Annual Winter Forages

By Tom Shea

Annual winter forages can help reduce the cost of feed, diesel, and time to feed livestock during the winter.  Annuals (aka cover crops) such as rye, ryegrass, oats, wheat, triticale and clovers provide great feed values and can help improve soil health.  These grasses help fill in the gap when warm season grasses aren’t growing. However, treating these like any other forage can be a mistake, they can require careful management.  

1. Timing  

   Annual cover crops require good timing and sometimes a little luck.  A little luck (rain) within three days of planting goes a long way.  Soil temperature plays a big role in the germination rates, based on your region this can be between September through December for good winter grazing.  

2. Preparation 

   Planting cover crops, you need to put your grain farmer hat on and prepare the field properly, making any soil amendments necessary, like pH levels ideally being between 6 and 7.  

3. Height  

   Grazing height is especially important when grazing annual cover crops in order to maximize their potential. The hardest part about grazing winter annuals is letting them establish and not grazing them too early.  Letting the annuals will grow to 6 to 12 inches before grazing should do the trick, and then not grazing them below 4 inches. They will easily terminate if grazed early or over grazed.  

4. Termination 

   Terminating green growing grass is hard, it hurts the heart.  However, not terminating winter annuals can stunt your warm season perennials performance.   The April/ May growing season when the warm seasons are starting to grow again but the annuals are still working their magic can be tricky to manage. Terminating the annuals gives the warm season grasses the best chance to grow. This can be done by mowing or purposely over grazing the cover crop.  

5. Soil Health 

   Winter annual cover crops have many soil benefits. They keep the ground covered, hold the soil together preventing erosion, and add organic matter and carbon.  Cover crops like clovers can also add nitrogen to the soil for other plants to use.  

When managed well, annuals are a great tool for a grazing operation and can be the difference between a huge feed bill and profit.  Livestock eat forage directly from the field is the most efficient way to harvest forage and feed them.  Annuals are a great way to improve a field's productivity and increase soil health and organic matter.