Welcome everyone to BCA today on this Thursday morning, August 13th, 2020. Our topic of discussion this morning is going to be late summer pasture management. And we're pleased to be joined by Dr. Katy Paine, who is our applied force system specialist at the Southern Piedmont, a wreck with virginia cooperative extension and Virginia Tech Dr. things. I'll be sharing some advice or some late summer pasture management and just some tips to as we go into the fall, some considerations for receding and how to set up your pastures and hay land for productive 2021 growing season. So we appreciate everyone joining us this morning. Thank you for being here, Dr. Payne, we appreciate you joining us this morning than 90 per billion here. Good morning. Thank you for asking me to be here. And so it's a great time to be talking about fall pasture management and some renovation techniques that we might be using here within the next month or so. First I wanted to kind of give a background about about me. I've been here at the southern PM on a rack for a little over a year. And I'm originally from century West Virginia, grew up raising beef cattle. When I was teenager extension agent said, I'm going to show you what's going on under those hopes and got me interested in soil judging and got a Bachelor of Science at West Virginia University and soils. And then I figured out the best way to mix those two worlds. Soils and beef cattle was going into forges. So I went and got a Master's at the University of Georgia, working with Dr. Jan, it's Hancock and finished up my PhD at the University of Kentucky with Ben Goff and Ray Smith. So jumping right into some pasture renovation, there are a lot of different reasons that you may be interested and renovating a past year. Some of this first picture, you may want to consider moving away from the Kentucky 31 toxic into five tall fescue and to a novel. That's a lot of what we're seeing these days with pasture innovations. You could be having stands that are getting then that had been heavily overgrazed, moving more towards weed species. And then you could be wanting to just try something new. If you have a wildlife area here at the southern Piedmont in Iraq, we've converted 15 acre area. To native grasses that will be starting grazing next summer. Or you could have had a wet winter or wet summer, had to hold those animals in a sacrifice area, have a lot of plugging and that requires some renovation Now. Then one of my favorite reasons is to incorporate legumes into your grass pastures. So when we design a renovation strategy, timing is everything. And really the best time. Here in Virginia, we think about our base grass system or cool season grasses. So the best time to establish those are in late August or early October. And you can plant in the spring, but there are some challenges. May have excess moisture. You have stress from the summer and weeds. So usually we we try to recommend planting in the fall. And so when does this renovation plan need to start? Well, now really a few weeks ago. And it really takes a lot of planning, making decisions and really following through with the management. So we'll kind of go through some steps. First as you're making your plan. First step is what species are you looking for and establishing. So really you want a species that's adapted to your area. There's no use here in Virginia trying to establish something like perennial peanut when you know or behave graphs when you know, it's not going to do the best up here. So here traditionally we think tall fescue base systems, you want to make sure your forage species is adapted to your soils. Make sure that it's going to get you the yield that you need. Make sure it's going to have the nutritive value that your livestock require. And make sure it's going to adapt to your conditions. And make sure that that species is able, going to be able to adapt to what you're using it for. Searches when we think about whether they choose red clover, white clover, Red Clover, my work better. And a hay operation where white clover may work better. In a pasture where we're going to graze. And also you want to think about how long is that plant going to last out there? How long is it going to persist before you have to go back and start this process over trying to reseed. Step two is weed control. And that's really one of the biggest steps in planning your renovation. Because you have to be able to control the weeds before. You go into seeding. As of right now, there aren't any available herbicides to kill broadly weeds and leave clover. However, core tab is coming out with a product called Pro clover. Next, it'll be commercially available next spring. That will allow you to keep white clover and it's also allowing you to keep some of the annual less produces. But so far they've found that it doesn't work too well on keeping Red Clover and pastures. When we talk about herbicides, you want to make sure that they match the weeds that are present. You want to correct them at the right at the rate that's recommended on the label. I want to make sure you're the right growth stage. There's no use in applying. You're wasting money. If you're applying herbicide on a fully mature wheat plant that's already dropping seed onto the ground, you want to make sure that you are getting them while they're young and susceptible. And you also have to plan on certain herbicides may have restrictions on when you can seed actor those applications, or even when you can graze after those applications. And