 So why would we want to plant legumes and to warm season perennials? One of the reasons is the complementary growth distribution that these two types of forages can have. So specifically in the case of alfalfa and bermutagrass, alfalfa sort of has more of its growth early in the year in the spring, and then it sort of lulls in the summer and has another flush of growth in the fall. And then if we plant that into bermutagrass, bermutagrass is going to have its most vigorous growth in the summertime. And so those two distributions can work together to extend either the gracing or the hay season and potentially allow for more cuttings and those forages can kind of work together to create this larger system. Another thing that you can get from planting legumes into warm season perennials is increased sward-nutritive value. So using legumes will increase the nutritive value because legumes tend to have higher digestibility and crude protein than our warm season perennial grasses and incorporating those will increase the overall quality of the sward. You can also decrease dependence on nitrogen fertilizer by incorporating legumes because legumes have the ability to fix nitrogen and provide nitrogen to the system. You could decrease the nitrogen needs, especially compared with the monoculture of a warm season perennial and potentially not use nitrogen fertilizer at all, depending on your goals for yield and quality. And a final reason for planting legumes into warm season perennials is the potential for greater cumulative yields. So back to the example with the alfalfa and bermutagrass. If we can potentially get an extra cutting either early in the year or late in the year over time, and depending on how long the stand persists, we could see greater cumulative yields from these mixed stands than compared to a grass monoculture. These figures show how we can improve forage quality by incorporating legumes into warm season perennials. The figure on the left shows the digestibility of different types of forages as well as legumes. And we see that the farthest to the left, the warm season perennial grasses have a digestibility range between the mid-40s and up to about 60 percent. And then if we look to the far right of the same figure, we see that legume digestibility is higher between 50 and 70 percent. If we incorporate these two into one system, we can improve that digestibility of the overall forage and allow better quality, not only to produce a better profit potentially, but also for the livestock that are grazing it. The figure on the right on the top shows a comparison between Bahaya grass only and Rhizoma peanut and Bahaya grass pastures. These pastures were grazed for two years and they did see an improvement in animal performance through average daily gain in those pastures that incorporated Rhizoma peanut compared with the Bahaya grass only pastures. And then on the bottom right figure, we see a comparison between Tifton 85 Bermuda grass and a stand of Tifton 85 plus Bulldog 805 alfalfa. And these were harvested for hay in a demonstration by America's alfalfa. And they did see an improved quality both in TDN as well as crude protein in that mixed stand that incorporated the legume. So we've talked about some of the benefits that we can get from incorporating legumes into our warm season perennials, but there are some challenges and limitations when it comes to using one of these systems. The first one and probably most importantly that we have seen would be persistence and management challenges. In the past, people have used alfalfa in the southeast and have had persistence issues because of disease or weed pressure or even insect pressure. And some of those stands started to decline and we saw decreased acreage of alfalfa in the southeast. However, recent developments of new varieties have allowed for some disease tolerance as well as insect and weed technology such as Roundup Ready. And that will allow us to better manage our stands for more longevity and see that persistence hopefully be better in these improved varieties. We also know of widespread use of herbicides especially in the hay industry. And there are some herbicides that do have a residual for a certain amount of time after they've been used. And this can negatively affect an alfalfa stand if it were going to be put in on that area that had that residual herbicide. So this is where some pre-planning comes into play. It's very important to know when you want to plant alfalfa so that you don't use an herbicide that will put you another year out from being able to establish that legume in the pasture that you want to end. And finally there are some social barriers surrounding alfalfa use in the southeast, specifically the awareness. People don't really know that we can plant alfalfa or know that we're using it today in the southeast compared to several years ago. And then another thing that we can do is just increase the knowledge that's around the use of alfalfa or other legumes and show people that we're working on developing certain recommendations or management strategies for using these systems and hopefully improving their knowledge and their experience when using this on their own operation. So we've talked about some of the opportunities and the challenges that we could see with these systems and now I'm going to move into talking about some specific examples that we could use in the southeast. The first system I want to talk about is alfalfa and bermudagrass. I