 On today's Animal Science and Forge webinar series, we're going to discuss tall fescue renovation. So there are a couple of reasons why you might want to consider renovating your pasture or hayfield from Kentucky 31 to novel-indified tall fescue. The first and most economical is if the pasture needs renovating because of a dead or thinning tall fescue stand. In this picture, you can see a picture actually from my dad's farm where there was an area that need to be renovated. And so during the winter we actually fed hay there and allowed the animals to muck it up and kind of destroy it and trample it during the wet season, which as you can see here killed out a lot of the forage. So if you have areas that look like this, they'll need to be renovated anyways. And so it's useful to go ahead and make that transition to a novel-indified tall fescue. The other reason is if you're just really struggling with tall fescue toxicosis. I'm not going to get into a lot on tall fescue today. But for those of you not familiar, it is caused by an endophytic fungus that lives within the fescue plant that causes vasoconstriction in livestock, which results in heat stress. Low feed intake and rate of gain, low pregnancy rates, low birth weight and meaning weight, dystocia or difficulty birthing in a galactia or reduction or elimination of milk after production after birth. Some producers may find that they see very little tall fescue toxicosis. Other producers may really struggle with it. I would argue that even if you don't see the consequences of tall fescue toxicosis, you are not going to get the maximum animal performance that you could with a non-toxic fescue. But sometimes the economics aren't quite there for complete reestablishment just because of this. But if you are seeing severe tall fescue toxicosis, sometimes it might be worthwhile considering. So there are four main methods that have been researched as a way of renovating pasture from Kentucky 31 to novel tall fescue. So for those of you who have Kentucky 31 are familiar with it, you know, it's extremely persistent and stress tolerant. This makes it difficult to kill, as you can imagine. So there are some extra steps. We can't simply just kill out the tall fescue, spray it, and then reestablishment. There are some steps that we need to take in order to ensure that we're getting a actually novel tall fescue stand. Now, some people, there's kind of a myth out there that novel endophyte tall fescue can actually change back into Kentucky 31. And on a plant by plant basis, this is not the case. So a novel endophyte tall fescue or even a endophyte free tall fescue, which we don't suggest planting for a variety of reasons, which I don't have time to get into today, those can't revert back. What happens is those, especially the endophyte free tall fescue, but even a novel, if they're not managed correctly, will end up dying back. And there's so much Kentucky 31 seed either already in the seed bank in the soul, or from a surrounding fields that the Kentucky 31 then creeps back in. So that's how you could have re-encroachment. So that's what we're trying to prevent. So I'm going to go over these four methods individually and talk about how you would do these. So the first is spray, sweater spray with a summer sweater. This consider is considered probably the best option. It has the shortest amount of time between killing the tall fescue Kentucky 31 and establishment of the novel with minimal disruptions and pasture availability. So this is a curve showing relative tall fescue yield through the spring, which is when it's most yielding. The summer, which it doesn't actually grow during the summer and the fall where you do get some growth, but not as much as the spring. So you want to conduct your first killing spray in late spring after you get that initial flush. So this will kill your old stand, as well as any weeds. We want to not only kill the tall fescue, but also eliminate any weeds that may compete with our novel tall fescue. After spring, we want to plant a smother crop. These are typically going to be summer annuals. I'll talk about in a couple of minutes what the options are in planting our smother crop. But we would plant that in early summer, just like we would any summer annual, you're going to know till that into the existing side. After you have your smother crop, you're going to want to spray again. This is going to kill any volunteer seedlings, any tillers of fescue that weren't killed in your first spray, any additional weeds as well as your smother crop because you want to terminate that. After that second spray, approximately September 15th is when we want to plant our novel tall fescue. Regardless of what fescue we're establishing in Alabama, we suggest a fall establishment to help us get a push on that, that spring growth. Some producers do plant it in the spring, but you're going to see a very stressed stand during your first summer, especially if there's not adequate rainfall during your first summer. By planting it in the fall, we have a good root development and good growth prior to entering the summer, which will allow it to be a little more tolerant of drought and heat stress. So the other option is spray smother spray. It's going to be the winter smother. So in this is going to look a little bit different, and this one's going to take a little bit longer. So the first spray is actually going to happen after the summer. So you're going to graze your tall fescue or cut it for hay during the fall, go through the summer, and you're going to spray that in the early fall or late summer, end of August, early September. And this is going to kill your