Pasture Management – Page 2

Last KHSI Notes on Grass: RCG in the Northwest

Posted on September 26, 2009 by fourfarmdogs

My last bit of learning from Woody Lane’s class on grass actually happened at the lunch table. I had the good fortune of sitting by him, so got another whole hour of his knowledge! The topic of discussion was of great interest to me: reed canary grass (RCG), because we have a lot of it. The above picture is what our RCG looked like when we first started to tackle it, during the winter, it would lay in dead layers of brown like this. Beyond it, you can see a field of more “normal” green pasture grass that had been well-maintained by the prior property owner, cut for cow silage multiple times per season.

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What I Learned About Grass at the KHSI Expo: Part IV

Posted on September 25, 2009 by fourfarmdogs

Here is the fourth section of my notes on grass. Needless to say, I took a LOT of notes during Woody Lane’s lecture…

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What I Learned About Grass at the KHSI Expo: Part III

Posted on September 23, 2009 by fourfarmdogs

Here’s the third part of my notes from Woody Lane’s lecture on grass. This is intuitive once you say it and graph it; but grass, when it first starts growing, has the highest nutritional content it’s going to get. It’s TDN (total digestible nutrients) at this stage is likely in the low 70’s, percentage-wise. As it grows, it increases in volume, of course, but it also starts to decrease in TDN. When it’s headed out to seed, its TDN is down around 45%. So, there is an inverse relationship there, between increasing volume and decreasing nutritional value.

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What I Learned About Grass at the KHSI Expo: Part II

Posted on September 21, 2009 by fourfarmdogs

Here is a next bit of my notes from Woody Lane’s lecture on grass and nutrition. First, I should offer the caveat that he gave, which was that he felt he had to oversimplify some technical terms, due to the time constraints of the 2-hour class (which he normally teaches over several weeks). And, a second caveat that if something seems wonky in the information, surely it is my note-taking, and not Woody’s information, which is incorrect. 😉 Comments are welcome if I’ve gotten something wrong.

Woody introduced two terms which are important in considering what grazing animals need to eat in order to grow.

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