Marshall ryegrass, cereal rye and stockpiled fescue keep cows in pasture into winter. Fields ready for soybeans the next spring.

Gene Wagner’s cows don’t spend much time around a bale ring. That’s the way he wants it. Wagner has built a long-season rotational grazing plan by implementing crop-field fall pastures of Marshall ryegrass and Forage Master cereal rye while saving stockpiled fescue pasture for winter grazing and calving paddocks. The result is a forage and row-crop rotation that boosts beef production.

With the Midwest’s winter cold snaps, year-round grazing is rarely a reality, but Wagner comes close on his farm near Alma, Mo. A stickler for careful planning and recordkeeping, Wagner sees that his fall forages get their start in summer. He no-tills cereal rye and Marshall ryegrass immediately after corn harvest. When it’s practical, he plans to spread the seed by airplane into standing corn in August. Early broadcasting of seed gives the forage plants a chance to germinate in the couple of weeks prior to corn harvest, taking advantage of any rare August rains. After corn harvest, the forage mix hits rapid growth and is ready to graze by about Oct. 20.

“Flying it on works,” said University of Missouri forage specialist Rob Kallenbach. “The hard part in a corn crop is the fact that you won’t get much growth until the crop is cleared off and sunlight can reach the surface.”

Still, Kallenbach agreed that the last week of August or first week in September is the ideal time to sow a cereal rye/ryegrass mixture.

“Given the right fall, this kind of system works very well, but just like any fall-based grazing plan, it is a bet on rain,” Kallenbach said.

Wagner typically covers that bet.

“Last year I was afraid to fly it on [over standing corn] because we’d been in such a drought,” he said. “You could fit your hand in the cracks in the ground.” Wagner waited until Labor Day rains delivered 8 inches of ground-soaking moisture before planting the rye seed. “That cost us about a month of grazing,” he said. The rye mix needs to be about 8 to 12 inches tall prior to grazing and didn’t reach that point until mid-November. Cows graze the pasture mix down to about 4 inches. They are pulled in late fall/early winter to allow the forage to recover.

With a good fertility program-Kallenbach recommends 75 pounds of nitrogen applied in autumn cereal rye and rye grass. It can be grazed until late December, sometimes later depending on temperature and rainfall. Snow and excessive rain forced cattle off Wagner’s rye pastures by Dec. 10 last year.

By using fall-planted forages, Wagner typically manages to keep cows off of stockpiled fescue until calving time in early February.

But fescue intended for stockpile takes planning, too. In August, when the grass is dormant and cows have been removed, Wagner applies nitrogen fertilizer to boost fall fescue growth. The fescue grows undisturbed until calving time, when cows are strip grazed across the pasture and allowed to calve on the cleared paddocks. After calving season, the rye pasture has greened enough to graze. Last year, Wagner started grazing the rye pasture March 23.

Kallenbach and his associates at the University of Missouri have been studying the per-animal cost of winter forages for several years. The studies have shown that a cereal rye/ryegrass mix fits somewhere between the cost of hay and stockpiled fescue. An annual rye/cereal rye mix costs about $0.60 per animal unit per day. Traditional hay is about $1.25 per unit per day and stockpiled fescue is $0.28 to $0.32 per day.

“In one sense, this system may seem expensive,” said Kallenbach. “But it’s hard to put a value on the crop land that you employ for this kind of rotation. It’s sitting there at this time of year not producing any kind of return. So it becomes a comparison of cost per animal unit versus across-the-farm costs that include idle land.”

Wagner seeds about 50 pounds of Forage Master cereal rye and 18 pounds of Marshall rye per acre. He said he pays about $0.14 for cereal rye and $0.56 per pound for Marshall rye to total about $17 per acre for the mix.

No-till costs are about $9 per acre. Wagner has priced fly-on broadcasting costs at $12 per acre.

With 65 pounds of nitrogen applied in January to boost the rye pasture, Wagner was able to graze through the system and still capture a hay crop, harvesting about 1.75 bales (at 1,700 pounds each) per acre.

Following the hay harvest, he plants Roundup Ready soybean in the stubble. The rotation then continues on to corn the subsequent year. Every other year, land in the rotation receives a dose of hog manure as slurry. Wagner keeps abreast of P and K removal with soil tests and adjusts fertility as needed.

Kallenbach said that taking a hay crop off the temporary pasture is a handy way to control rye plants that are quick to hit reproductive stages, but given that such a hay crop would be in April, baleage is a better bet. Regardless, managing the forage as planting approaches is of great importance to the success of the following soybean crop.

“I’m try to get grain farming in, too,” said Wagner. “After 3 years, I’d say this is the way to go if you want to produce the most beef per acre. I’m working the ground, but I don’t think I’m abusing it.”