# Mixing cool and warm season grasses



## rjmoses (Apr 4, 2010)

Sometimes I think too much and yesterday, while traveling around my hay fields, I got to thinking:

What if I mixed a field of OG and big blue stem? I'd have cool season grass for the spring/early summer, segue into warm season big blue stem for the summer, then back to cool season OG for the fall.

Anybody ever tried this? Wondering if one would smother the other out? Seems to me this would be fantastic for pastures! Would only have to feed December through March.

Ralph


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## Swv.farmer (Jan 2, 2016)

I don't know if it would work but if it would it would be great I'd do it if would work.


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## RuttedField (Apr 24, 2016)

Here in Maine we mix cool season grasses with warm season ones, and for the very reason you mention. We did it for silage and not grazing nor hay, but I am not sure that would matter. Our biggest motivator was we wanted the higher protein content so that it would show up in the milk which naturally we were paid a bonus for.

We had to be wary of the Alfalfa Content only because it is prone to winter kill. My farm has a very North-Easterly aspect to it and is located high on a hill. That means with fierce north-east blizzards blowing off the Atlantic, snow-cover on these fields is non-existent. When temps dip down to 20--30 blow zero (f), alfalfa would die off. On "protected" fields that faced south, we could get alfalfa percentages in the 50-60% range, but my fields got no more than 10%.

Another issue we had was with our method of fertilization. For whatever reason clover seeds pass through a cow with immunity, and so the following year you would see a ribbon of clover in the fields...where the liquid manure truck made its path through the field the year before. In that way there was some overcrowding.

I can only say this from my experience here in Maine, but mixing warm and cool season grasses for a field has never been part of the consideration factor; but rather, just what the mix percentage and different grass varieties should be are the questions that come to fist-a-cuffs between farmers.

I know it is impossible to tell sward from a photo, but this is a cool season/warm season grass field with its 3rd crop being grazed. Alfalfa content is 10% on this field, where as you can see from the clover how the trucks were traveling out of the field diagonally.


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## somedevildawg (Jun 20, 2011)

Purty country ya got there ruttedfield......


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## Vol (Jul 5, 2009)

Yep, that is pretty country.....but I would be danged if I could stand the winter time with the "fierce NE blizzards off the Atlantic". I would have to high tail it to the Southland....but...someone has to do it.

Regards, Mike


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## somedevildawg (Jun 20, 2011)

Nobody better suited for the task than a guy with Rutted Fields, and proud of it


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## hillside hay (Feb 4, 2013)

I'm not sure it applies but I have stopped going g to a completely clean seedbed for my sorghum sudan plantings. I get a spring cutting of mainly o grass and pre head fescue. Run the disk and drag across the field spread fertilizer and lime run the disk with cultimulcher behind. Plant. Two sometimes 3 cutting of SS. Ograss and fescue have always come back on there own. I will mix a few pounds in this year just to make sure I don't CV overdraw the seed bank. I haven't needed to spray for weeds either in that part of the rotation. Transitioning out of corn is the only time we do it now. 65-87 per acre I try to do as little as possible since it's hard to break out of 120 per ton here


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## rjmoses (Apr 4, 2010)

Anybody tried big/little blue stem for hay and pastures in the midwest?

Ralph


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## TJH (Mar 23, 2014)

My dad's place has a 10 acre field that has never been plowed and is in the original prairie grass of old. He would only hay it once a year and very rarely graze it. I ask why and he told me that native grasses would not take close grazing very often and could only be hayed once per year, about every three years he would let it stand till it went to seed then hay it. He told me to study how the bison grazed it and then I would understand. I realize that this may not be what you are asking but I consider bluestem as a native grass. The guys' in the flint hills of Kansas buy in the spring and the calves are gone by mid September, and the native grass rest till the next spring, and this is across thousands of acres not a few hundred, they only graze down to 3 inches and that's it. If I'm not mistaken sometimes they burn it also, just like nature use to do it.


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