STRATHMORE, Alta. Ñ A new way to preserve cereal forages is getting good reviews after three years of study in Saskatchewan.
Yellowfeed, which is a dried version of greenfeed, has been tried in Alberta and Saskatchewan by producers who want to avoid the problems of drying forages in wet years.
“It’s a bit like making silage; you can schedule things,” Lorne Klein of Saskatchewan Agriculture said during a seminar sponsored by the Foothills Forage Co-op Association and Wheatland County Feb. 9 in Strathmore.
Since 2001, Klein has been involved in trials on yellowfeed at four Saskatchewan locations.
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Standing cereal crops such as oats and barley are sprayed in August with one litre per acre of glyphosate. The crops are left to dry standing in the field. Once the stand is dry, it is swathed and baled immediately.
Glyphosate levels may need to be increased in years of heavy rain to 1.25-1.5 L per acre from the standard rate.
Oats should be sprayed at the milk-dough stage and barley at the soft dough stage to get the optimum dry matter yield and palatability level.
Barley dries four to seven days sooner than oats.
Klein said many producers spray five days before the crop would normally be cut for greenfeed. The crop continues to grow a few days after it is sprayed so in a normal year dry matter yield improves over what might have been attained from greenfeed.
While energy levels are good, protein levels decline during the drying process.
“Even if you are baling by day 15 (after spraying,) it looks like you’ll lose a percentage and a half or two off protein,” he said, which means a potential loss of 75 pounds of protein per acre.
Observations made of cattle grazing the bales in winter indicate palatability is good.
Another advantage of desiccating forage crops is that it reduces weathering loss in windrows, especially during wet conditions. Windrows do not have to be turned because they are baled immediately.
Kernels and leaves do not shatter when the crop is swathed. However, in wet conditions sprayed barley heads curl until they nearly touch the ground. Oats tend to bend until they are about 30 to 45 centimetres from the ground. This does not affect quality or swathing ability.
Yellowfeed production is also an effective perennial weed control because the glyphosate kills everything.
Yellowfeed is not recommended for swath grazing because the windrows are light and could blow away.
