By Mark Sulc
The Ohio Forages and Grasslands Council Annual Conference will be held February 6, 2015 from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Ohio Department of Agriculture in Reynoldsburg, OH. The program focus is “Take the Next Step” in your forage management program. The featured speaker will be Dr. Ed Rayburn, Extension Specialist at West Virginia University, who will provide an introduction to pasture ecology and plant and animal responses to management.
How to increase animal gain by optimizing the animal-plant interaction during grazing will be discussed by Dr. Anibal de Moraes, a professor of pasture ecology in southern Brazil, who will share research information on animal performance on Italian ryegrass. Dr. Rayburn and Dr. Moraes will provide pasture-based livestock producers with new ideas to step up their grazing management that can improve animal gains on pasture while increasing pasture production.
Best management practices for plastic wrapped bales will be another topic featured on the program. Dr. Rayburn will be sharing practices learned from a series of on-farm research projects and demonstrations with plastic-wrapped bales.
In the afternoon, four producers will talk about their own dairy, beef, sheep and commercial silage storage operations and share lessons they have learned that will help others in their forage-based operations. Results from integrating sheep into grain crop rotation will be discussed by Dr. Jeff McCutcheon, Extension Educator from Morrow county. In addition, this year’s winners of the Ohio State Grazing Essay Contest and Ohio Forage and Grasslands Council Awards will be announced.
Source:osu.edu