Pasture Mixes
Pasture Grasses
There are many variables to take into consideration when planting a pasture. Weather, man, plants and livestock are a few. The number of head of livestock, how much additional feed and what type of livestock also make a difference of how well your pasture is going to hold up. Keeping your pasture healthy is important because it directly affects the health of your animals. Not all plants are the same and depending on what type of livestock you are raising depends on what you need as far as a pasture goes. To run livestock and get the full value, protection and use of your land you need to plant a pasture with the suitable seed for your needs.
Tall Fescue is among one of the toughest pasture grasses. This grass tends to tolerate the abuse of hooves and being grazed to the soil and still comes back. Although tall fescue is not the greatest feed grass, it will last the longest and is one of the most forgiving.
Orchard grass is probably one of the finest all around feeds for most livestock. This grass is very palatable with almost all livestock, but does not take abuse from heavy traffic and must be maintained properly to keep a stand.
Timothy is the Cadillac of grass hay as far as horse people and cattle ranchers are concerned. It makes premium hay, but in many regions, Timothy is very high maintenance for pasture and does not hold up to heavy traffic, but makes excellent forage.
Clovers work good for a balanced pasture building nutrients to help keep grasses healthy and build soil. The best part about using clovers in your pastures is they have very high feed values for maintaining healthy animals. If you use clover, then you have to consider how to control broad leaf weeds. If you are not careful about weeds, you may end up spraying out the whole pasture.
Tetroploid Ryegrass works well in mixes for fast recovery and establishment of pastures. This is also a very palatable feed.
We have put together a few mixes of grasses that are developed for livestock that we feel would do a good job of holding up to the foot traffic and grazing that the small land owner would find useful for there livestock.
We will try to supply you with the lowest cost and most successful ways that we know of to plant or reestablish a good working pasture for your animals.
Replanting Pastures
- When
replanting a pasture, take a look at the condition of your present pasture
and decide what your best approach is before tackling the job.
- Test
the soil to find out what is needed to keep your pasture healthy. You should
do this a month or so before you start work on your pasture.
- If
you have a rough pasture with nothing but weeds, consider spraying and
completely tearing out the ground. If the ground has not been worked in many
years and has had heavy livestock grazing, it is best to work it to a depth
of six to eight inches. Then chisel plow or subsoil to a deeper depth of at
least twelve inches or more to loosen the soil and also to get oxygen in the
soil. Add the needed additives to improve the soil while it is worked up,
this allows them to be mixed in better.
- When
working the soil, be careful not to work it if it is too wet. You could
damage the soil by doing this and it takes a very long time to recover. A
general rule of thumb is to pick up a handful of dirt and squeeze it in your
hand, making a fist. Hold your hand straight out and drop the dirt on a firm
surface. If it remains in a ball and does not break up, the ground needs to
dry more before working.
- Once you have worked your soil, you need to harrow and roll to firm, level and smooth the ground. Once this procedure is complete, the soil should be firm enough that when walking across it you should not sink much more than ½" to ¾" maximum. Allow the ground to sit for 2 to 3 weeks let any weeds sprout. After this period is past, you can spray the weeds with a selected herbicide at the rate recommended, or harrow with a pasture harrow to remove any weed sprouts on the top. (Spraying is the most effective for long-term weed control).
Planting
After you have waited the proper amount of time recommended on the label of the herbicide, you are now ready to plant your pasture. If you are seeding by hand with a broadcast spreader or anything other than a drill, we recommend spreading half the seed one direction and the other half in the opposite direction. This insures a correct rate and uniform coverage.
Maintaining your Pasture
Keep the livestock off your new pasture until it is well established. It is best to mow at an 8-12 inch mowing height to keep weeds from seeding and let the plants become better established. For the first year, do not let animals graze short, abusing the grass or you will shorten the life of the pasture.
If your pasture has tall spots where the grass is starting to seed off, it is best to mow the tops off the plants, this keeps them healthy and growing. Do not to allow hard grazing down to the crowns of the plants. You are much better if you can section your pasture into smaller areas and rotate your animals around to different areas.
Watering
If you have water to irrigate you should water after removing the animals to different areas to keep from compacting you pasture. This will insure a steady supply of feed if you can rotate, using this system to different areas of your pasture.
Fertilizing
Your pasture should be fertilized in the spring at the recommend rate to get optimal growth. You can repeat during the growing season, if you water or have adequate rainfall when the pasture starts to slow in growth, you should fertilize in the fall with a balanced fertilizer. This will insure adequate root growth and keep the plants healthy through the winter.
Some fertilizers are almost straight nitrogen. These fertilizers will give you a tremendous amount of growth fast, but for some animals, like horses, it could make them sick. Balanced fertilizers for most applications work the best.
Mowing and other Improvements
Keeping your pasture in top shape requires proper care. You should keep it clipped at the bottom of the seed stem height. This will keep the plants growing better and also keep weeds down. If your animals have grazed down lower, then you should mow shorter to keep pasture a more uniform height when the growth slows.
Other maintenance you can do is to use a pasture harrow a couple times of year when the pasture is short. It is best to do this in the spring and fall to level and help spread out the animal manure evenly and keep pasture more level (rodent holes, ext.).
Overseeding Pastures
To replant your pasture with livestock present, you need to split your pasture in half. This way you will have a place to keep them. Some people only keep livestock during
For overseeding, we recommend using a pasture harrow. Go over it several times at different angles to loosen and level a small amount of soil, this allows the seed to establish itself.
Seeding the same way discussed in the planting section for pasture we recommend on 2 to 3 times the normal seeding rate when overseeding a pasture to insure a good stand.
To make sure your pasture will hold up, you need to monitor how your livestock are using it. You can only have so many animals in a given area. The better you take care of that area the more livestock you can maintain to a certain level. Sectioning off your pasture into smaller areas will most definitely increase the quality and the life of your pasture if you will take the extra time to rotate your livestock in them. Remember a healthy pasture is a healthy animal and if taken care of properly will give you many years of use.
Pasture Mixes
We have three pasture mixtures that we feel will give you a range of variety that should accomplish the quality feed and pasture your livestock needs. We like to give you these blends rather than one kind of seed because this will give you the best qualities of each of these kinds of plants once they are established. You have to remember that some plants have higher feed values while others are more durable to traffic. There are even some types of plants that well actually produce nutrients that other plants can use. Some of these are just more suited for one type of livestock than for others.
Recommends Seeding Rates
Seeding rate on a worked up new pasture should be planted at 15-30 Lbs. per acre. The higher the seed rate the better stand you will get for grazing. (200’*200’= 40,000 Square feet approximately one acre)
For over seeding an established pasture after harrowing, working or drilling you should plant a minimum of 60-100 Lbs. to the acre.