# Fescue Hay



## VA Haymaker (Jul 1, 2014)

Anyone making small squares with Fescue? Not endophyte resistant - but straight up tall fescue? And do you have horse folks who will buy it?

Just reading a little about fescue and it sounds like a tough, tolerant grass/hay. Great for cattle - I gather unless you've got a pregnant horse - otherwise great for horses?

What's the skinny on small squares of fescue?

Just curious.

Thanks,

Bill


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## Orchard6 (Apr 30, 2014)

Here, I don't think you could give fescue away. Seems all the horse people are scared of it. They want Timothy, orchard grass or alfalfa or some combination of them. I haven't heard of anyone seeding any endophyte free fescue in my area but I'd imagine you'd have a hard time convincing people that it was ok. But it may be different in your area.


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## VA Haymaker (Jul 1, 2014)

Orchard6 said:


> Here, I don't think you could give fescue away. Seems all the horse people are scared of it. They want Timothy, orchard grass or alfalfa or some combination of them. I haven't heard of anyone seeding any endophyte free fescue in my area but I'd imagine you'd have a hard time convincing people that it was ok. But it may be different in your area.


I agree with everything you are saying. It seems like the horse folks want perfect hay (as anyone should) but to include what they have been told about other grass hay and legumes like clover.

My hay has a tad bit of fescue in it, there is wild fescue everywhere around me and clover too! This stuff will continue to invade my fields.

I was thinking - what I ought to do is grow quality fescue/clover mix - that'd be a sure winner on my fields - LOL!

Who knows, when the hay for sale becomes short or the horse owner realized the cost per bale of timothy, they might warn up to a nice fescue or fescue/clover bale of hay!

Probably ought to stick with a sure thing, timothy or OG......


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## FarmerCline (Oct 12, 2011)

In my opinion fescue hay is junk to be frank. The only good thing about fescue is it is extremely hardy. Here fescue is everywhere and is pretty much the only hay grown in any quantity......very little quality hay of any kind grown around here. Some horse hay buyers will buy fescue but these are typically the ones wanting cheap hay and buy based on price only. The educated buyers don't want anything to do with it. I have to laugh at the statement fescue is great for cattle......hardly the truth......actually fescue has much less of a negative effect on non breeding horses than it does cattle and can have a very negative effect on all breeding stock.

There are so many other good quality forages I don't understand why one would plant fescue anymore. I planted some MaxQ endophyte friendly fescue year before last and it has done very well. This is the first drought year it has had and so far it is holding up just as well as regular old infected k31 fescue like it was advertised so there goes the only advantage of k31 fescue. The only downside is that by looks you can't tell the MaxQ from the infected k31 and since it grows wild pretty much everywhere here you couldn't tell if the infected fescue started encroaching into the field from the road banks or field edges. Also your customers would have to take your word that the hay is not infected fescue.


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## 8350HiTech (Jul 26, 2013)

FarmerCline said:


> In my opinion fescue hay is junk to be frank. The only good thing about fescue is it is extremely hardy. Here fescue is everywhere and is pretty much the only hay grown in any quantity......very little quality hay of any kind grown around here. Some horse hay buyers will buy fescue but these are typically the ones wanting cheap hay and buy based on price only. The educated buyers don't want anything to do with it. I have to laugh at the statement fescue is great for cattle......hardly the truth......actually fescue has much less of a negative effect on non breeding horses than it does cattle and can have a very negative effect on all breeding stock.
> 
> There are so many other good quality forages I don't understand why one would plant fescue anymore. I planted some MaxQ endophyte friendly fescue year before last and it has done very well. This is the first drought year it has had and so far it is holding up just as well as regular old infected k31 fescue like it was advertised so there goes the only advantage of k31 fescue. The only downside is that by looks you can't tell the MaxQ from the infected k31 and since it grows wild pretty much everywhere here you couldn't tell if the infected fescue started encroaching into the field from the road banks or field edges. Also your customers would have to take your word that the hay is not infected fescue.


"It's junk ... There are other forages ......... I planted some and it's doing fine."

I'm confused. If it's doing fine why do you hate it so much?


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## FarmerCline (Oct 12, 2011)

8350HiTech said:


> "It's junk ... There are other forages ......... I planted some and it's doing fine."
> I'm confused. If it's doing fine why do you hate it so much?


 What I was referring to as junk is regular endophyte infected fescue known around here as k31. What I planted was MaxQ endophyte friendly fescue because I wanted a forage that was tough like endophyte infected fescue but didn't have the negative effects to stock. The MaxQ is what I was talking about that was looking just as well as the neighbors endophyte infected k31 fescue during the current drought. I thought I made this clear in my other post but I must have not.


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## deadmoose (Oct 30, 2011)

You were clear as a bell to me.