mentioned this is what my doctoral research focuses on and I'm very interested in the topic. I'm curious to see what we find with our research and how this continues throughout the southeast. In this figure we can see that complementary growth distribution that I mentioned bermudagrass with its heavier growth during the summer months, especially in June and July. And then the alfalfa growing earlier in the year, April and May, and then a little bit later into the year. And so if we were to overlap those growth distributions on top of one another, we see how we could extend that grazing or hay season and potentially get those benefits from incorporating that legume into the system. The first benefit that we can get from using alfalfa and bermudagrass is to grow your own nitrogen. Again, we know that alfalfa is a legume that can provide nitrogen and use it in the system and so potentially reducing those nitrogen inputs that you might see specifically in a bermudagrass monoculture. Increasing quality by 30 or more RFQ points. So relative forage quality is a way that we test and standardize our hay so we can compare it to other samples. And improving that quality or increasing those RFQ points not only can lead to better profits for hay production, but also increased animal performance with that increased quality. The mixed alfalfa and bermudagrass hay can make an excellent supplemental feed or cash crop. If you have a specific market for mixed hay or even majority alfalfa hay, you can market that to people who are looking for that specific quality and that specific type of hay. But also when we think about feeding hay throughout the winter, a lot of times we have to supplement that hay with grains or other things to improve the quality of their diet. If this hay already has a good quality, we might be able to reduce the amount of supplement that we would use in addition to hay throughout the wintertime. Incorporating alfalfa and bermudagrass allows for faster drying and clean harvest. This is compared to alfalfa stands as a monoculture specifically for hay production. Alfalfa is very hard to dry down and in the southeast we know we have a hard time getting most of our hay dried down, making sure that we have some dry days in the summer to do that. And so incorporating alfalfa and bermudagrass together sort of lifts that alfalfa up, creates kind of a structure for that alfalfa and bermudagrass to dry together. And then to harvest cleaner, so less leaf shatter or leaf loss in that alfalfa when it's incorporated with bermudagrass. And then if all else fails in this system, you still have your bermudagrass. So there can be stand failure and we'll talk about some reasons that that might result. But you're not going to kill your bermudagrass by putting alfalfa into it, even if you don't get the longevity out of the stand that you're looking for. So let's talk about how to establish alfalfa into bermudagrass. And specifically we're talking about interceding into an already established bermudagrass stand. So in the fall of the year you would want to clip bermudagrass very short and then induce dormancy. Glyphosate can be used to do that and induce that dormancy and won't have a negative effect on bermudagrass in the following season if it's used at the recommended rate. And also glyphosate can be used for the roundup ready variety of alfalfa throughout the season. The seeding rate for interceding alfalfa into bermudagrass would be between 18 to 20 pounds per acre using a drill and then seeding depth between zero and one quarter inch. So it's very important that the seed stays close to the top of the soil. If it's planted too deep that can be one of those reasons that we would see sand failure because it's not able to germinate and come up like it would if it's not planted on top of the soil. Roast spacing is important when it comes to establishing alfalfa and bermudagrass because you don't want one species to out and keep the other. So we would recommend a 14 inch roast spacing. Some people may choose to do even wider rows depending on how much legume contribution they want in their stand. Just making sure that there's enough space between those rows that the alfalfa doesn't shade out the bermudagrass that's already there. And finally it's important to remember to inoculate your seed if it's not pre inoculated. Typically it is, but just making sure that you ask that when you buy it or you're prepared to do that before you plant. So thinking about the soil considerations. This is again where that pre planting comes into play when you're thinking about planting alfalfa. Soil has to be well drained so it's important to find an area that's going to not hold water for a long period of time. Alfalfa has very deep roots and it doesn't like for that area that's end to be wet for an extended period. pH is very important to consider when you're wanting to plant alfalfa. It's important that your pH is between 6.5 and 7.0 and it's important to take a subsoil pH test and make sure that those soils are not less than 5.5. Thinking about that pre planting and thinking ahead of time wanting to make sure that you have enough time to allow lime to do its job and increase that pH if that's the case on your operation is important. So it's important to take those soil tests annually and make sure your pH is in that range that you're working for. I mentioned that you would want to plant alfalfa in the fall. So in the northern part of the state, we might recommend