Oklahoma Forage Specialist
Touts Cool Season Grasses

By David Bowser

AMARILLO — There is increasing interest in cool season forage in Oklahoma, southern Kansas, North Texas and the Texas Panhandle, says Dr. Larry Redmon, a Texas native now an Extension forage specialist at Oklahoma State University.

"This has really become an interesting topic," Redmon said during a beef conference here this month. "A lot of people are looking at cool season perennial grasses."

He says the interest was spurred by the costs associated with winter pasture.

"It just costs more money to establish annuals each year than it would if we could find an adaptable cool season perennial," Redmon says. "I think the Freedom to Farm bill is probably responsible for stimulating a lot of interest in these cool season perennials."

When the farm bill came out about three years ago, it allowed farmers on the southern Plains who were involved in the wheat program to plant alternative forages and still retain program benefits.

"Wheat pasture is big business in Oklahoma," Redmon says. "We plant about seven million acres of wheat each year. We pasture about one and a half million head of stocker cattle, usually not from Oklahoma. It's big business."

A lot of producers are interested in replacing wheat pasture, he says, and others would like to stay in the winter stocker business and still harvest grain.

"We think we can offer either side a real opportunity with cool season perennial grasses if we can find a suitable species that will work for us," Redmon says.

He figures Oklahoma has about a million acres that cattlemen would like to turn to grass and get out of farming.

"They'd like to park the tractor and sell the drill," Redmon says, "and get out of that part of the business if they could find a perennial that would work for them for the winter stocker calf business."

But he thinks many other producers want to stay in the grain business, and combining cool season perennial grass pasture with traditional wheat may offer them a way to do both.

"I think we can offer them a lot more flexibility," he says.

Having perennial grass pasture available could provide an opportunity to purchase stocker cattle sooner and allow them to gain more earlier in a grazing program.

"In our typical price scenario, it takes about 90 to 100 days to break even on wheat pasture," Redmon explains. "If you're bringing some of the higher grain yield varieties that are early maturing, sometimes it's hard to get much profit on wheat pasture cattle if you have a short grazing season. We think we can bring cattle in earlier and precondition them on pasture that's similar to wheat pasture, then whenever wheat pasture is available, we can roll the cattle into that pasture."

Such a grazing program using cool season perennial grasses would also allow producers to move cattle off wheat pasture to ensure maximum grain production.

The drawback to establishing a cool season perennial grass pasture is that it takes time and is usually not available for grazing the first fall it is planted.

For that reason, Redmon recommends establishing such forage in steps. If a producer has a section of wheat, he said, he may want to put only a quarter of it in grass initially. That way, he reasons, the producer can still graze his wheat while the grass is getting established and use the seed from the grass he is raising to expand the grass pasture for future years.

Cool season perennials, Redmon believes, offer the producer a chance to continue to graze his cattle without sacrificing grain yield.

Redmon says research shows the cattle need to be pulled off wheat when the first hollow stems begin to show.

"If they are held over even a day or two past the formation of that first hollow stem, the producer is penalized on his grain production," he explains.

The problem is that the first hollow stem is a moving target. It can vary as much as 30 days within varieties from year to year.

"We can identify that stage although it's a moving target, but at that point in time a lot of producers are reluctant to pull cattle," Redmon says. "Cattle are usually making about two to three pounds of gain per day at that point. If they do pull cattle, then they're faced with either sending them to the feedyard or holding them and having to feed them. We think that at the first hollow stem stage we can pull those cattle off and put them on a cool season perennial grass pasture. That would optimize both animal gain and grain production."

Although his research was initially in western Oklahoma, Redmon says he soon began getting questions about cool season grasses from the eastern part of the state, particularly from horse producers looking for alternative forages.

Some of the grasses he looked at have been around a long time.

"Lincoln smooth bromegrass came out in 1942. Jose tall wheatgrass came out of New Mexico in the early 1960s. There have been a lot of grasses out for a number of years, but because we were tied to the wheat program associated with the USDA farm bill, a lot of producers did not have the opportunity to look at other forages."

Redmon says Jose tall wheatgrass has been used quite a bit in Oklahoma. Wheatgrasses should do well from the Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma north into Canada and west from the Kansas-Missouri line to the Nevada-California state line, he says. They should work in fields with high pH problems, salty soils, and those that are prone to flooding.

Some producers in Oklahoma, he says, graze such grass from Sept. 1 to July 1, but they require fertilizer and must be kept grazed to an appropriate height, which for Jose tall wheatgrass is from six to eight inches.

Redmon also likes pubescent wheatgrasses such as Luna and Manska.

Luna came out of New Mexico State in 1963, but the one he's been working with the most is Manska, which came out of Nebraska and North Dakota. It has the cold tolerance Redmon thinks they need in Oklahoma.

As with most cool season perennials except for Matua, he says they don't have much production that first fall, but by the following May they may be belly deep on the cattle.

He tells of his first test patch of 14 acres that he planted and had planned to run about two head per acre on a rotational grazing plan with some orchard grass.

"We wound up putting 55 head of five-weight steers on 14 acres to control the grass," he says. "It was really kind of embarrassing because we were trying to demonstrate good management. We wound up in mid-May harvesting hay and putting the cattle back in June.

The thing he likes about Manska as opposed to Luna is that Manska is about three or four weeks later in maturity.

"For me that's an important factor," Redmon says. "I like to hang on to crude protein digestibility as long as I can."

The Luna, although it may produce about the same amount of forage, is a little bit earlier maturing. Most years, it wouldn't make any difference, he says. Some years, it may.

Redmon's test sites are only two years old, but he says some ranchers have six and seven year-old stands that seem to be doing well.

"You should be able to get at least six or seven years out of that grass," he says.

Further to the east and north, orchard grass is probably the finest forage grass available, he maintains.

"It's an excellent grass," Redmon says, "but we can't grow orchard grass in Oklahoma because of the problems with heat and drouth."

That is, until the U.S. Forest Service selected a variety in 1981 called Paiute Orchard Grass that has the drouth tolerance Oklahoma and the southern Plains needs. In their test plots west of Stillwater, it has done very well.

"It runs 18 percent crude protein," Redmon says, "but it needs about 25 inches of rain in a site that holds moisture."

Redmon has also been studying smooth bromegrasses.

"When I first moved to Oklahoma, I was told Lincoln smooth bromegrass would not grow in Oklahoma," he says. "It stopped at the Kansas line."

But he has tried some and believes it has done well.

"It appears to have good cold tolerance and good drouth tolerance," he says. "It's early maturing."

He's also interested in other grasses including Russian Wildrye. Research showed that when grazed hard, all the way to the ground, all summer, the Russian Wildrye actually increased.

"It's not as productive as some other grasses, but it might be good for calving pastures that take a beating," Redmon says.

The cool season perennial grasses have the potential to produce quite a bit more dry matter than wheat pasture, Redmon says. They also have a longer grazing season and will run from 25 to 30 percent crude protein depending upon the level of nitrogen available. They should maintain a 20 percent level of crude protein for the year.