This year, even your normal perennial grass species struggled to provide high-quality, longer-term grazing ground for animals, while legumes – especially white clovers – didn’t seem to take. On my family farm, about five years ago, we decided to start growing alternative forages after the perennials weren’t bouncing back after grazing. Unfortunately, it seems the same conversations are being repeated this year.

I’ve seen some good-looking forage crops in the past week that are now coming through nicely. Brassica forages are generally tolerant to frost and boast a high energy content, making autumn and overwinter grazing possible. Forage kale, forage turnips, swedes, or forage rape are among the options. To avoid a mess, these particular crops are best strip-grazed!

It’s all about diversity – feeding solely a brassica-based diet could cause harm to ruminants. With that in mind, I’ve had interesting conversations about reserve cropping. There are some grass species that can be planted within the year and left as a reserve crop for early spring. Perennials like cocksfoot and fescue work well.
Stockpiling into the winter isn’t necessarily new, but the importance of making good quality feed – in a year where we’ve seen both ends of weather extremes – is new, and therefore our approach needs fresh thinking.

As always, treating any root in the ground as a cash crop – and feeding it as such – will ensure the crop gets off to the best possible start and begins feeding back into your system from day one. Especially when it comes to livestock, the overarching motivation is to ensure we have reliable food stores. There is no better way to encourage that than to feed it. A crop can only ever be as good as its management.

See this month’s article on ‘OSR Seed Drenches’ for examples that promote a healthier crop, including elements of carbon, nutrition and silicon.