How to Extend the Grazing Season

Kathryn: 00:08

Hello, and welcome to the Talking Crop Podcast. My name is Kathryn Seebruck, and I'm a commercial agriculture educator with University of Illinois Extension serving Jo Daviess, Stephenson, and Winnebago Counties. Talking Crop is a row crop production podcast with episodes occurring every other week during the growing season between May and September. In each episode, I bring on a guest speaker to discuss topics related to their areas of expertise. In today's episode, I'm joined by Travis Meteer, the Illinois Extension Beef Cattle Specialist.

Kathryn: 00:38

Now you may be asking yourself, why have a Beef Cattle Specialist on a crop production podcast? That's a great question. It's because where I'm located up in extreme Northwest Illinois, we are heavy in cattle production with Jo Daviess County consistently ranking first and head of beef cattle in Illinois. Many of these livestock producers are also row crop producers. Travis and I discuss how producers can extend the grazing season by stockpiling forage and by grazing cover crops and cornstalks.

Kathryn: 01:06

In the episode description, you'll find some articles from Travis that go into some detail on each of these strategies, as well as the PDF that we mentioned of cover crops that can be used for forage. This is a really great resource as it's essentially a one stop shop for all the information you need on these species in terms of when to plant, what seeding rate to use, cautions relating to their use for forage, and so on. I also want to remind folks with crop insurance that the USDA Risk Management Agency has determined that cover crops can be grazed or chopped for silage, haylage, or baleage. For the next and penultimate episode of this season of Talking Crop, I will be joined by two researchers from the University of Illinois crop physiology lab, Jared Fender and Sam Leskanich, to discuss their work on strip tilling and short corn. That episode will air on Wednesday, September 3. Now please enjoy this episode of Talking Crop, How to Extend the Grazing Season with Travis Meteer. Travis, hello, and welcome to the Talking Crop Podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today to talk about extending the grazing season. You are a little bit of, the odd man out since we do typically talk to corn and soybean producers on the podcast. But, of course, in my area, at least, many corn and soybean producers up here also are, livestock producers.

Kathryn: 02:21

So I'm really excited to talk to you about extending the grazing season today. So again, welcome.

Travis: 02:27

Yeah. Thanks, Kathryn. Glad to be with you.

Kathryn: 02:31

We're talking about the grazing season extension basically. The first main big question here is why extend the grazing season? What is the big benefit to extending that grazing season beyond maybe what's typical for most producers?

Travis: 02:46

Yes. It's a great question first off. I think the big thing here is we need to focus on profitability. As we look at the cost side of a beef cow calf enterprise, we know that over 60% of the total cost for beef cow calf producers is feed cost. If we can reduce feed cost, we can increase profitability of our operation.

Travis: 03:13

One of the big costs from a feed standpoint is harvested and stored feeds. As we think about extending the grazing season and what that does, if we can keep a cow out harvesting her own feed, keep her grazing more days of the year, that's less harvested, less stored feeds that we have to feed, and in turn, that helps us save cost and allow for more profitability. That's the big picture here. Every day that a cow can be out grazing, harvesting our own feed, we're adding profitability to our beef cow calf enterprise.

Kathryn: 03:47

Even with grazing, there's added costs, of course, with fencing and with water. If you're extending the grazing season, you're extending the use of these inputs essentially. Does extending the grazing season have a higher return then? Basically, the costs weigh out positively even when considering those extra added costs for fencing and water?

Travis: 04:09

Yeah, I think a lot of times people are like, well, when we look at the potential hurdles of extending the grazing season, sometimes there are thoughts that, well, maybe I don't have water on this field, or maybe I don't have the best fence here. I think what we've really seen though is technology has come to us a little bit. We've got geared reels and poly wire and step in posts, and we've even got more solar applications now for solar pumps and water and things like that. High density plastic pipe to just pipe some water farther. I'll be honest, hauling water is like my least favorite job in the world, so I'm always hesitant to recommend that.

