Baleage Production from Cool-Season Forage Cover Crops

Feb 22, 2021

By Doug Mayo

Cashing in on Cover Crops

The University of Georgia recently released a well written publication, UGA Baleage Production and Use that discusses key recommendations for success, as well as advantages and challenges of baleage as compared to dry hay production. After reading through the publication, I was reminded of an often overlooked opportunity to utilize idle crop land to produce high quality forage for grazing or baleage for beef or dairy cattle. Much has been shared over the years through articles in Panhandle Ag e-News on the value of cover crops, but what has not been discussed as thoroughly is the opportunity to turn these cover crops into animal gains for additional income for crop farms. One of the great efforts of the long and fruitful career of Dr. David Wright, UF/IFAS Agronomy Specialist, and his associates, has been incorporating bahiagrass into a Sod-Based Crop Rotation that includes cattle grazing in a rotation with peanut and cotton production. Through this project, the research team has decades of data that prove the benefits of incorporating grazed forages into a crop-focused farm operation. But what if you don’t want invest in the cattle, fencing, or labor needed to add cattle to a crop-focused operation? There is a real opportunity to produce income from small grain cover crops managed for livestock feed as round bale silage aka baleage. The challenge comes with how to get the forage from the crop field to the livestock, and how to make the necessary agreement between producer and buyer.

Why Cool-Season Forages?

Annual forages, in general, are fast growing crops, with less indigestible fiber (ADF) than perennial grasses such as bahiagrass or Bermudagrass. Most annual crops are grown for 90-120 days and then end with seed production. They are more expensive to produce, because of the need to prepare land and plant seed for each growing season. There is also a transition time between crops, so perennial grass pastures have a real advantage for grazing. But the quality of annual crops is excellent, because they are more digestible; so if they are harvested before maturity, the nutritional value is really high.

There is potential to grow cool-season cover crops that are harvested as high quality forage. The chart below shares the top five entries and category averages comparing dry grass hay to grass baleage in the 2020 Southeast Hay Contest. These were entries the very best grass hay and baleage produced last year. While there is not that much variation in the top five of the two categories, the category averages tell the real story. The balage samples had a 6% advantage in energy (Total Digestible Nutrients or TDN), and a 40% advantage in the fiber digestibility (Relative Forage Quality or RFQ).

The bahiagrass that is used for two years in a sod-based rotation system certainly offers major benefits for the cash crops that follow it by limiting the impact of diseases, nematodes, and other pests that develop in a continuous crop rotation. While two years of grass offers the greatest response from the following cash crops, cover crops in the off-season can also offer benefit to the soil health and the warm-season crops that follow. Small grains such as rye and oat make excellent cover crops, but these same crops can also be managed to produce high quality forage.

Many livestock operations dedicate land for winter grazing of small grains and ryegrass, but for most operations only a small percentage of their land is utilized this way, because of the need for perennial pastures. While grazing is the lowest cost, most efficient system for harvesting forage crops, there is an opportunity to preserve cover crops for use throughout the year as baleage. Because baleage is rolled and immediately wrapped at a high moisture content (55-65%) it is a better fit with the short, cool days associated with early-mid spring harvest than traditional dry hay. While these forages can certainly be preserved as dry hay, the extended drying time required is usually not available until late-April through mid-May. This later harvest window does not fit well with traditional crop operations, that need to be planting corn, cotton, and peanuts at that same time of year. This is also generally when the forage crops are nearing maturity, and not at the peak nutritional value. If grazing cover crops is not feasible, harvesting them as baleage is the next best option.

Because baleage is rolled/wrapped at a high moisture content (55-65%) it is a better fit with the short, cool days associated with early-mid spring harvest than traditional dry hay. In-line baleage wrapper demonstration at the 2018 Cattlemen’s Tour in Jackson County. Credit: Doug Mayo, UF/IFAS

Challenges with Baleage

Hopefully, I have at least peaked your interest and have you considering this option for crop field utilization over the winter. However, there are some real challenges to making this system work. The biggest challenge is the cost of the equipment to harvest and preserve baleage. According to UGA Baleage Production and Use, bale wrappers range from $18-40K, balers capable of handling high moisture forages are around $5k more expensive than conventional hay balers, and the plastic adds $5-10/ton as compared to traditional hay harvest costs. The other sizeable challenge is storing and hauling this high moisture feed to the herd to be fed. If there is a cattle herd on the same farm as a crop field, this may not be a major issue, but if it is miles down the road this could add extra labor and transportation costs. The baleage bales must stay wrapped until fed, so it is best to wrap the bales where they will be stored for feeding. At the storage site, unwrapped bales should be fed within two days after being exposed to the air or they will spoil. A final challenge is that generally cover crops are not managed with the same intensity as they would be for forage production. Cover crops typically are planted at a much lower seeding rate, with minimal fertilizer applied. If you are producing forage from crop fields for your animals, all of this makes good sense, if the herd is large enough to overcome the added costs. If you have to sell the baleage, you are going to have to make prearranged agreements with buyers. The bales must be wrapped in the place where they will be stored, as soon as possible to prevent spoilage. This system would not work well to sell a few bales at a time to random buyers. You have to have a total plan in place before harvest begins.

Take Home Message

Cool-season annual forages (small grains and ryegrass) are the grasses with the highest level of nutrition we can grow in the Southeast. Some of these forages (not ryegrass) have also proven to be excellent cover crops in rotational cropping systems. So, there is an opportunity to ramp up the management of these cover crops to make high quality feed for livestock. But like most other farming ventures, you have to develop the system to make it work out profitably. There is an opportunity to add income from highly productive crop fields over the winter with livestock grazing, or for producing baleage from cool-season forages. If you are already planting cover crops, the main increase in management comes with two baleage harvests, transportation, and wrapping. In the end this will not work for every crop field or farm operation, so you have to decide if this concept fits well with your other interests. You may opt instead to simply go hunting, or take a vacation to enjoy the winter break and rest up before warm season crops are planted again.

Source : ufl.edu

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”