With tight margins and a push for improved soil health being the status quo in most cattle operations, producers are working with researchers to find new and innovative ways to improve economical profitability while also improving soil for the next generation of farmers.
While corn stalk grazing is becoming more commonplace in the Prairies, producers such as Byron Long, of Long Family Farm, in Barrhead County are looking for other ways to reduce inputs and promote healthy soil, all while feeding their cattle in as profitable a fashion as possible.
This year, Long is trialing a number of things on his farm, such as extending the space between corn rows and filling the space left between the rows with a diverse cover crop mix.
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Some of the species in Long’s cover crop mix are forages such as radishes, sunflowers, forage peas, clovers, sorghum, vetch, Italian rye grass, alfalfa, kale, cereals and more. The cover crop, along with the corn, will provide feed throughout the winter as his cow/calf pairs strip graze through the crop on a three-day rotation.
Currently in his second year of this trial, Long is looking forward to another profitable winter with plans to do more feed testing as well as soil sampling in the future.
For anyone looking to experiment with some of these ideas, Long recommends getting on the phone or checking out the university of YouTube. It’s a bit of a rabbit hole, he says, but there are a lot of people doing this and there is a reason why.
Related
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Corn School: Does planting into green cover crops work?
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