Consider Grazing Wheat and Delaying Turn-out on Drought-Stressed Pastures

May 12, 2025

Drought conditions in the Nebraska Panhandle region persist, with many areas receiving limited precipitation in April. Pastures would benefit from delaying turn-out as the cool-season grasses that are present have very limited growth. Delaying turn-out will give existing plants the opportunity to grow and fully utilize what precipitation does fall without being cut off. Leaving new grass and last year’s grass growth to provide ground cover will help to catch and keep whatever rain does fall.

For integrated crop and cattle producers, low wheat prices, high cattle prices and the value of grazing may present a situation where utilizing winter wheat as forage may have more value than harvesting it for grain. The current market value of beef-quality hay ranges from $80 to $120 per ton. That equates to $1.50 to $2.50 per cow-calf pair per day just for the hay. In May and early June, with some moisture, an acre of wheat can provide 30-45 days of high-quality grazing for a cow-calf pair. At a value of $2 per day, this is a value of $60-$90 per acre. Thirty-bushel wheat at $4.25 per bushel generates $127.50 per acre and will require additional costs to harvest it.

With those values in mind, the option to graze wheat may net more dollars than harvesting the wheat as a grain crop under current expected yields and new crop wheat prices. This is especially true if recent drought conditions, disease or insect infestations have damaged wheat, which will significantly reduce expected grain yields.

Early spring calving cow-calf pairs will benefit from high-quality wheat pasture grazing, as it sets them up to gain weight right prior to and through the first part of the breeding season. For later spring calving herds, calving cows on wheat pasture will provide excellent quality green feed that may not be available from pastures this year due to drought.

When grazing wheat, the logistics of fencing and water need to be considered. Grass tetany is also a potential risk, so make sure there is a high magnesium mineral supplement available to cattle two to four weeks prior to turn-out, and mineral consumption is consistent during grazing. If grazing isn’t a possibility, harvesting wheat as hay is another option. When cutting wheat for hay, consider which type of cattle will be fed the hay. If the plan is to feed it to young, growing cattle, harvest wheat at the boot stage or earlier to ensure a high-protein and high-energy content hay. An early harvest of wheat for forage also opens the door to planting back a summer annual forage as an additional feed source, if rain comes and moisture conditions improve.

A partial budget that analyzes both costs and projected revenues associated with grazing cattle, cutting for hay or harvesting wheat for grain is helpful when evaluating these options. Consider also how grazing or haying will impact subsequent crop production, insurance and potential government payments.

Source : unl.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.”