Travis: 04:57

But in the big scheme of things, and we can talk a little bit about the economics of each practice as we get into them, but we know that for feeding hay, it's going to come out to about $2 a day. If we can graze something and allow that cow to harvest her own feed, in most cases, we're looking at something at 60¢ or less per head per day. So there's a pretty large incentive there to keep the cow out grazing, even if we have to invest in some infrastructure. Producers over time see that, that's real money. If we're looking at the long game, beef cow, we're not really trading cows, A lot of our beef cow calf enterprise operations in Illinois, if we're in the cow calf business, we're kind of in it for the long game. Investing a little bit in infrastructure could be a long term investment. But it doesn't take a lot. The thing that I want to encourage producers to do is, in the fall and early winter, cattle will trail farther to water because the temperatures are cooler, their requirement for water is a little less than it would be in the summertime when it's really hot. You can make things work with simple fencing systems and simple watering systems, and still utilize this opportunity, whether it is stockpile grass, whether it is cover crops, whether it is cornstalk grazing, all of these options, I think you can utilize with not a ton of investment. You can make it what you want.

Kathryn: 06:42

You mentioned economics, which I know is the big reason for extending the grazing season. And we'll talk a little bit, like you said, also about the economics of each of the practices that we'll jump into. I'm in the area of agronomy, not livestock production. I'm very familiar with the thin margins that agronomic producers face, and less so about the profitability of raising cattle. I would assume it's very similar and you have thin margins, but I was just curious when it comes to extending the grazing season and the economic benefits of it, can that be the difference between a profit and a loss, or is it more of like a nice supplement to the returns for a cattle producer?

Travis: 07:21

Yeah, I smile right now as we talk about this because we're actually in record profitability for beef cow calf enterprise right now. We've got record high cattle markets, and so it's easy to make a lot of different things work with beef cattle right now. You started the show by saying most of our row crop folks have cattle or livestock in your area. Right now, that's a really good thing, because in other parts of the state where they don't have livestock as an enterprise, those farm budgets don't look near as good. Our beef cow calf enterprises and our livestock side is contributing positively to the cash flow and the economics and returns to farms right now.

Travis: 08:06

We're just in a part of the cattle cycle where we've got record low cow numbers, record low calves supplied to the feed yard. That's a big factor that's ongoing. And I think that's a big part of why we've seen record cattle prices and record profitability is because where we are in the cattle cycle. Things change. But if we hit the rewind button and go back to 2020, and in the midst of COVID, we were having discussions about whether this was the collapse of really all commodity markets. I would say the livestock sector was hurt extremely bad. We've gone just here in the last five years, we've gone from super tough situations, a lot of red ink on our cattle operations to now we've got some profitability. I guess to get back to the point, beef cow calf producers are not used to record profitability that we're seeing today. What we've preached for the longest time, and we know that these prices won't stay around forever. So it's really important to continue to focus on how can you control cost, how can you minimize cost to allow the most profitability in your cow calf operation as you can. These strategies no matter what the cattle price are, are going to be valuable strategies to making sure that you're staying competitive in the market that you're in, and that you're allowing yourself to be as profitable as possible.

Kathryn: 09:49

Awesome. I'm glad that we'll be able to talk about each of these today. Hopefully whether you're hurting or not in the future, you can start now, but of course, utilize it in the future to buffer yourself in those, like you said, those market situations that may not might not be as profitable. I want to talk about three main strategies for extending the grazing season. The first being stockpiling.

Kathryn: 10:14

I like the name of this one. I think it's a little bit of a misnomer because to me it sounds like you're stockpiling stored feed, but that's not the case. Can you talk about what stockpiling is?