August 15 through October 1 and then the central part September through October 1. However, when you're talking about overseeing this alfalfa into Bermuda grass, we would wait a little bit later than the above recommendations to do that. So we're targeting that October to November time frame. And this allows the Bermuda grass to go ahead and go dormant and not compete with that alfalfa as it's trying to establish. It is important to plant in the fall. There are some people who have tried to plant in the spring and typically those stands are not as successful as the ones that are planted in the fall. And we'll see that in some of the research that we've done with our alfalfa. When do you harvest alfalfa? Alfalfa has that April through October production we talked about with the growth distribution. And typically in the southeast we would see a three to five year stand life. There are some stands that have persisted longer, even 10 to 12 years that are managed properly and have just done really well. But typically we would target three to five years in this region. In the first year after planting it's important to allow alfalfa to get to 25% bloom before it's harvested. This allows the alfalfa to have a lot of root reserves, root carbohydrates reserved so that it can regrow after it's been cut. And that's specifically important at the first cutting in the first year. And then after that your typical cuttings would be at one tenth bloom. So one tenth is a little bit of an arbitrary number. But once you start seeing any flowers start to pop on the alfalfa, that's when you need to be ready to harvest. And typically you would harvest on a 28 to 35 day cutting interval at a two to four inch cutting height. Just to note some things about economics. I don't have a large economic breakdown here. But the main factor that drives profitability would be the yield potential in these alfalfa and Bermuda grass systems. So of course it's going to depend on the variety that you choose, the environment that you have as well as your management strategies. And it's going to be variable over the life of the stands. So you might not see the yields take off in the first or second year. But maybe in the third year, you really start to see that yield potential increase in that alfalfa. And over time that could lead to those greater cumulative yields that we talked about by using this legume in the system. So yield potential is going to be the primary determinant of profitability. If you can get those greater yields over time, you're more likely to have that profit by using alfalfa and Bermuda grass. If you're interested in looking at an alfalfa establishment budget, Chris Provatt at the University of Florida did put one together. You can go into that link and we can provide that to you. And you can enter your cost and see if it would be profitable for your operation to establish alfalfa. So I'm going to move into some of the research that we've done with alfalfa and Bermuda grass. This first project looks at this mixture for use in village production. This project was completed in Tifton, Georgia. It was planted in the spring. They had Tifton 85 Bermuda grass plots and they interceded those with Bulldog 805 alfalfa. This is an alfalfa that is adapted more to the south that has a fall dormancy that allows it to thrive better in our climate. The Tifton 85 alone received 75 pounds of nitrogen per acre four times per year. So it was fertilized like a typical hay setting might be. And the both the monoculture and the mixture were harvested for village harvested at 10% bloom on that targeted 28 to 35 day interval and wilted to 40 to 60% moisture to make village throughout the summer. The conclusions from the study were that the Tifton 85 alfalfa mixture provided harvestable forage both earlier in the spring and later in the fall, which contributed to a greater cumulative yield over the three years of the study in that mixture. They also saw improved quality through greater crude protein and digestibility values. And the system shows that we would have the option to make village or hay throughout the growing season or a combination of both if you have the equipment to do that. And so during the months that you might not be able to drag down that mixture as well, you would have the option to make it into village. And then maybe in the summer months have the option to make hay. So there are several different things that you can do with this mixture. The next study I'm going to talk about is my specific research project and it's being done in several states at several locations with several other grad students working on it. So it's multi location. It's a small plot study as you can see in the picture there are small plots there that are harvested. We use grazing tolerant varieties. The bulldog 505 was used at the northern locations and the bulldog 805 was used at the southern locations in each state. And so we're evaluating the effects of harvest height and frequency on the alfalfa and bermudagrass mixture. This figure shows data from the first year of our project. And it shows the four different locations and we saw that typically yields were greater in those stands that were harvested every four every six weeks. So making sure you're still falling in that 28 to 35 day range is going to produce the greatest yields in this mixture. So this next slide is going to have several figures on it. We're overall looking kind of at a trend in the different components of the