![]() “Too often when we get into these annuals we end up with a huge mess of feed that’s impossible to harvest – you’re trying to dry something that is never going to dry down – or the quality profile doesn’t fit what you’re trying to do,” Daniel says. What harvest method are you going to use? Grazing? Baling? Haylage? Ensiling?.What your goals for feed quality? What animal groups will you be feeding it to?.The first step is to answer two key questions: “Small grains provide great opportunities to build soil health and grow some amazing forage at the same time,” Daniel says. Daniel is a seventh generation dairy farmer and forage consultant of Forage Innovations who has been increasingly working with all kinds of warm season annuals like sorghum sudan, millet and teff in combination with cool season annuals and small-grain crops to keep the ground covered year round and produce a reliable stream of forage for both his own and his clients’ cattle. “What really intrigues me is thinking outside of the box of alfalfa and corn,” Daniel Olson says. But more and more corn silage hardly seems like a sustainable solution because it leaves the ground bare for so many months of the year. ![]() Increasingly erratic weather events are making long-lived plantings of alfalfa trickier to establish and manage successfully for cattle and dairy forage.
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