What to look for in improved grass varieties – Audio
Dan Undersander, Extension Forage Agronomist
Department of Agronomy
UW-Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences
djunders@facstaff.wisc.edu
Phone (608) 263-5070, (608) 262-1390
For more information: www.uwex.edu/ces/forage select "Grasses"
2:58- Total Time
0:20- The grass choices out there
0:51- Major differences between grass varieties
1:26- Considerations when buying hay
2:01- Disease resistance
2:18- Producer expectations
2:50- Close Out
Transcript
Sevie Kenyon: Dan, people have more choices with the kinds of grasses they can use. Can you tell us what they are?
Dan Undersander: The bulk of the grass varieties are developed by European countries, and they may or may not be properly adapted for this region. Our experience has been generally we need a little bit more winter heartiness than some of the varieties have. And so we test for all this stuff here at the University and we suggest that you go to our website and look at it. There will also be a publication of this in most of the farm newspapers.
Sevie Kenyon: What are some of the differences between grass varieties?
Dan Undersander: First, this data’s appropriate for both pasture and for hay and haylage; for either pure stands or mixtures. So even for pastures we should be looking, and here’s where perhaps a lot of horse owners should be thinking about what we’re growing. We would suggest that, particularly for horse owners we should be thinking about maybe Orchard Grass rather than Timothy as a pasture. The Orchard Grass is high quality, and it doesn’t have as high a fructosan as the Timothy does. For those looking at a hay crop, the kinds of things that we should be considering are first, winter hardiness. We like the variety to survive the winter here. Look for a variety that yields consistently throughout the season. We talk about the beta; which is the slope of the yields. If we plot three or four cuttings, what is the slope of that line, and if it yields consistently it’s close to zero, if it’s like Timothy and Brome it’s a minus twelve. And on the other hand we’d like to see something closer to zero, which means a uniform yield throughout the year. The other thing that we would look at is disease resistance. We want if we’re going to plant a Blue Grass, and Orchard Grass, or Timothy, we want rust resistance. So we are categorizing the yield, the seasonality of the yield, the winter heartiness, and the disease resistance of the varieties.
Sevie Kenyon: Dan, what can a producer expect in terms of yield and productivity from a grass stand?
Dan Undersander: Well what we have seen is, in our grass trials, the difference between the top and the bottom entries has been as high as four tons per acre in one year. If we get good rust resistance in, we’ll get an extra one or two tons yield per year. Now at current hay prices, even if we just figured just two-hundred dollars a ton, one to four tons of extra hay per year is kind of a big deal from either a pasture or a hay field.
Sevie Kenyon: We’ve been visiting with Dan Undersander, Department of Agronomy, University of Wisconsin Extension in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Madison, Wisconsin, and I am Sevie Kenyon.