Cover Crops Provide Advantages For Soil and Livestock
By Denice Rackley
Regenerative agriculture reminds us that all life is connected, and the foundation of agriculture – our soils – need to be a central focus. One of the processes that have gained a ton of press is the use cover crops.
There is no denying the numerous advantages cover crops bring to both crop and livestock production. Cover crops can reduce soil erosion, provide organic matter, scavenge nitrogen, break up compaction, and provide grazing.
The two most appealing benefits to a livestock producer are that the cover crops can extend the grazing season and provide high-quality nutrition. Odds are winter feed costs are the largest expense for most operations. Not only is it expensive to feed animals in winter, you also need to calculate the expense of equipment needed to make the feed and then the cost of feeding it. Animals who can feed themselves cost less and provide added benefits.
Not only will you save fuel and equipment costs, but you will also reduce the amount of stored feed used and purchased. Reducing the amount of hay needed may allow you to reserve land for summer grazing and pasture rotation. Soils benefit by allowing stock to recycling nutrients.
If you have cash crop fields that livestock graze, the addition of cover crops can be a game-changer. By incorporating cover crops into cash crop fields, you can add additional forage as well as gain soil benefits. Grazing crop aftermath along with added covers will add protein to the forage while also adding nutrients to the soil and increasing biodiversity above and below the ground. Less tillage, decreasing fuel costs, fewer chemicals are all possible when cover crops are added.
The added forages that cover crops supply in the spring, and fall can give pastures an extended rest period. This rest will help the grasses and their root systems regenerate along with breaking parasite cycles.
Grazing turns cover crops into a cash crop through marketing livestock.
Here in southern Indiana, rye, wheat, oats, triticale, barley, clovers, and brassicas planted in late summer or early fall provide winter grazing as well as early spring grazing.
Cover crops take advantage of early spring rains growing well with the cooler ground temperatures. This allows grazing of pastures to be delayed. Grass can mature before animals are turned out.
Once the pastures are green, it’s tough to keep livestock in and avoid the temptation to just open the gate. Grazing rye, wheat, clover in the spring provides the nutrition and exercise they need for calving, lambing, and kidding.
Birthing on green, annual pastures holds additional benefits. Avoiding muddy lots and overgrazed pastures avoids health problems. The increased exercise lessens dystocia and assisted births. Stock tends to spread out to graze, not being bunched up when birthing decreases mismothering. Then of course, you are benefiting soils by using the animals to distribute nutrients directly to the soil, rather than needing to spend time and money doing that yourself.
Cover crop selection
Cover crops fall into several categories including cool-season annuals, warm-season annuals, and legumes.
“The versatility of cover crops allow you to choose those that work best to address your goals and particular challenges,” says Clay Nuhring of Grazing System Supply, headquartered in Greensburg, Indiana. Cover crops address a wide variety of soil issues and well as provide excellent feed, but the vast array of choices can be overwhelming.” As a livestock producer himself, he understands how complicated it can be and provides answers not only based on science but his own 30 years of experience.
To help his customers succeed, Nuhring begins by asking several questions then recommends the best path forward.
1. Are you using the cover crops in pastures or crop fields?
2. What is the soil type?
3. Have herbicides been applied? If so, what was used and when.
4. What particular problems are you having with the land, crop, or pasture? Compaction, lack of nitrogen, weeds….
5. Do you want to add nutrients or scavenge nutrients?
6. Do you want the covers to winter kill?
7. Are the cover crops going to be grazed? When do you need grazing to occur?
The answers to these questions will assist you in choosing cover crops that will meet your goals. No matter your location cover crops can benefit your operation.
Cover crops = cost savings, soil benefits, livestock improvements
Jerry Doan of Black Leg Ranch in McKenzie, North Dakota estimates he saves 150.00 dollars per cow in hay and fuel costs by using cover crops for winter grazing.
He plants a mix of millet, radishes, turnips, and field peas in June. Doan is experimenting adding kale, collards, and forage corn with his other forages to figure out the ideal mix for his land, cattle, and weather. He estimates 1 acre of cover crops per cow; his cover crop field is next to native pasture; the cattle have access to both. His cattle even graze through the snow. If there is freezing and thawing that leaves a layer of ice, he feeds hay.
Doan’s cover crops are planted on lighter, sandy soil. The grazing cattle are feeding themselves meeting their nutritional needs as well as improving the soil by working manure in as they graze, he mentions. “We realize a huge savings keeping cattle out on the land.”
The grazing of the livestock and hoof action breaks down the cover crops adding organic matter to the soil. Forages, not eaten, along with manure, and even saliva benefit soil life and increase nutrient cycling.
Grazing also reduces the need for synthetic fertilizers, herbicides. Studies have shown that root growth is not affected by grazing if covers are allowed to reach near mature height before grazed. Since root mass is unaffected by regenerative grazing, the soil continues to reap the benefit even after the animals are removed.
Cover crops benefit both the soil and livestock. You really can’t go wrong adding them to your operation.