Travis: 10:24

Yeah. When we talk about stockpiling, what we're really talking about is cool season grasses that we rest and allow them to grow, and is about building that feed reserve in the pasture. So every time we have to start the tractor and load the bale and take it to the feeder and feed it to the cow and take the net wrap off, that's a lot of labor, a lot of diesel fuel. If we can just move a fence and allow that cow to graze stockpiled grass, it's just a lower cost situation. It's probably better for the land too, if we think about it. Keeping the animals out on the land, keeping the nutrients where they are on the pasture instead of taking them off and transporting them to other places. I would say that most conversations around stockpiling grass probably focused on fescue, but you can stockpile most cool season forages. I think fescue dominates this conversation because of how well it holds its feed value into the winter. Many times fescue gets a bad reputation as a forage because animals tend to not prefer it, it has poor palatability. In the summertime, the endophyte infected fescue or kind of the original Kentucky 31 fescue variety contains an endophyte, which does cause vasoconstriction and reduce blood flow in the animal, that's the symptom. A lot of times you'll see the tips of tails sloughed off of cows, maybe even the tips of their ears, and sometimes you'll have some lameness and foot problems in extreme scenarios. The grass is less palatable, it does have some side effects, and so in the summer, in the middle of our grazing season, it's probably the least preferred forage by those cows, and it can have some negative health impacts. When we get to that fall and early winter period, those side effects, those symptoms of fescue are gone. For the most part, in the fall, we're growing leafy tissue. We don't have a bunch of seed head present, which the seed heads tend to be a concentrated source of that endophyte. We've got this feed stuff that keeps very well, the palatability in the fall is better, and the cows will go to it because those symptoms of exacerbating heat stress or reducing blood flow are less negative to the cow when the temperatures are cooler. Everybody wants dislike fescue as a grass in the summer, but it really shines in the fall and early winter period. And so again, stockpiling that fescue can allow those cows to graze in that late fall and early winter period when many of our grasses are going dormant or are dormant. During the growing season where we've got active growth of our cool seasons, and if we have warm seasons in our pasture, or maybe warm season annuals that we've planted, we've got this abundant forage growth. I think the challenge is what happens when that forage stops growing. That's really where stockpiling fescue and stockpiling cool seasons can allow you the opportunity to keep grazing when we get into those shorter days, those really cooler cold days, where we know that those forages aren't actively growing.

Kathryn: 14:00

Are there any management practices that can be done leading up into the fall to increase that stockpiled forage to increase that quantity?

Travis: 14:09

Yep. Good question. The management of stockpiling is the big part. A lot of times in our area you're going to want to start in early to mid August, you want to clip those pastures or remove the cattle, go in and graze it down to reset the forage growth. If you don't reset the forage, you'll end up with more mature forage that's less palatable. Going in and mowing or clipping or going in with a high stock density graze and getting everything pushed back down in that early August period, and then removing the animals to allow that forage to regrowth is really important.

Travis: 14:51

Now, a lot of times it's common to go in with a small level of nitrogen supplementation, maybe 50 pounds actual end, and that can increase or stimulate that forage to grow in the fall and benefit in terms of stockpiles. A lot of times that extra 50 pounds in it stimulates the grass to grow, you get a yield response a lot of times another 1,000, 1,250 pounds of dry matter per acre from that supplementation of nitrogen. That helps you build your stockpile and create more grazing days for those cows in the fall and winter. The thing we don't wanna do is return to that pasture too early. If you start there in August, you apply a little nitrogen, you might be looking over at that field in October and be like, man, that's some pretty good grass.

Travis: 15:45

Here's an opportunity to get back on it. What I encourage producers to do is admire it, but leave it there for a while. Turn your head the other way and look at the corn stock field, and the grazing opportunities that exist there in October and November. If you allow that stockpile fescue or cool season, the opportunity to just leave it alone until about December 1, you've really maximized the amount of growth that you're going to have. A lot of times we would encourage producers to find other alternative grazing opportunities and then return to those stockpile pastures around the first of December.

Travis: 16:28

Many times with the modern beef cow, many of these cows are weighing 1,300, 1,400 pounds. Once we get there in December 1, and we start to graze that stockpile, know, those cows are eating 30 to 35 pounds of dry matter per head per day. And so based on our ton of dry matter, if we don't fertilize, or maybe we've got close to 3,000 pounds of dry matter that are available to those cows, we've really only got about thirty to sixty days of grazing depending on how we manage that. I think maybe part of this discussion is once we get there, I think one of the best returns to management would be strip grazing. Cows can go, they're selective grazers. If you allow them access to the whole field or the whole pasture of stockpile, they're gonna go through and nip off the very tops, and they're going to trample the whole field. They're going trample a fair amount of it. If you do have snow or wet, muddy environmental conditions, you can really lose a lot of the forage just due to trample and travel of those cows. Strip grazing those pastures, our rule of thumb is that increases the utilization rate up to about 70%. If we were continuous grazing those pastures, many times we're only going to utilize about 40% of that stockpile. For investing not only our time, but maybe even some fertilizer, we want to maximize that grazing day by increasing the utilization. I would recommend that producers plan to strip graze, and you can develop a strip based on your time. It doesn't have to be a daily move, you can allocate more forage if you can't be there every day to move the fence, but just allowing them access to the whole thing, you're going to lose more of your feed value and dry matter to trample. We want to utilize it with strip grazing.