old stand as well as your weeds. Now you don't want to spray when the tall fescue is dormant. So you do want to wait for your fall green up. So if the tall fescue is dormant, you're actually not going to kill it. The herbicide has to have an actively growing stand of fescue in order to be active. So just make sure that you're seeing some amount of green up and growth in your fescue prior to spraying. So in this scenario, you're going to plant a smother crop. It's going to be consisting of cool season annuals and you're going to plant that from approximately September 15. Now you'll manage that through your second year. So now we've gone through the winter and we're into the spring of the second year. So we're going to have that into late spring. We'll have that smother crop and then we're going to do a second spray at that point. This is going to spray any escape tillers. So any fescue that didn't die from our first spray, our weeds as well as terminating our smother crop. So this system actually requires a third spray. So you're going to leave the field fallow during the summer. So it will have residue on it, obviously, but you're not going to mess with it during the summer. So you're going to initiate a third spray, which is going to kill any more tillers that haven't died. Fallow weeds as well as any volunteer seedlings because we do have a lot of our pastures and all of them are going to have a very weedy seed bank. And so as we open up that canopy and allow sun to reach the soil, you're going to get a lot of weed seeds and seedlings emerge. So you're going to spray again in that late summer, early fall. And you would still plant your tall fescue approximately September 15 to get sure that you get good establishment. And this system, you're still going to plant. But as you can see, this system takes about 12 to 18 months to follow through because of the time in your spraying and establishing where with the summer smother crop, you're going to be a little bit less. So you're going to be able to do that more of in one growing season where this one takes two growing seasons. So for your smother crops, if you're using a summer smother crop, this is the preferred method. You want to use something like sorghum, sorghum, Sudan grass or pearl millet. My personal opinion would be to use pearl millet because you it's more drought tolerant, as well as being resistant to sugarcane aphid so you don't have to worry about those situations. Crabgrass, which I usually am a very big proponent of is not a great option. And this is because it has very high receding potential, which then can become a lead in your fescue and outcompeted. So we want to avoid crabgrass. We're going to no till it into a sod. We're not going to do prepared seed bed. And there is a prepared seed bed option. Many of our pastures that are in tall fescue, we really don't want to till them because either they're very have a very high slope there on the side of the hill. In other words, they're really prone to erosion, which is a lot of times why they've been established in tall fescue. So these are going to be the options for those those fields we would prefer not to till because of erosion issues. Now we do on our summer smother crops want to use a lower seeding rate so that light can reach the dead tillers and actually for any of those that have not completely died allow them to grow. So when we plant have that second spray were able to begin since they're actively growing have them die. So for our winter smother crops. The best option is actually serial ride because it produces a lot of biomass. Oats or any winter annual mixture. I would probably avoid ryegrass for the same reason we would avoid crabgrass has high seeding potential and it's going to compete with the fescue, but serial rye and oats on those small grains are going to be the best option. Again, you want to use a lower seeding rate so live reaches undead tillers and allows growth so that when you spray them, it's more effective. So the next option is spray wait spray. So we have the same graph here our tarp fescue growth. And we're going to clip it in late spring. Then we're going to spray this six to seven weeks before we want to plant. And this is going to kill our old stand. Now this six to seven weeks is going to be contingent on how far north you live. So the further north you live the longer top as you will grow into the summer. So if you live close to say Auburn, which is kind of the line where we have top fescue is going to go dormant earlier. So this is also something to keep in mind that you need to make sure that it's not dormant so we want to spray it before it goes to my dormant in the summer, which could be anywhere from mid May to mid June depending on where you live. So we picked up the second spray about six weeks after the first spray. And this is going to do volunteer seedlings, escape tillers and weeds. Again, this might change a little bit. These are generic recommendations coming mostly out of research conducted at Kentucky and North Carolina, which are going to have a later growing season for fescue than we do. So in my opinion, that might be a little bit longer. We want to wait till we see some green up in the fall. So you may see that being more than a six week period, it may be more eight to 10 weeks for the summer. So this is going to kill any volunteer seedlings of weeds and escape tillers. So let's do that second spray just before we're going to plant and then we're going to know till into the existing seed bank. Again, September 15 that's our special day that we want to play any of our cool season forages, and we're going to plant at that point. This