Section16cattleco’s Blog

I am sure there are many rotations that make sense but I have came up with this one for people in the corn belt that can use some feed and are sick of buying high priced Nitrogen. Imagine you a have field and its like 60 acres. Lets split the field up in to three 20 acre fields. year number one you plant corn. Harvest it for silage or grain, your choice. After the harvesting of corn spread all your manure on that 20acres. The following year you seed oats/alalfa. I would also add red clover because its cheap, makes good feed, and will also add nitrogen to the ground. I also am a believer in planting mutiple species in my hay crops for the same reasons mother nature doesnt just one species growing in the same place at one time. I would use the cheapest alfalfa seed you can find because it will only be in stand the seeding year and one additional year. Have worked in the seed industry and ag retail industry for 12 years I have found most seed companies have an alfalfa thay call a blend thay sell cheap. The funny thing is it isnt a blend at all!!! Its actually very good varieties that they just need to get rid off and cant sell with the name on it or it will screw the other comapnies selling the same variety. So the seeding year you will get a nice crop of oats hay (which in my observations cattle prefer over all other feed) and maybe a cutting of alflalfa/red clover. The following year you will get 3-5 good cuttings of alfalfa. year three the field will go back to corn either no-tilling in to the alfalfla stand and killing it with roundup or killing it first and seeding the corn. There will be no need to purchase nitrogen because the alfalfa will provide all you need. Also the deep root system of alflalfa and the fiberous roots of the oats will do wonders for your soil. I wouldnt be in any hurry to plant your corn in the spring if you intend to cut it for silage. Over the years we have had some wet aprings in SE South Dakota and I have noticed that the later you plant your corn the taller it gets which leads to more tons. This year I had to replant some corn on June 16th. That corn is 2-3 feet taller than the corn I planted in may. It seems that the later planted corn speads out more between the nodes than earlier planted corn. The number of nodes is the same but they are just spaced farther apart.

With very expensive N looking us in the eye I believe we might want to do a little more of what our dads and grandpas used to do. There is a reason Legumes were put on this planet.

Erik