one of the biggest things, especially in renovating, is considering using herbicides and smother crops to produce weed seed production. So I will go through a couple of those smother crop systems that have kind of been tested. So we're going into the fall. We're thinking about completely renovating. So if we're gonna do, if all see this smother crop, we would kill the side or the problem leads in late summer. And then we may see to small grain as an when our cover crop. However, we want to make sure that we make it truly smother and reduce the amount of wheats that come up, use at a higher seeding rate than we normally would. And then you can harvest those small green plants for hay or silage. Or you could, we could harvest the grain. However, and the systems you may not be able to plant in the spring if that was your plan or if you wanted to plan a good fescue or cool season grass, you can plan a warm season grass in this system. For summer seated smother crops, again going in. And to the end, late spring, we would kill the solder problem weeds. And then we could see two summer animal touches, sorghum, Sudan grass or Fox Hill mill it again at a higher seeding rate. Harvest that late summer for hay or silage. Or you could graze it and then spray and see to forage crop in the fall. But really, as for renovating a tall fescue pasture, we want to think about combining both of those where we would do the false mother crop sequence, follow it up with a summer smother crop, and then spray and seed are tall fescue or cool season perennial grass that following fall. So it does take time. Like I said, this was the ideal situation for the conversion of toxic to novel and to fight tall fescue. And there has been some research down at NC State recently completed that showed the benefits of using these processes. And I don't have a slide, but you can also consider doing a couple seasons of doing Roundup Ready crops. You could get some income while you're in the renovation process. Step three, adjust soil fertility. To me, this is one of the most important steps and I could call it the most important step, and I could talk about it all day. But really the basis of our soil fertility programs, getting a soil test. You want to make sure that you're getting representative soil samples, at least 20 cores per sample. And to make sure you're getting a good representation, sample each pasture separately. Or if your pastures are split up, you want to make sure that your representing each management type by themselves. And you also for pastures, you want to make sure that you're getting the proper depth. We usually recommend two to four inch depth unless you've recently tilde, then it can go to the regular six inches. And then you want to make sure to avoid those camps, stock areas where animals congregate around water, feed, troughs, shaded areas, and fence lines or gates. And we recommend testing graze pastures every two to three years because we are getting recycled nutrients from the animals. And hay fields because we're removing those nutrients really needed soil test every year and the systems to replace those nutrients because we're taking them off. And just a general rule of thumb after you've gotten your soil test and you get your recommendations will try to adjust pH depending on the forage species that you're growing and you're area, try to get it between the 6.06.8 higher and for legumes and alfalfa. And we also want to a judge adjusts the phosphorus and potassium as needed according to soil test. Step four, we consider suppressing the existing side. We want to make sure that we're reducing that plan residue. We want to we're doing that to make sure that we're getting the seed in the right place and that we're getting good seed to soil contact. You can suppress the existing side that's reducing competition for light water and nutrients. You can't hard graze. This top picture shows some lighter grazing and the bottom picture some harder grazing down to the bottom, which may result in better seed to soil contact for those for that renovation. And when we, if we want to suppress with herbicides, glyphosate is usually the way to go if we want to control it, can get, it gets down and the routes better than a grim Ox1 repair quiet pair Co-op may be better for suppression. It is a little bit more dangerous chemical plants, so be careful when you are using those. And then really getting a good to soil to see contact is our next step. And that really goes back to our seeding methods and being able to introduce those seeds to that soil. You use frost seeding. Livestock seeding can do some minimum tillage practices. Or one of the most reliable is no till and established pastures. So livestock seating, there has been some talk about it. You feed the seed to the livestock. And legumes usually work better than grasses. In that situation, it's not really uniform. It can take. Four to five years to get one manure Pao per square yard. So it takes time. It's not the best practice. You can get high germination rates on the actual manure pile. But getting that, getting the roots to actually penetrate the soil from their siblings can be difficult. And also, it's hard to keep them in seed inoculated as it passes through the animal and into soil. Proceeding is broadcast the seed onto the soil surface and late winter or barely early spring, you want to be able to get it out there early enough that you're getting freeze and thaw cycles to really incorporate that seed as though soils kind of shrink and swell