Monday, December 19, 2016

Summer Annuals can make up for winter-kill alfalfa

From the Summer 2014 Dairy Route newsletter


You have completed your first cutting of hay.   You can tell that the residual alfalfa is too thin to leave the stand for another year.   In fact, you would like more feed off that acreage this year.    One option:
Interseed a summer annual—for example, BMR-6 Sudangrass (OR) Dwarf BMR-6 Sorghum Sudan

Seeded at half their normal rate, these will grow with what is left of your alfalfa, and you can expect two full cuttings reclaiming your expected yields for the season, that can be either windrow chopped or baled as you would have harvested your alfalfa.

Note once this stuff canopies, it not only provides weed control but will stunt off the remaining alfalfa.   Thus, at the end of the season, you could plant a fall cover crop to harvest in the spring for early forage (allowing interseeding of a new alfalfa crop) or used as plowdown “free nitrogen” for a corn crop next season.    

Unlike Grandpa’s sorghum sudangrass hybrids, thes BMR 6 varieties are “dairy quality”feed—plus they use ½ the nitrogen and water of a late corn crop to produce dry matter tonnage equal to alfalfas.

TAURUS SERVICE  JOINT MARKETING  WITH  SEXING TECHNOLOGIES  

A new development finds Taurus Service “Affiliated Sires” working with Sexing Technologies (the company that provides semen sexing for all the AI systems) to bring both selected Taurus sires and an equal selection of Trans World Genetics sires to the AI market in “sexed” straws, at competing prices.

Ask us for the full list.    We are stocking a limited number of the sires but will order any you wish.

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