system is not as effective as our smother crops. So it's less expensive though, and in some respects a little bit quicker, because you're able to do it in one growing season similar to the spray smother spray. But research has shown this isn't quite as effective as killing the tall fescue sand as using a smother crop. So prepared seed bed is our last option. So in this option, we are going to perform conventional tillage. Again, as I mentioned earlier, we don't want to do this on any pasture, which may be prone to erosion, and that's going to be many pastures where we're growing tall fescue. So we're going to do it basically a spray till spray through the summer. You're going to spray kill the stand in late spring, do conventional tillage and then spray it again. You may also have to do an additional spray just prior to establishment in the spring. So this is going to have more labor in that you're going through the field and producing tillage. So we have a lot of times we do have forage establishment fails. In this scenario, honestly, we want to make sure it is expensive to put in novel and defy tall fescue. So we want to avoid failures at all costs. So the main reasons why we might see a failure are for kill, the tillers and seedlings must grow and contact the herbicide. So we're not getting a good kill of that Kentucky 31 or the weed seeds for that matter. So they're actually outcompeting our freshly planted forage, bad seed. So we always want to use certified seed, especially in novel and defy tall fescue. You're going to see a lot of brown bag seed, especially in Kentucky 31 but we do want to use certified seed when we're doing this. So we're planting 2D. It's difficult to see in this picture because we had spray painted the seeds pink, but then we were planting into a red soul. But in that green arrow, you'll actually see one of the tall fescue seeds. So when we're planting, we should actually see some of the seed on top of the ground. If you can't, then if you're having a dig for it's 2D, we want to go a quarter to a half an inch and no deeper on our tall fescue. Carry over herbicide. This can affect new seed and preserves old seed and tillers. So you want to make sure the herbicide that you're using doesn't have any residual effects on new tillers, the tall fescue in our IPM guide for forage and hay fields. You will see that we do have restrictions on herbicides that should be used during establishment year of fescue. So those are ones that if they have residues you don't want to use during your just prior to establishment. Legume competition. So legumes are great in tall fescue, whether you're talking Kentucky 31 or novel in the fight tall fescue, they're always a great addition, but we don't want to plant them right now. We want to wait until at least our second year of establishment to think about putting in our clovers. So don't plant the clovers immediately because they actually can't out compete the grass when it's really small. Moisture conditions, be it drought or water logging, we really don't have a lot of control over that. But again, if we plant in the fall, the likelihood of having those conditions is going to be much less than if we plant in the spring. And then soil fertility phosphorus and pH along with nitrogen are critical. So make sure you're doing your soul tests prior to establishment. So you're looking at your pH and remember that pH can take 612 or more months to correct and we want to give it the best growing conditions ever so we want to correct that pH prior to planting. So for grazing management, we really want to make sure in that first year we're really babing it. So in the first year you want to consider making hay and not grazing because hay is going to be less stress on the stand. This picture here was taken in Northwest Georgia at my parents farm two years after we established a tall fescue stand. Now typically I wouldn't suggest waiting two years but actually what happened was the fencing got delayed because of rain and so the fescue wasn't touched for two years. And you can see how well the stand looks. So we really want to baby in that first year so that we can have a good strong stand like this. So you can reduce any contamination of wheat seed from hay bells and manure. If you do have to graze. So if you are feeding fescue hay, especially Kentucky 31 fescue hay in a field you just planted and novel and defy that Kentucky 31 can out and compete. There will be seeds not only in the hay, but they actually can be passed through the animal. So also if the animals have been grazing on a Kentucky 31 pasture, you want to give them time in another field to pass that give them about it takes three to four days to pass so about a week before you move them to a new established stand of novel and defy tall fescue. So long term grazing management novel and defy tall fescue is going to be similar to any other forage. It's going to persist much better than in the fight free tall fescue we don't actually suggest planting in the fight free tall fescue because of its persistence problems. And this includes things like Kentucky 32. So still need to manage for persistence. This is something we got a little lazy with with Kentucky 31 because it's so stress tolerant. But in any forest system we always want to try to utilize rotational grazing so that we can manage for persistence. We want to make sure that our soul fertility and grazing management are correct because these are the two stresses factors that can be controlled by producers. We can't control rainfall, we can't control the weather, but we can control that we have proper soul fertility and food for our plants because that's