during the winter. In works best with red and white clover. It, it can work with grasses, it's not the best with alfalfa. Like I mentioned, it's really works the best with red and white clovers. You really have to work at minimizing the the residue that's on top of the soil because that seed has to reach that bare soil to be able to incorporate through those free stall cycles. And it's important to get even distribution if you want and even stand. And there can, if there are some soil disturbance can help getting for all seated established. Minimum tillage can be used to graze the pasture, hard to reduce some residue. You can use some light tillage you might want to disturb, go in with some like tillage 40 to 60% of Assad broadcasts a seed or you can use a drill culture packing you're dragging to get a good soil to see contact. Again. Here it's important to control the competition. After actor you've ceded either by clipping or grazing. And then No-till takes more effort and attention to detail, but it really is a more consistent result. And it's directly putting that seed into contact with the soil. And this method can be successful in spring or fall. If you're trying to establish alfalfa, that would be the best method to use. You can. Again, you need to suppress the residue and calibrating the drill before seeding is very important. One of the most important things and often the biggest reason for stand failure or plants not coming up is planning at the wrong depth. So you want to check and recheck the seeding depth before you start going out to plant. We rarely ever need anything deeper than a half an inch. Don't trust. Don't trust what someone tells you. Make sure that you're going out there before you plant and check it yourself. And there's a general rule that you should be able to see some of the seed along the slit from the no till drill. And if you don't, then you're probably too deep. And again, it's important to control post seeding competition. If you're planting in the spring and you can use pre-emergent herbicides that may help some of that post seeding competition. Step six is again, controlling this competition and that can often determine the success or failure of the planting. Seedlings aren't very tolerant of competition. You want to keep that can't be open so they can get the nutrients and sunlight and water that they need to really establish that root system to get them growing. You can, if you're good at managing your animals, you can flash graze where you put a large number of animals onto a small area and graze too just above the seedlings, that can be difficult. That's why I say that you need to be able to manage those animals pretty, pretty tightly. You can also clip frequently just above those seedlings. And really it takes those siblings to get up to four to six inches before they can start competing on their own. So now that we've planted our plants are four to six inches. They're able to compete on their own. We kind of want to look at some of the pasture management that we want to take. After it's been established. That first year, we want to graze lightly and lettered breast as much as possible and our first spring and summer, because those plants actually take up to two years to fully establish. And it's good to allow seed heads to form before that first cutting. That way, when plants form the seed heads, they start sending nutrients back down to the roots that's going to get the nutrient reserves back into the root to give them a good carbohydrate reserved for regrowth. You'll also want to continue controlling those weeds and these cool season grass pastures. And then I always say or I always recommend, don't plant legumes during that first year of establishment. That way you can control those weeds during that first year and then come back that second spring to relay you've gotten your weeds under control. Now we can go back and plant a legume species that spring. That way we're getting the nitrogen benefit from those like yams were increasing yield, increasing digestibility of crude protein, and producing fiber content. So really, I'm a big supporter of incorporating legumes into grass pastures. So those are those where some kind of some of the steps in establishing a renovation strategy. Now just kind of go through some of the basic management practices that you may want to do this late summer or fall in an established pasture. So you can, it's really important to soil test and keep up with your nutrient management. Fall is actually the ideal time to correct for pH because it does take lime about six months before it even starts to correct ph in the soil. So getting that on in the fall, we'll help you get off to a great start the following spring and summer. You also want to apply some low rates of nitrogen and potassium. And that will help. In the fall. It's some tailoring from that nitrogen tell put overwinter and also potassium is really important for over-wintering forges. As we go into fall, our plants are starting to slow down and production. We want to make sure that we're getting as much out of it as we can. So rotational grazing, this is a good management strategy to go into that, to be able to extend what growth we're getting. But you want to make sure that you're leaving enough stubble height to really save some of those carbohydrates for winner over-wintering. So we usually recommend leaving pastures of four to five inches. And then the big thing is stockpiling those cool season grasses. Especially here where we have a lot