Spring Oats
During mid to late March in many regions, you’ll notice a slight greening on pastures from a variety of cool seasonal perennial grasses starting to sprout. Rather than spreading manure for planting warm weather crops, you might consider thickening the forage with spring oats using a no-tillage process. It quickly thickens your pasture and is easier on livestock’s digestive system as they move to grazing. Additionally, it can help hinder the germination of many weeds until thicker summer grasses grow.
Health Benefits to Cattle
As cattle come off winter-feed, a thick forage from a blend of spring oats and other cool-seasonal grasses provide extra protein. Even when you have a variety of early season grasses and clover, an extra layer of oats thickens the feed potential to meet the needs of hungry animals.
It’s also helpful to their digestion system. Spring oats are not overly rich in protein as found in summer forage. The nutritional value exceeds winter feed but is less than summer perennial grasses and clover. This variance allows for a gradual transitional period from dry winter hay to summer pastures and eases the process of digestion for the cattle.
Pasture Benefits
As cows graze, any residual oats that get trampled into the ground or left to die in hot weather create green manure (plant matter). This helps to build soil’s fertility by raising the organic material in the ground.
The Process
You’ll need to plant over the top of existing cool-season perennial grasses and clovers. We prefer to use a No-Till drill. It allows you to get the seed into the soil in a small groove created by a pair of discs. It will not disturb the pasture’s surface and thereby eliminate potential erosion.
We find that 2 to 3 bushels of seeds per acre is plenty for our fields when applied over other spring perennials. Seed requirements may vary depending on your region, soil health and other spring grasses planted.
Our preference is western oats, spring oats or forage oats. You can also use annual seed for barley, rye or wheat. The seeds grow quickly when the soil temperatures reach 40 degrees.
Your planting of annual forages can also be accomplished during late summer from August to September if you need to increase the forage level by October or November.