Kathryn: 18:42

This sounds like a really great option for extending the growing season. There sounds like there's just a lot of benefits to it. I always have to ask and wonder, are there any disadvantages to stockpiling?

Travis: 18:52

I think if we're in a drought scenario, and you're just really committed to stockpiling, you might be feeding your stored feeds already, right? So there could be some disadvantages from an economic standpoint to waiting too much. I would say this though, if we run it, environmental conditions can be a make or break here. If we don't get fall moisture, we don't get the yields that we've just talked about earlier, that can be a detrimental thing to our situation. I would say in any grazing scenario we're probably proliferating the fescue if we don't graze it down. We're actually fertilizing and setting it up for those cool seasons to come back in and take over our stand. If you want really diverse pastures, you might not want to stockpile the same pasture every year, you may want to look at rotating. Again, there are some challenges with fescue. So again, if you're managing for fescue, and you don't like fescue in the other months of the year, we're talking about a short timeframe here. I'm kind of grasping at negatives, because I think the positives are so much better than the negatives here. I guess you could be a critic and say that you're managing a little bit more for fescue or that you're somewhat dependent on the weather to make sure that the stockpiled feed pans out from a budget standpoint versus a bale of hay. We get that bale of hay and put it in the shed and we kind of know what it is, what it costs us. Depending on how we feed it, it could go faster, we could waste more, but you could do a really good job of everything we just talked about for stockpiling, run into a drought, dry fall, not get much yield. And then the wet weather comes in early winter and you track a bunch of it into the ground. Then in that scenario, it doesn't look as ideal as we've just talked. I'd say the seasonality usually is favorable for stockpiling here in the Midwest.

Kathryn: 21:16

Grasping for negatives is a good problem to have. Like you said, lots of positives to stockpiling. I wanted to switch gears to the next tactic for extending the grazing season, which is utilizing cover crops. I love this idea.

Kathryn: 21:31

Again, as an agronomic educator, I think cover crops have a lot of really great benefits. When I learned that they can be grazed for forage, that was even more exciting, Just tacking on those, that list of benefits that they offer. I especially like it for cattle producers because they typically will also be producing crops that they can harvest a little bit early. That gives them an opportunity to take more advantage of the cover crop by getting it established earlier than a typical row crop producer typically can. Cereal rye is of course the most common cover crop species.

Kathryn: 22:06

It's a great starter species. And is it also a good option for a grazed cover crop?

Travis: 22:13

Yeah, I see the same thing you see, Kathryn. Cereal rye is just so hardy, it's easy. We can plant it late and still get a stand, and then it really takes off in the early spring in terms of biomass production or that forage yield. I think cereal rye is a good option. I think that I probably wouldn't testify that that's the only thing that we need to use in a grazing scenario.

Travis: 22:41

I also think that maybe the challenge or big hurdle for me, and some of my own experience, is that if we run into a really wet spring, grazing these cover crops in early spring just becomes such a challenge. I mentioned the trample that we could have in stockpile. It's even more so an issue in these spring cover crops. I've seen more producers go to actually harvesting cereal rye, triticale, wheat, some of these overwintering cover crops or cereal grains as baleage, or actually chopping and bagging them and making more or less a silage hay out of these cover crops. I think the reason that I see more of that is just because you put that time and effort into the crop, and you don't want to just track it all into the ground and create a mud lot. I think that becomes the challenge. We can stock less cows per acre to try to trample less, but this cereal rye grows so fast, you almost can't have enough cows out there if the conditions are right. If you run into the start of a dry, like in West Central Illinois this year, we started out a little dry, and it was great weather to graze that overwintering cover crop, and you could almost not have enough cows out there to keep up with the growth. I think that there's just, whatever mother nature throws you, it's another thing to manage. It's hard to predict, we can't predict the weather.

