Fastest growing forage crop?

Granite Farmer

Member
Mixed Farmer
I have a field that has had cattle out wintered on it. I would like to reseed it in the Autumn. So i would like something growing in there in the meantime that can be grazed.

TIA

James
 
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cquick

Member
BASE UK Member
Forage peas, sunflowers and sudangrass? Maybe throw some phacelia and berseem clover in as well.
You would probably have to graze it directly. But it ought to grow above 6ft by August and be great for the soil and the bees
 

Farmer Roy

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
NSW, Newstralya
Pretty sure sudangrass is toxic to cattle??
I may be wrong though

used quite a bit here as a summer forage crop for cattle. sorghum ( very popular here ) is probably a higher risk, but generally only if the crop is under a lot of moisture stress

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here is some info of prussic acid poisoning for anyone interested

 
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Jerry

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Devon
Hybrid rape as break crop and then reseed with something like Barmix from @Great In Grass

Did the same last year and the new grass ley at moment is romping away.

That was a very very old perm pasture field that was doing no performance.

Limed it, DD,d redstart into it start of may. Weaned lambs onto it that grew like weeds. DD’d the grass into it in September.

Grazed it lightly with ewes and lambs in March, now shut up for a cut.
 
Ive done just that last year - Forage rye, some peas and grass seed sweepings from the shed - sown mid april into chained grass that was weakly sprayed (I dont mind abit growing back the forage rye was through fast anyway).
Baled 14. heavy 4fts to the acre of hayledge type feed mid june, the regrowth was very strong and lambs rocketed on it - crashed and went thin by mid july and rolled black oats in, should of cut them in OCT but grazed them instead, huge volume and the soil worked lush for a good 5y resseed last month.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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