stand. So looking at the different colors that show up on each figure. So this first figure is data from the crossbow location so the northern Alabama location. This was planted in the spring and you see that the alfalfa really didn't contribute much throughout the year. That stand was not successful. It was planted in the spring because of a residual herbicide issue. And we see that based on the results of this we would not want to recommend planting in the spring. The Watkinsville location is the northern location in Georgia. You can see they had a much stronger stand of bermudagrass and some alfalfa early in the year. But their alfalfa did kind of peter out towards the end of the season. In Tifton we had another spring planted location. This is the southern Georgia location. Another strong stand of bermudagrass and their alfalfa did contribute a little bit more than that Watkinsville location. And overall not a lot of weed pressure in those two locations compared especially to crossbow. The final location is the southern Alabama location or central Alabama location and shorter. And you can see that the percentage of alfalfa and that stand was much more than some of the other locations. This was planted in the fall. We did have some weed pressure and not as much bermudagrass in the stand. We actually saw a lot of crab grass in this situation. So that would be a consideration that you would want to look at when thinking about planting something that you can use herbicides on. A round of ready could have been a technology that we could have used here to possibly get rid of maybe that crab grass component in those in that stand. So the main point of these four figures is that there is huge site to site variation. We only have a year of data on this project. We are continuing it for another year to see the longevity and how these different cutting frequencies and cutting heights are going to affect that persistence over time. But we are still gathering that information and we just have to basically streamline our process and try to get replicated results from several different places. So now that we've talked about alfalfa and bermudagrass, we're going to move into the perennial peanut and the hayagrass system. Rhizoma peanut, known as perennial peanut, is well adapted to Florida. It's a warm season perennial legume, so different from alfalfa in that it's a warm season versus a cool season legume. And it has the potential to spread when strip planted into grass pastures. So this would be sort of the mirror system of alfalfa and bermudagrass, but used further south in those pahea grass paddocks. Rhizoma peanut does have to be strip planted so it can't be interceded like we would see in the alfalfa system. It must be sprayed because it has rhizomes, similar to what you would see with the bermudagrass that needs to be sprayed. And so this increases the establishment time for these stands. So you can't use that rhizoma peanut in the first year like you could in alfalfa and bermudagrass stand. And it also increases the cost of establishment because of the specialized equipment that it takes to spray that rhizoma peanut. You can reduce the establishment cost, however, by strip planting compared to a pure stand. So basically cut those costs in half by only planting half of the area that you have in rhizoma peanut. The grass strips can be used for hay production while the rhizoma peanut establishes. So it's important if you want to strip plant that you leave those grass strips wide enough that you can get your hay equipment through there. And you can at least use part of that land while the establishment process is taking place. But it does limit your overall land use during that time frame. It is a lower input system than alfalfa and bermudagrass. Alfalfa requires very intensive management when it comes to weed and insect pests and fertility. And this system doesn't require that level of input. Just to give you a look at the strip planting process for rhizoma peanut. We see in this figure on the top left that strips have gone in and been sprayed with an herbicide to kill off any grass that's in that area. And then if we move to the top picture on the right, we see the sprig digger as well as the sprig planter. That would be the equipment that would be used to plant this rhizoma peanut. And then we move down to the bottom pictures and we see where rhizoma peanut has been established in the first year in those strips and where it's starting to fill in in those pasture areas and then being grazed by cattle. So it does take a little bit longer again than that alfalfa and bermudagrass mixture. Some strip planting research was done at the University of Florida by Dr. Mollinitz when she was working there on her PhD. She looked at different genotypes to see if they were, one was able to establish faster than others and if they could spread more rapidly throughout that grass stand. And she also looked at how defoliation management in the establishment year could impact that spread or establishment of various genotypes. So they had two different types of defoliation. One was hay production where they mechanically harvested the plots and the other was rotational stocking where they grazed the plots with cattle. And they looked at several different varieties of rhizoma peanut for this. Their results showed that ecoturf and flora graze were the two genotypes that spread the most and provided the most ground cover throughout that establishment year. And you