what soul fertility is, and that we're not allowing the animals to overgraze. You can see in this picture right here that this grass is easily three four five inches tall and this is where we want to keep it. We don't want to graze below three to four inches in tall fescue. So intake of non toxic tall fescue pastures like novel into fight tall fests pastures tall fescue pastures is actually going to be greater than that of Kentucky 31. So the reason one of the reasons that we can continuously graze our Kentucky 31 pastures is because the animal self limit because of the toxin. That limiting factor and novel into fight tall fescue so overgrazing can be a major problem. Again, why we're able rotational grazing is going to give us that advantage. So we want to make sure that our animals are not able to overgraze. We really want to manage that and this is what's going to give us long term persistence. So we want to keep an eye on that because they're again not going to have any self limiting factors. So as I mentioned rotational grazing is the best way to manage our tall fescue stands are any pasture for that matter. Some type of rotational grazing should be used. It doesn't have to be management intensive. We don't need to be moving animals, even once a week, just moving that every two weeks or every four weeks through different paddocks will make things better and allow pastures to rest. Animals with access to toxic and non toxic fescue at the same time will always prefer the non toxic, leaving areas undergraze and areas overgraze. So especially if you're not renovating your entire farm at once which actually is something that we don't suggest I'll get into that in just a second. But you want to make sure that they are only on one or the other. Otherwise they're going to overgraze portions and undergraze others. So I'm not going to get into a lot of numbers. I am definitely not an economist, but there's some things that I just wanted to keep give you as an idea of things to think about when when thinking about renovating. So the first thing are cost. So obviously there's a large cost of spraying, planting this mother crop, planting the novel tall fescue, as well as any additional feed needs because likely you're going to have reduced pasture during your conversion and you'll have to supplement with either hay or some kind of feed. So these are things that are going to cost you money during this process. The benefits are that you're going to get improved weaning weights, improved breeding rates, and eventually reduce any extra input costs. For example, any supplementation you may have needed while feeding fescue, you can either reduce or eliminate because the animals are going to perform better on the novel into fight tall fescue. As you can imagine, these are long term benefits versus costs in the first year. So it's important to balance that. And if you contact any of your extension regional agents or the extension service, we can help you figure out where the economical point is. So there's different payout years. In general, it takes three to five years to recover the cost for renovating tall fescue pasture. So the key drivers of renovation economics are stocking rate. If you, the higher your stocking rate, the more performance returns you're going to see. Your caliber performance improvements, be it calf weights, breeding rates or calf crop survival. These are also going to be dependent on your stocking rates. So you're going to see all of these improvements. It depends on your certain scenario how much improvements and that goes into your breed of cattle or livestock. These effects have, these are effects on all livestock, but most of the research has been in cattle. So there's a lot of factors that go into that. Is your pasture at its yield potential? So if you can also improve your yield potential by doing correct sole fertility and rotational grazing and these kinds of things, then that might be something to consider. Also, does all acreage need to be renovated to achieve the benefits of novel tall fescue? As I mentioned earlier, renovating 25 to 50% of your field at once and then waiting is a more economical decision. So renovation of pastures is costly. Producers should evaluate their losses to guide their decision to renovate. It pays to renovate pastures that need it, but only renovating 25 to 50% as I just mentioned may be the best, most practical approach. Changing the fall calving may also be the best option when renovation is impractical because when you have fall calving, you're going to see lower effects on your cattle performance because they're not going to be consuming the higher levels of endophyte during a time when they have higher needs for nutrition. I put this picture in here is actually of my daughter digging up helping me dig up some fescue plants for a demonstration, but in this particular scenario, if I had a pasture like this and this is Kentucky 31, I would not renovate because these are really healthy stand. It's providing a lot of good forage and a lot of availability. So I might consider managing my cattle differently. But if I had a poor stand, then it might be worthwhile to renovate. Like I said, there's a lot of decision factors that have to go in because this is a large monetary commitment. So for more information on any of your forage related questions or problems, please contact us at Alabama forages at Auburn.edu. You can also email me at that email to get added to our monthly newsletter. Feel free to visit us at Alabamaforages.com, which is our official website for any of our publications and content pieces related to forages, as well as follow us on social media.