Cereal Grains - Spring Seeded
Spring seeded cereal grains can provide fill gaps in forage production. They can be grazed, made into dry hay, wet wrapped, or chopped as silage. The spring seeded cereal grains can also be used in the fall. These small grains usually take 60 days of growth to go from emergence to late boot stage. Of course this depends on the growing conditions and soil fertility. Forage quality and yield are increased with improved varieties.
Haywire Oats on the left. Jerry Oats on the right. Not all oats are created equally.
oats
Haywire oats are a forage variety that have been bred for yield and forage quality.
Look at how wide the leaves of the Haywire oats are in comparison to Jerry oats. Jerry oats make a great cover crop oat, but if you are needing more forage, then Haywire Oats are the way to go.
The pictures speak for the themselves.
The windrowed field yielded 2.1 T/A in northwest Indiana.
Elevator triticale
Elevator spring triticale is a cross between spring wheat and cereal rye.
It has outstanding forage quality and should be harvested in the late boot stage.
Elevator is a wonderful nurse crop for spring seeded forages as it does not compete with the forage crop like oats do.
For use as a nurse crop - seed it at 70 lb/A
For use as a forage crop - seed it at 100-120 lb/A
