objective……. I know this from experience….. I have seen the results of both choices….. which is not altogether a bad result……. seeing is believing.

Carl

[Kevin Cunningham]

After rotating our mixed herd through grass all season long (twice a day moves!) we are finaly starting to dry out. This time of year if I don’t irrigate everything is dusty dry. I am trying something new this year. I am now keeping the herd stationary in a sacrifice area and feeding out my hay. I hope to collect some of the manure as it is a small paddock and let my pastures fully recover. If I irrigate now I will hopefully get a jump on our short fall grass flush before winter and then stockpile pasture for winter grazing. I am very new to grazing so I guess I will see if this works. My steers seem to be maintaining condition. They are not gaining but not losing either. They are in a seperate sacrifice zone and are getting the premium hay because I still try to yoke them regulary and burning more calories. But honestly the steers that don’t work still seem to be gaining just a bit on the grass hay.

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