of tall fescue. Tall fescue is a great forage for stockpiling. So with stockpiling, where we would clip it right about now, mid-August to late August, apply some nitrogen and just allow whatever grows to accumulate until December or so. When we're looking for a field to pick to do this, we want one with the strong side that has good drainage to help relieve any standing water that may have to help reduce deterioration of that plant material. We also want to protect those fields from overgrazing during the summer or early fall. Like I mentioned, we would clip those pastures and late summer trying to remove those weeds in the old growth. Before we apply that nitrogen, leaving it at that four inch residual high. Mentioned about 60 pounds of 50 to 60 pounds of nitrogen. In late August to mid-September. I had done some research with my PhD that going over about 80 pounds of nitrogen didn't help with stockpile yields. So you wouldn't want to spend too much money on nitrogen. Like I mentioned, we're going to allow that growth to accumulate to mid-December. And if there is, you may consider feeding hay during the period of when we're allowing it to accumulate if there is grazing. Just so we'll have that fresh growth later. And then as we see with the seasonal distribution of the cool seizing grass curve, again, we have our summer slump, but allowing those, that tall fescue to stockpile. And the winner we're really going to save money on, hey, so here, this is in mid-February, and as those plants start to deteriorate, some of that crude protein is actually going to become more available because it's coming out of the cell wall easier. So we do have really good, high nutritive value forage. And so to get the most out of your stockpile, you always if you have grass legume mixtures, like I mentioned, the legumes and other forage species don't stockpile. As well as tall fescue. So you may want to utilize those mixtures first because they're going to deteriorate quicker than a pure tall fescue stand. And you also want to strip grace. So start off with your poly wire or temporary fencing. There's no need for a back fence because that it's not going to regrow until early spring. But it is important to manage that grazing and it can be really high-quality forage. It's kind of in summary for pasture renovation. Timing is everything. You want to make sure that you're selecting the best species for your system's getting weeds under control. Taking soil test, kidding residue off of the soil surface, and ensuring C to soil contact and giving it the best chance after it's established by controlling competition. In terms of fall management, again, soil testing, it's very important. You want to make sure your rotational grazing to get the most out of it and leave that residual high to get those carbohydrates back into the plant roots. And I want to take a challenge for everyone. If you, if you're able to fence off a field or something and trying to stockpile this fall to really get that high quality forage. This winner. Before I go, there is still some time to enter. If you've made some high-quality, Hey, consider entering the southeastern hey contest. Talk to your extension agent about submitting a sample. And also a little plug that Virginia Tech forges this now on Facebook and Instagram. And we welcome any followers and recommendations. And so with that, I'll say thank you and I welcome any questions. Thank you so much, Dr. Payne. We really appreciate you being here and Shanda, great comments and presentation. This is Brad Jarvis and Madison paper and I have a question on herbicide use on pastures with 30% lagoon was unknown. Apparently proud. Is that label for that. And 24 d, 24 d b. The main formulation. Seems to be two applications then a little bit softer on preserving clover. There are some restrictions. I'm not exactly sure what they are off my head. I think erasing restrictions like was pretty long. It's like 60 days. Heyne restrictions less. It's like 45. Would there be any advantage of that or wouldn't you determine when you can sacrifice clover with a herbicide? They improve your pasture utilization, I guess I'm saying there's our studies that there what percent weight infestation makes sense to sacrifice and clover come back and for all seated. Does that make sense? That makes sense. Usually I recommend to people, if you have less than 25% clover and a field, and it, if it's not an intermediate or a Latino type clover. And if it's just like a small Dutch clover, even then if it's over 25%. And it's just that small Dutch clover than I would consider sacrificing that clover content because that's it's not going to be worth the amount of nitrogen that it supplies because it it doesn't really supply that much. Yes, my thought, I think if we look that this economically ethnic sacrificing some clover is Pais and long run versus the cost of for all seeding five pounds and clover plus or mic stands. I think if you put those down, you can certainly if, if you have the ability to make, hey, somebody looks thinking closely the clover, but if you're making hay and you had to wait 45 days, well, heck, in the middle of summer, many times overweight, 45 days after the first cutting to to make our Hey, so I just don't see a lot of research out there to fully push that out as a recommendation that I do it case by case depending on the farmer. But we do have a lot of weeds were trying to protect a lot of Clover, and so does try to develop strategies to make that work or happened. There was a lot of