can see pictured here those two genotypes do have a little bit different growth habits, but they are able to adapt to grazing. They sort of grow low to the ground so that they're able to basically adapt to that defoliation while they're being established. She saw the same, again, those varieties that were able to be defoliated that weren't but spread better but did see a difference in the grazing versus the hay defoliation. So she saw that the hay systems had more spread than those that were grazed. And so typically if you would want to defoliate in that first year, we would recommend haying that instead of allowing cattle on to graze while that peanut is getting established. While looking at grazing tolerance, they looked at some different leaf removal amounts as well as different harvest intervals. And they found that a greater residual leaf area resulted from removing only 50% of the canopy versus 75% of the canopy at grazing. So basically leaving more leaf area, more leaves to capture sunlight and allow it to regrow better than if more leaves were removed in that 75% removal scenario. They also saw greater pre-graze light interception at the six versus the three week defoliation. So allowing that rhizoma peanut to rest for six weeks between the times that it's harvested resulted in greater leaf area. So greater capturing of photosynthetic energy essentially at the beginning of grazing, which will allow it to grow better than if it were defoliated more often. So these results suggest that those would be the levels that 50% removal and six week defoliation timeframe that would favor rhizoma peanut persistence the best. And they also found that ecoturf did not have a decrease in ground cover when it was harvested at six weeks compared to the other genotypes which did see a bit of a decrease in that situation. And that's again because that ecoturf can adapt to grazing because it positions its leaves closer to the soil surface. And so it's able to be defoliated and doesn't negatively affect its growth after that. So we're going to move into the last system and this is just a small amount of research that I saw in my master's program. I looked at overseeding eastern gamma grass with winter annuals. And so we saw a potential carryover of red clover in that system. Red clover is a legume that tolerates more soil acidity and poorer drainage than alfalfa. This research took place in the black belt. So we had a soil challenge from the get go in this project. And so we selected this clover because we knew that it might persist better in that situation with the heavy soil that they have in that region. Red clover does have a longer growing season than what our white clover might have. And so they can provide more growth in the summer than that white clover would. And it also can act as a biennial in the south. So it will regrow the second year. You wouldn't have to go in and establish that every year like you would other annuals. So we overseeded rye and then rye plus clover mixtures into eastern gamma grass in this project. And we saw that red clover production was actually greatest in the summer. We looked at early, mid and late season throughout the summer. We looked at both botanical composition as well as ground cover. The figure shows that the ground cover of eastern gamma grass, obviously during that transition time from spring into summer, the gamma grass increased. We also saw that slight increase in the clover into the summer months. So there was a carryover of that into June and even some in July. And so that ground cover is what you would see when you're looking out into that stand. But also when we looked at botanical composition, we found that red clover composed 25% of the stand by weight. So when we separated those samples, we saw that 25% contribution by clover. And so that's a pretty good contribution that could provide those increased nutritive value as well as nitrogen effects to those that warm season perennial grass. So we did see an improved quality compared to the non clover treatments in this study. So the big take home message that I want you to get from this presentation is that adding legumes to perennial warm season grasses can improve quality and yield and potentially decrease the use of nitrogen fertilizer. Several options exist depending on what forage system you have and what the goals are for your operation, whether it's increased yield, increased nutritive value. If you have a market for hay or if you're even wanting to graze, there are several different options that you can look at. And finally, good management is critical. So legumes can produce challenges as far as weed pressure, fertility and things like that. And so making sure that we manage these stands for better persistence can result in success in the long run. So with that, I'd like to acknowledge several people here at Auburn at the University of Georgia, Florida, and then America's alfalfa that we're all taking part in this research and certainly need to be recognized for that. If you have any further questions, you're welcome to see our information on our websites, Alabama beef systems and Alabamaforages.com. There's a very good resource on alfalfa.org that looks further into the management of alfalfa in the south. And if you have any questions about the particular presentation or you want to follow up with me, my information is at the bottom and you're welcome to email me with any questions that you have. Or you can go ahead and ask those now.