Travis: 24:25

I think what we're really trying to do though, and I want to back up quite a ways, we're trying to stop soil erosion most times. I know we may have a plethora of cover crop goals and benefits, and grazing or forage production might be one of them. But in the very simplest form, we're trying to plant something that's going to grow and hold the soil. That is something we can accomplish with cereal rye. Then if we get the forage side out of it, whether we can graze it if the conditions are right, or if we have to go in and maybe mechanically harvest it once it grows up for baleage, I think there's options there, we just need to have some flexibility as a producer. If you're planting it, and you're only going to be able to harvest it by grazing, you just need to be aware that you need to have an exit strategy if the weather conditions aren't fit for grazing.

Kathryn: 25:29

Right, and it's funny because in row crops and talking to farmers about cover crop education, we always harp that you have to have a management plan in place to get those benefits. It sounds like that's definitely the case, even if you are utilizing cover crops as a forage. You have to have a plan in place before that cover crop is even in the ground. You made a really great point about understanding what options you have for termination and making sure you're managing that appropriately so that that termination option isn't gonna turn around and shoot you in the foot, so to speak. I think that was a great point to make.

Travis: 26:02

Yeah, I want to chime in real quick. I think it's important to be clear, I'm a huge fan of using cover crops for forage. Oftentimes in our conversations with producers, we lay out the worst case scenarios for them right in our conversations so that they're not taken back, or that they're not prepared for these worst case scenarios. We want to put everything on the table for them. But from my lens and my view, I think the beef cattle producers that I'm working with and livestock owners that are using cover crops to produce forage, they have this step ahead of everyone else.

Travis: 26:43

Because like I mentioned, not only are there benefits to reducing soil erosion and some soil health goals, but we're getting forage production off of this really highly productive land that we have. It's almost an off season crop. Yes, it requires management. Yes, it requires time, labor, thought, all the things that a crop requires. But it's an opportunity to not have to go out and find more hay acres.

Travis: 27:13

It's an opportunity to not have to worry about producing or buying more feed on someone else's land, and land cost is so high, how can we better utilize the acreage that we have? I think cover crops are a big answer there, especially if we can use it for livestock feed.

Kathryn: 27:32

Sure. Those are great points. Like you said, we are kind of doom and gloom sometimes when it comes to talking to producers, because we do want to be upfront and make sure it doesn't always sound like rainbows and sunshine because we want to make sure that everyone understands the risks. But like you said, there's myriad benefits to these. One of the things with cover crops that can be a little bit overwhelming, especially for someone just starting out, is the many options that there are and understanding which ones are going to be best for your situation.

Kathryn: 28:02

Are there any resources available that producers can utilize to help make those decisions a little bit easier?

Travis: 28:09

Yeah, I think we've got a good resource on our website. It's a resource that we call our Cover Crop Forage Guide. It's a listing of a lot of different species of cover crops. At one glance, it has seeding rates, it has planting depths, it has some pros and cons and some comments and cautions on that simple guide. What it really sets you up to do is to, at one glance, you can know the basics about several cover crop species, and then that prepares you to have a more detailed conversation with your team. If you're talking to your local Extension agent, or you're talking to your seed supplier, or your agronomist, it just prepares you to have that conversation with your team to see what potential opportunities are there. Then as always, we would encourage in a grazing scenario, look at mixes, right? Not just one variety or species, but look at different options to get as much diversity into your system as possible. Sometimes if our plan is mechanical harvest, we need to go with a more simple mix or a single specie just so we can manage it for optimum for a mechanical harvest. But again, depending on your goals of your cover crop, there should be a lot of options out there, and I think that guide does a great job of setting you up to kind of make some preliminary selections, and then have a good conversation with your team to finalize your cover crop goals and species.

Kathryn: 29:55

Yeah, that sounds like a great resource, and we will definitely link that for listeners in the episode description, so it's very easy to find. Moving on from cover crops, I know you did already mention some of those disadvantages in the beginning, so I know you're a fan of them. I'm not going to make you grasp for negatives again. But moving on from cover crops into the third tactic for extending the grazing season, which is grazing cornstalks. My first thought was that this method maybe sounds like the most convenient since, like I said in the beginning, many who raise livestock also probably have a row crop operation. My question there is, is there wide adoption of cornstalk grazing?

