Restoring depleted pastures doesn’t have to cost a bundle, says Michael Thiele, a grazing club co-ordinator with the Manitoba Forage Council.
An all-terrain vehicle with a broadcast seeder and a few bags of legume seed might be enough.
“About five years ago, we noticed that the native paddocks were going downhill real fast, mainly because of the lack of legumes,” Thiele said during a presentation in early July at the Manitoba Zero Till Research Association farm near Brandon.
“We needed to do something. It was getting desperate. Should we just re-establish? We decided that before we took that step, we should try to get some legumes back into those paddocks.”
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Thiele said options for nitrogen-fixing legumes were limited 15 years ago, but new strains such as cicer milkvetch are now widely available to ranchers at a reasonable cost.
Strapped for funding, Thiele dug through the sheds at the research farm and found several types of seed that he combined and dumped into a quad-mounted broadcast seeder.
He spent an afternoon in mid-July driving the ATV with a spinner mounted on the back over the worst-affected paddocks, doing his best to spread the seed evenly throughout the poorest areas.
A timely rain helped the seed germinate, but looking back, Thiele said a better strategy might have been to put the cattle into the paddocks at a high density shortly after seeding to grind the seed into the ground for better seed-to-soil contact.
“The point is that we did things as poorly as we could have and it still worked,” he said.
“No diesel fuel, no loss of time or production.”
Cicer milkvetch seed was pricey at the time, so Thiele used a rate of about half a pound per acre, along with red clover, trefoil and a 15-year-old bag of sainfoin.
Three years later, the increase in forage production is astounding, with the self-seeding milkvetch expanding every year. He said the plant produces large seed pods, and because of its slightly bitter taste, the cattle graze around it until later in the season when the native grasses are dormant and it is the only green plant remaining.
“The point is that you don’t need to take the drastic step of working it up, and spending a year or two getting it into shape.”
Over the years, native warm season grasses such as big bluestem and Indian grass have supported the farm’s 26 cattle during hot dry spells, when the crested wheatgrass and the meadow brome shut down. Nitrogen-fixing legumes added to the mix help to keep native and tame grasses in a productive state.
Ideally, a rancher would broadcast seed in thinning areas every year to maintain pasture productivity. Thiele said even if it doesn’t always catch immediately, the only loss would be the cost of the seed.
