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Dear Jeff,
Havendale Farm is our organic dairy in Oswego County, New
York. We are 2.5 miles from Lake Ontario in the snowbelt (200+
inches, normally. Pretty much all the land we crop is Ira
or Williamson, very fine sandy loam (HEL). Our crop rotation
is a very minimal one that supports dairy cows quite well.
We moldboard plow our oldest hayfields after first cut (early
June here—that really seems to be about the earliest
you can plow sod here and have it go well—and put the
field in BMR sorghum Sudangrass after discing in 10 tons/arce
of previously piled sand-bedded free-stall manure. We then
leave about a 24 inches of regrowth of the sorghum Sudangrass
over winter, lightly disc the field in early spring and seed
down to orchardgrass/red clover with 1 to 2 pounds/acre of
Ladino clover mixed in and a nurse crop of oats at about 1.5
bushels/acre.
The second year after seeding, we start spreading at about
15 tons/acre of free-stall manure with our slinger spreader.
By this time the red clover is disappearing, what seems like
a dense stand of orchardgrass at first cutting quickly shows
solid Ladino underneath, which gets overtaken by the orchardgrass
and is ready for cutting every four to five weeks. As a note,
we cut just under 2 dry-matter tons/acre after having one
of the driest Mays on record. In wet years these fields are
a challenge to mow at first cut, but that is a problem I'll
gladly live with. Also, we don't put anything else on these
fields, except manure, and maintain our pH about 5.8 and organic
mater at 4.2-4.8. These fields generally average 4 dry matter
tons/acre BMR or hay. We don't grow grain or feed very much
of it anymore and market about 16,000 pounds/cow/year while
maintaining a 12-month calving interval on our highly seasonal
herd of high grade Holsteins. We crop approx. 2 acres/cow,
not counting the 1/2 acre/cow it takes us to get 50-percent
dry matter from intensively managed pasture, and we have always
had forage carry over since cropping this way.
All the conventional farmers around me—we are the only
organic dairy in county—put almost all their manure
on the corn fields, but to me the grass just seems to be much
more efficient. Also, we do all our forage with the round
baler making for a very small line of equipment requiring
less horsepower and diesel.
Sorry to ramble on so,
Scott J. McAuslan
(owner/operator)
Havendale Farm
Dear Scott,
It sounds to me like you have a well-thought-out farm plan.
Even though you say you don't have a diverse crop rotation,
you are probably more diverse than you may think. For example,
most grass-based pastures are not monocultures but polycultures
with several grass species and legumes all growing in the
same place at the same time. You are actually getting the
benefits of a divers rotation all in the same year. Then you
rotate your hay crops between grasses and legumes. Without
grain crops, I think you're doing a fine job.
I hope it rains up there for you folks and that your hay
production improves.
I'd be interested to know how many cows you are milking and
if you wrap your first-cutting round bales as hayage?
Thanks again for the email.
Jeff
Dear Jeff,
Yes, I see a lot of diversity in our pastures. We have never
plowed what we use for intense grazing. We rescued it from
overgrown brush, and all we have done is manured and managed
it. It is a mix of orchardgrass, perennial ryegrass, bluegrass
and some other grass I don't know, and a whole lot of clover—white,
red, alsike and even some with yellow flowers on newly cleared
land—also vetch and even a fair amount of trefoil. I
would not even try to mow these pastures for hay as my older
sickle type haybine would just make a mess. I haven't frost
seeded these pastures, just every three or four year I spread
on them in late fall or early winter to keep the sandy soil
well fed.
We wrapped about a hundred bales this year from the 13 acres
of red clover/orchardgrass that was seeded last spring and
cut twice last year. We cut most of the dry hay kind of late,
but the cows seem to love it this way when they are grazing
and I feel it is better for cow health. We wrap the sorghum
Sudangrass at about 65-percent moisture. Tough to get it much
drier without serious field losses, and if its too dry it
falls apart like clover leaf.
We are currently only milking about 30 cows and feeding about
40 heifers as we sold off about 40 percent of the mature cows
during organic transition, but now we have no strep ag or
staph a, and no hairy wart, so we'll expand back up from within.
We have 78 stalls in the free stall and have had more than
a barnfull in the past when we were conventional.
We have a double four flat parlor with takeoffs and a 1,500
gallon bulk tank that I want to get near the top of in a few
years.
It has rained more than 1-1/2 inches and the second cut
is looking real nice. We are just planting sorghum sudangrass,
since I didn't see the point of drilling into dry sand, but
this is how late we have always planted it and it always does
great and makes really nice feed.
Scott
Have some questions to Ask Jeff? E-mail
him directly at jeff.moyer@rodaleinst.org.
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