Last week we looked at managing grazing so you have forage in pasture into the fall and winter months. This week we’ll look at alternative forages that do well into the fall and winter.
Bamboo!
Edmund Brown of Cairncrest Farm in central New York found the climate conditions in his region made it difficult to graze for more than 8 months out of any given year. So he and his brother began considering alternative forages. They’ve been experimenting with bamboo as a season extending forage with good success. (And before you say, “Oh no! It’s highly invasive!” well, Edmund thought of that too when choosing his variety. Check it out.)
Edmund has continued the bamboo grazing experiment. Here’s an update from 2021. His conclusion:
It’s been a long time coming, but these results are promising enough I now plan to dig bamboo roots and plant them over several acres next spring. Buying bamboo for a broad acre planting would be super expensive; we finally have a large enough patch to dig rhizomes from that we won’t go broke planting out a bigger area with homegrown rootstock. It’ll take a few years for the transplants to get established and really take-off into a much larger bamboo patch, but once they do it’ll make for a great place to winter livestock with less need for hay.
But if you’re thinking of getting started with bamboo, first read his cautionary piece, “Bamboo Scams and Environmental Farming.”
Trees – They’re Not Just for Shade Anymore!
Austin Unruh of Trees for Graziers has done a great deal of work on tree species that both provide shade and shelter, and are a food source. You can get an idea of the potential of Honey Locust from these two articles he shared with On Pasture. But don’t stop with these! Head over to his website where he has additional articles and a wide variety of learning resources. I highly recommend Trees for Graziers. They’ve done the work so that you can get started quickly and successfully.
Multiflora Rose
I’ve worked with a number of graziers on teaching their livestock to add multiflora rose to their diet and at 10 to 13% protein, it’s a very nutritious forage.
Yes, it loses it’s leaves in the winter, but those winter rose hips are also a good source of nutrition. A 2021 study that appeared in the Journal of Agriculture Food and Development concluded with this:
The present studies of rosehip supplementation in animal nutrition show the relevance and consequences of positive effect in relation to both animal health and productivity in terms of quality and quantity, in cattle (milk and beef), pigs (pork yield and reproductive performance) and poultry (productive performance, egg quality). The fact that livestock and humans share the same fundamental biology and metabolic pathways supports the belief that animal well-being (reducing oxidative stress by proper managing) the rosehip may also provide benefits to the final consumer. The positive effects of rosehip as a supplement on animal health status and production performances deserve further investigations.