Travis: 30:35

It's a good question. I wish I could say yes, but unfortunately we've really just seen more concentration within our farming operations. Most people you would talk to in Illinois would tell you that over the last decade or two that we've seen more fences taken out, folks farming the ditch and getting every tillable acre that they can. We know that, I just mentioned in the beginning, we're at record low cow numbers, so we've got less livestock around, less cow numbers, and so unfortunately, grazing cornstalks, I think, is not as widely used as it should be. Now, in the same sentence, I would be remiss if I wouldn't say that the folks that are being profitable in their cow calf enterprises year in and year out, those folks are utilizing cornstalk grazing every year and trying to maximize it too. We've got this barn lot that's close to a cornfield, we'll kick cows out there for a couple of weeks. If there's a few ears of down corn or something that missed the combine they can clean it up. It is a great resource. I've done a lot of interviews in my Extension career and cornstalk grazing is always one that I focus on because I do think it's an extremely low hanging fruit for our cow calf operators. You could probably put calves out there and do a stocker background or situation too, if you got calves that are straight and right. You don't need to gather them and worry about health. For the most part, a dry beef cow, a cow that calves in the spring, cornstalk grazing fits her nutrient requirements very well. We've hit this low and after we've weaned our calves in terms of nutrient requirement that pairs really well with cornstalk grazing. We think about most of our farmers being focused on harvest and getting the crop out. We don't have to worry about maybe feeding these cows every day.

Travis: 32:50

If we've got some fence up and water accessible, these cows can honestly live on corn stocks for thirty or sixty days and do just fine. It's a a low cost situation. Why is it low cost? Well, we attribute all the cost to the grain production, right? So the grain enterprise is paying all the costs to produce the corn. Then we have all this leaf and husk and stalk and aftermath of corn harvest out there. Having a ruminant animal, a beef cow that can go out and harvest some of that and make use of it is just a bonus.

Kathryn: 33:29

You mentioned that a lot of the more profitable cow calf operators are typically utilizing cornstalk grazing as an option. I wondered if when they're producing that crop, are they undertaking any management considerations for grazing that? Are they doing anything differently, whether during the growing season or maybe during harvest to make it, even more of a benefit, a beneficial environment for those those grazing cattle?

Travis: 34:00

The short answer is their focus is on the crop and producing a profitable yield to their corn, making sure that that plant's healthy and that they're returning what they need to on their row crop enterprise. I think they really do look at the cornstalk grazing side as a bonus that they can take advantage of. Honestly, it's kind of viewed as some free cow feed. I would say that there are some producers that are trying to innovate and look at different ways to maybe interseed into corn or plant hybrids that allow more palatability, different things like that. Honestly though, the big push is probably just to make sure that we're profitable on the grain side, and then use the corn stocks as kind of the bonus for cow feed.

Travis: 34:52

I think the beauty of grazing corn stocks is that the cow is a selective grazer. And so we can kick cows out, and we can allow that cow to eat what she wants. Initially that cow is going to select any remaining grain, and then the husk, and then some of the leaf. Cows don't eat stalks. We talk about grazing corn stalks, but they actually don't really eat the stalk portion because it's the least palatable, it's the least nutrient dense. Oftentimes people think, well, man, I don't want my cows out there taking everything off.

Travis: 35:31

That's important nutrients and organic matter for my fields. These cows, they're going to return 70 to 80% of everything that they consume right back to your cornfield in a much more nutrient available form. They're not taking all the biomass off of these fields in a grazing scenario. They're kind of picking through there getting the best, most nutritious parts and putting it right back on your cornfield in the form of manure. The benefits there, I think are huge.

Travis: 36:04

As far as catering to the cow, I would actually say we don't need to do much of that. We just need the cow to go out there and work for us. She can utilize that crop residue, that aftermath and help us out and putting some good nutrients back on the field in the form of manure while she grazes. There are probably some fringe benefits of waterways or field edges those cows will take that grass and convert it too. We got to be careful if we've got watering spots or shade that we could concentrate some nutrients there, but it's not a huge issue at all. Just back to the fact that cows are really an incredible creature utilizing a low quality feed and converting it to a protein. Then the byproduct of that is the manure production that they produce. I could go on and on all day about the things that I think cornstalk grazing is a benefit to, but I think the simple message here is, grow your corn, utilize those cows to get a bonus from that crop residue. It will benefit your system too. That's a great way to get animals back on the land.