research back in the sixties and seventies. But we, we didn't look too much at week percentages and such. Buddha trying to, in my PhD research at Kentucky, I was using enhance deficiency nitrogen fertilizers on on grass clover mixtures. And I'd come across a lot of stuff about when and when not to consider eliminating legumes that you do have in the past year to get rid of the wheat content. So I think that 20-25 percent of like good intermediate or Ladino type clovers. Kind of what what the norm is for recommendations. I have another question. If no one else says on, I very rarely recommend tillage unless it's really a truly compact that situation. The no till drill, just so easy to use premium. The hardest part is learning how to calibrate it. And if you have a nice shop or nice piece, a soft brown the layout, and you can get that done. But if you do have to attack some hard pans or some compact the soil and Samir pastures because of equipment running are making, hey, would it be reasonable thing that we get overseeing brassicas in those fields as a way to improve soil health until to kinda penetrate that hard pan. And I know it's I know it's been done down and Auburn, they've Dillard is doing some research with brassicas and I believe she's looking at it's effect on compaction and everything. And I'll make a note of it right now. I'll ask her what she's found and I'll get back to you on that. Well, I was wondering what, you know. We had the brassicas in by the middle of August, first of September for them actually to do anything because I'm not very cold tolerant. So I kind of wonder what the forge with the standard grass needs to look like doesn't have to be a pretty open canopy or does that brass seed heavy enough to penetrate? I will say something. If it's six inches, six to eight inches tall, can have brassica, say, make it to the soil level, actually germinating, do something or do we have to bring the bring it down below at three inches or lower to make sure we have germination of the brassica seeds. Yeah, we'd make sure that it's slower than sixth centuries. Sure. Was you got fee there as well. If you bring them in after the brasses grow, the channel will come pluck them out at ground vehicle. That campaign we had a question submitted for for producer. They couldn't join us today and he had a question on a recommendation for a species that could be planted now in anticipation of some production and growth that could be utilized this fall, late summer into the fall, but it would also overwinter and come back next spring. I know they'd be very tough with something like some of our traditional cool season perennials like fescue orchard grass. That thought that come to mind for me, maybe be something like ryegrass if they can hold off long enough to let that go one good. This following any comment or recommendation on that? Yeah. If he if he just wanted it for this fall and late winter, early spring, he could do was small grain or annual rye grass, GDB and mix it with crimson clover or winner p. I've got a project that it will be planted in September. I'm looking at different mixtures of cool season angles of grasses and legumes. So hopefully one day we'll get that turned into a grazing study. But I think if if he's looking for just fall, late fall growth in early spring growth, then I would go with a winner annual. Alright, thanks, Dr. Paine. In any other comments or questions as more of what our guest speaker on this topic. Alright, well, thank you again to our campaign. We really appreciate you joining us as small and great presentation. That's some great advice for folks as we come into the following months preparing for this. Just a few comments I'd like to make. Next week we'll be joined by one of our fellow extension agent and service to call Stafford and the northern district. And we're also going to have a producer on the line with us in the topic of discussion is going to be extending grazing time in eastern Virginia. And we're just kind of look at some different scenarios and I'll talk a little bit about some things that folks are doing in the area utilizing some of these. And your species to do that also maybe haven't called touch a little bit on some of the greys 300 Initiative and some of the stuff that the folks in the northern and western part of the state are doing and see if that can be adapted a little bit to the eastern part of the state here. So if you're interested in that or have producers are interested in that, please, please encourage him to join us next week. Also, thank you for being with us. If you just take a few moments and fill out our brief evaluation for the program, I think you just saw the link there on the screen. So if you could follow that link and thanks, definitely normally post that in the chat as well. So just take a few moments to provide us some feedback and also let us know if there's a topic you'd like to see featured. We'd be glad to do the best we can get that. So with that being said, thank you again, Dr. Payne. Thank you for everyone else that's children does this morning. I appreciate your time, appreciate you being here and just like to thank the team of agents and interns that that make this effort possible. Mike broadest, Stephanie Rommel check and her summer intern, scholar Swan, Mr. Trent Jones, Law, maxi nay, and Hearst Armor in turn, Shelly Underwood. So thank you all again for joining. Assess mourn, and we really appreciate everyone being here, stay safe, take care and enjoy the rest of your Thursday morning.