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## 8350HiTech (Jul 26, 2013)

FarmerCline said:


> What I was referring to as junk is regular endophyte infected fescue known around here as k31. What I planted was MaxQ endophyte friendly fescue because I wanted a forage that was tough like endophyte infected fescue but didn't have the negative effects to stock. The MaxQ is what I was talking about that was looking just as well as the neighbors endophyte infected k31 fescue during the current drought. I thought I made this clear in my other post but I must have not.


To me "Fescue hay" encompasses all fescue hay. Whatever. Now I follow.


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## Hayman1 (Jul 6, 2013)

At the risk of stepping on tender body parts, here goes. I find this all very amusing. When a student at VA Tech in the early 70s, the forage professors (one with a good international reputation) were dissing KY31 with abandon. being brash, I said BS, and told them our cattle did great on fescue, you just had to treat it right, a lot like bluefish I might add. 15 years later, low and behold, Tech is all about fescue stockpiling (KY31 mind you, not these pricey hybrids). Now those who drank the Koolaid and did not die with Jim Jones talk about their cattle sitting under a tree after a fescue cocktail and just having a conniption. Really, I have never seen such an event, must be a select performance.

All of that said, you just can't help some people. I sell fescue mix hay at top dollar to horse people all the time and they are glad to get it because their horses eat it, every bit of it. I cut it before it goes to head or I clip it early to preclude the heads. Just like them dang bluefish, cut the oil duct out, filet them on the way back to the dock and ice them and they are great.

What fescue does is fill in the gaps with orchard grass and keeps the weeds out. It does not suffer from aphids like og, or mites like timothy, and it bloody loves N. I will try an endophyte friendly fescue in one mix this year but it is just a trial.

Oh yeah, one other thing, all those people who won't feed fescue have it in all their paddocks. Silly people. Let the games begin and I am the 27 declared candidate for president of the United States!


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## VA Haymaker (Jul 1, 2014)

Hayman1 said:


> When a student at VA Tech in the early 70s....


You sure it wasn't VPI or VPI & SU..... 

I have a friend that graduated with an electrical engineering degree way back and though he is a rabid VT fan, he is adamant that he is a VPI grad....


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## FarmerCline (Oct 12, 2011)

Maybe when I said before that infected toxic fescue hay is junk I might have been exaggerating some but a low quality feed might be closer to the truth. The effects of infected toxic fescue on cattle is real. There are plenty of cows here in the southeast that are on infected toxic fescue pasture and hay and do ok but that's not without saying there aren't problems that go along with it.

I know an individual that has had to cull a couple good cows at the end of winter because they were going lame to what is know as 'fescue foot'. During the summer the cows get a rough unthrifty look because they didn't shed their winter coat. It appears that cows that are not accustomed to being on fescue fair the worst. This individual bought some cows out of southern Georgia that had been on Bahai and Bermuda grass and these cows showed the worst problems. He no longer makes any infected toxic fescue hay but does still has quite a bit of infected toxic fescue pasture due to the fact that he would have to sell his cows in order to convert them all at one time but has slowly been switching one pasture at a time to other alternatives and grazing a lot of pearl millet during the summer. Problems due to infected toxic fescue has went way down since the cows are not on it all the time anymore.

As I said before non breeding horses seem to fair much better on infected toxic fescue than cattle from what I have seen.....except for brood mares I suppose that infected toxic fescue would be an acceptable feed to keep their bellies full.

Not trying to start an argument.....just stating what I have personally saw.....and I'm sure there are a few exceptions to that.


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## Hayman1 (Jul 6, 2013)

No problems Hayden, I was just having some fun but also have no problems with KY31. Actually, the mixed grass with KY31 was my best seller last year-people were asking for it in particular. Actually, we have had this discussion on haytalk before, but horses, as a general statement, need more roughage through grazing or hay and not less, very high energy hay. They are grazers. You can make up the energy part through grain to some extent. My boarding operation horses do just great on good quality fescue mix hay keep their weight through the winter and the only time we have an issue is in spring when grass comes in, they stop eating as much hay and eat the grass which is mostly water.

Leeave-yep, I was there through all that, just learned to not sweat the small stuff. Always partial to Va Tech as a name, and never vippysue. Actually, the VPI moniker use was waning when I went.


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## Tim/South (Dec 12, 2011)

Not all K31 tall fescue is infected. Also the amount of harmful ergot endophyte can vary. Some fields may be 10% infected, others may be 100%. That is why it took so long to discover the harmful endophyte actually existed. People having trouble with fescue were told it was not the grass but rather other management practices. Some livestock did great on fescue, others did not. All K31 fescue is not created equal.

I almost starved some cattle the winter before last by feeding infected fescue. I baled a beautiful place on shares and bought the owner's share. I left 100 rolls at his place as the barns were full here. When we ran out I hauled the 100 here to feed. It did not dawn on me until there was a problem that the fescue from that farm had been mixed and fed with other hay the years prior.

My cows lost condition very fast. I had the hay tested and it was 100% infected. We no longer bale that field.

I planted some endophyte friendly fescue and the cow do well on it, really a great grass.


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