Travis: 37:23

The room and microbes that come from the back end of a cow are great for your soil too. There's so many other benefits, like I said, that we can continue to talk about, but it's a simple way to get livestock back on your land without having to grow another crop. You're just utilizing the leftovers of your corn crop.

Kathryn: 37:45

This tactic of grazing cornstalks sounds like a really best of both worlds situation for someone who's producing both cattle and corn. I think that's great. One last question for you, Travis. I know that you also are a livestock producer. I was curious of these different options that we've talked about.

Kathryn: 38:07

Do you utilize any of these and have any special preference towards any of them?

Travis: 38:11

Yeah. I try to use all of them. Cornstalk grazing is probably my favorite. There's maybe some nostalgia there a little bit. We've grazed cornstalks, feel like my whole entire life.

Travis: 38:22

It's always something that I felt personally, when I get to the fall, I get cows kicked out on cornstalks. I feel like I couldn't have enough cows. I could take way more cows than what I have. It seems like a great spot for a beef cow in Central or in all the Midwest. Right? It's a good thing. We have some pastures that we're always focused on stockpiling so that we can graze farther into the winter. On my own operation, a lot of times I'll have stockpiled grass, and then we'll move into bale grazing once the stockpile is gone. Then we have some cattle located in a different area where we do have to haul some feed to them. But we generally are utilizing a low cost feed.

Travis: 39:15

In many cases it's basically a byproduct of the seed corn industry. We're bringing nutrients on our farm through basically a husklage product that's the byproduct of the seed corn industry. We try to keep our cows happy, but also in a low cost setting. As far as cover crops go, we've experimented and I have with a lot of different things. We definitely have used cereal rye for grazing in the past. Some years it's awesome, some years I feel like we are trampling too much. We've grown triticale, and chopped and bag triticale for winter feed and had success with that. We've had sacrifice paddocks where we use covers like pearl millet, sorghum sudan grass to rehab those areas and continue to grow some forage in the summer on our sacrifice paddocks where we do feed. That's been moderately successful. You're really dependent on kind of the summer weather and conditions there on the success. Then oats and turnips if we can get those on timely, I think that's kind of always a struggle in our area. Two bushel oats and three to four pounds of turnips is a great option. If we can get it on in mid August, which sometimes, depending on the growing season can be a challenge, but that can really make an awesome fall forage grazing opportunity as well. The other thing I would just say is, we didn't really talk much about triticale, but I think if you're gonna mechanically harvest a cover crop, cereal rye matures so fast. You could be three days away from a great forage, and then three days later, it's almost like straw.

Travis: 41:17

It just matures so fast. If you're mechanically harvesting, I would say look more towards triticale just for the longer harvest window. We try to utilize all of these things along with some better pasture management during the growing season, even if it's just some rotation in our pastures. It's hard in Central Illinois not to overstock your pastures, I think sometimes because land is so expensive, but making sure that you're keeping an appropriate stocking rate, that can be a big help to extend in the grazing season too. Because if you're overstocked, and you're out of grass in the end of July, it's just a real uphill battle to to make up for that.

Kathryn: 42:07

Thank you, Travis, so much for joining me today for Talking Crop. Like I said in the beginning, this is a little bit out of my wheelhouse, but it's great to talk about this information because many folks who are producing cattle also have a row crop operation and they're typically dipping into some of the same strategies like grazing cornstalks, utilizing cover crops for different options as well. I really appreciate your time and your expertise. And again, thank you for joining me.

Travis: 42:35

I've enjoyed our conversation. And the last thing I would say is, if producers have more questions about beef cattle my contact information is online, and we do have a website if you just simply search University of Illinois beef cattle, our U of I Extension website will pop up, and there's a lot of resources available there for producers to check out as well. We also have social media if you want to find us on Facebook, we try to keep some updates there. We do also house a blog on the website, so timely articles through the blog. If producers are interested in checking out more information, they can do it through those those media.