This message is from: Melinda Schumacher melinda.schumac...@gmail.com
h! A fount of knowledge! I am impressed. :) Do you have any
information about reed canary grass grown in Ohio? I couldn't find much at
all on the web.
thanks,
Melinda
On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 11:12 AM, Cherrie Nolden
prairieparad...@yahoo.comwrote:
This message is from: Cherrie Nolden prairieparad...@yahoo.com
Hi Cheryl,
We feed our Fjords native prairie grass (they harvest it for themselves
year-round), of which a large component is little bluestem. Also mixed in
there is big bluestem, indiangrass, switchgrass, downy brome, sideoats
grama, buffalo grass, blue grama and lots of forbs. Both little and big
bluestem are decreasers in a grazed native prairie, which means that
livestock seek them out like kids seek candy, thus the percent of those
species in the stand decreases as grazing pressure increases (overgrazing).
Big bluestem is preferred by livestock, but would be harder to grow in
Colorado where native short-grass prairie is predominant. The Flint Hills
region of Kansas is essentially bluestem-dominated range. This region of the
country is where the majority of the beef produced in the US is grazed as
stockers. The range is intensively grazed and burned every year for
maximizing productivity of the range and gains on the stockers.
Some producers will put up hay on this ground. If you are buying bluestem
hay, get the bales that have been put up between late June and early July.
This is when the plant is 10-12 inches high and is at the peak for quality
and palatability. Just be sure that the seller certifies it blister beetle
free.
Our Fjords eat it at every stage but will tend to select other plants once
the bluestem heads out. The desire of livestock for eating those fuzzy seed
heads has been likened to our enjoyment of eating styrofoam peanuts by a
presenter at the Kansas Grazing Lands Coalition Native Rangeland School that
I attended in 2007. Very low palatability.
Bluestem is a warm season grass, with a different carbohydrate structure
than cool season grasses (brome, orchard, fescue, bluegrass, quackgrass,
timothy). According to an October 2000 publication by UW-Extension entitled
Native Grasses for Warm Season Pastures, warm season grasses contain
higher fiber levels and lower relative feed values than cool season
pastures. There is some evidence that these compounds are digested
differently than the fiber in cool season grasses and that our current
quality analyses do not adequately reflect the digestibility of warm season
grasses. I haven't personally had the time to see if more recent research
has been done in this area for warm season grasses.
The Iowa State University book, Pasture Management Guide for Livestock
Producers, shows big bluestem as being fair for hay production, good for
rotational grazing, has good palatability, and doesn't contain any
anti-quality components (alkaloids, coumarin, cyanogenic glycosides,
endophytes, glycosides, tannins, photosensitization compounds). The scale
for this ranking is: Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor.
Cherrie
1dr Fjords
--- On Fri, 1/23/09, Cheryl Gioia che...@finefjords.com wrote:
Does anyone feed bluestem grass hay? I'm not familiar
with it.Does anyone
have any information about it?
Thanks,
Cheryl
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