 Welcome everybody. We're in the third stage of our drought webinar series. The topic today is supplemental feed and forage options. My name is Janna Block. I'm joining you virtually. I'm the livestock extension specialist based out of the Headinger Research Extension Center. Our next webinar will be next Thursday, March 4th, and we'll be talking about water supply and quality concerns. Our speakers today are Dr. Again, good afternoon and welcome to this webinar on preparing your ranch for drought. And one of the topics we'd like to visit with about this afternoon would be supplemental feeds for beef cohorts. I'm Carl Hoppe on the extension livestock specialist here at the Carrington Research Extension Center. We live in a colder climate up here and we're used to knowing what feeding cattle is all about. And with that, when you look at supplemental feeds, we've usually searched out different things, but every year is always a little bit different on what we can do for feeding cattle. Feed prices change, temperature, winters, everything, amount of grazing we can do beforehand. All changes, well, the type of rates again we want to have in our cattle can change when we're feeding cattle in North Dakota. But when we look at a drought, we might think about feeding cattle in the summertime and we can certainly do that. I always like to remind people that here at the Carrington Research Extension Center, we've had a dry lot cowered where they never do see grass and it's been going on for 40 years plus. So we can certainly feed cattle for a longer period of time if we do have to get that point where we need to feed cattle beyond without having grass to go to. Of course, when we're looking for supplemental feed, the first thing that comes to my mind is energy needs and corn sets the price of feed. It just does. It's what the leader is across the nation. Corn is easily stored. You can haul it from different states or from neighborhoods. It's transportable. It flows easy. You can process it to improve digestibility. It usually happens five to seven percent, but you can feed it whole too. And of course, if you're dealing with corn, there's lots of options. If you need to haul it from one part of the state to the other, you deal with grain, probably dry. Of course, if you've got localized feeds, you can look at high moisture grain that can be hauled from several miles away back to your ranch. Or you could look at using ear corn or ear leech. Ear leech gets to be quite popular when you're hauling grain from quite a distance. Of course, silage works quite well. And if you're in a salvage situation where there's a four-inch crop out there of silage and you got a drought, it may not be completely harvested. Go to completion with corn grain. At least you can chop this for silage and make feed out of it. Of course, in those situations, be sure to consider nitrate issues with your corn. When it goes into a silage pile, you're going to see quite a bit of that nitrate disappear just due to the siling process. Stover is another option. We're looking at corn fields, so don't forget about that as either putting it up in bales or actually letting cattle graze out in the field. So corn really does dry the issue when it comes to supplemental feeds across our state that can produce feed. Of course, we have other feeds out there too. And the next thing is going to be protein. A lot of people comment about feeding protein to cattle. In reality, we feed energy to cattle first. Protein is what we need because there needs to be a certain amount of protein given to the animal. So we can do that from a multitude of different sources. It can either be oil seeds and we crush a lot of them in their Dakota. Soybean meal, canola meal, sunflower meal, linseed meal, which comes out of flax. And then we have our other protein feeds such as distillers grains as well as field peas and lentils. Don't forget alfalfa. That's been our number one protein supplier for quite a few century, I should say decades. And then of course you can feed oil seeds directly to cattle. Just be limiting on about how much because once you get about too high of a fat content, that starts affecting room and fermentation. So a little bit's okay, a lot isn't. Well, when you look at supplementing, be sure to consider what's lacking in your forages. And sometimes it might be protein. Other times it might be energy. If we're feeding a lot of grains or processed things, we need to think about some fiber, something that'll cause a chewing factor. And then of course vitamins and minerals. In reality, most of our feeds are probably short on some of these things. But what I find interesting is sometimes when we add our, when we do a feed test on our forages, and we look for something to supplement with to make a balanced ration, co products tend to blend in with what rad with the forages don't have. So that's another option to look at. And of course I got to at least put this comment in is that when you're looking at commercial feeds, they are balanced. All the rest of co products are not unless they've had something added to them. And of course, commercial feeds come at additional costs, but they certainly do well, work well, because they're a blend of grains and co products, minerals and additives. And it will certainly work. North Dakota produces a lot of co products. It's amazing. When you get to other states, we just don't appreciate what we have available to us as cattle producers in North Dakota, until you leave North Dakota and find out what they don't have. We've got a file, you can see the yellow dots on the screen, that'd be ethanol refineries across the state. And that is across the state both northern, part of the state in the southern a little bit even on the Western. Now we do have some wheat mid facilities across the state as well. That's where they're crushed, where they're milling flour, in order to make it, of course, flour or flour, wheat flour, whatever. And then the wheat mids are the byproduct from their in different locations across the state, five different spots actually. And then of course, we have oil crushes across the state, we have malting facilities, not so much anymore in Barnes County, because that's been closed down, but it is available over in Moorhead. We do have sugar refineries, which make beet pulp as well as beet tailings. And then actually we have potato facilities across the state. If you know where, if you're in the area that those processing plants are, you certainly know where to get your lower cost feed. Everybody else has transportation costs from that location to haul it to your place. But sometimes it might be exactly what you need if you're looking for extra feeds. I just got to point this out. We produce a lot of co-products in North Dakota. I said that, but we really do. Our state mill and elevator, it's owned by the state of North Dakota, that's us. It started in 1922, almost 100 years ago. And I like to point out it's the largest wheat milling facility in the world in one location. There's other locations, there's other businesses that are larger, but we have the largest mill in our state in the world. Okay, mills quite a bit. A wheat every day produces 700 tons of wheat mills daily. That's enough to feed 140,000 head of cattle, 10 pounds of wheat mills. That would provide their protein needs for 100, that's every day. So as you can tell, most of this is already being shipped out of state, even all the way down to Texas. And you can see it's high in protein, 18% high in energy. But remember, it's low in calcium, but high in phosphorus. So in other words, when we're balancing a ration, if you don't correct for the low calcium, high phosphorus issue, you're going to end up with urinary calculei as well as bone issues. So a little bit can work well, a lot may not. As you look at ethanol production, we have five distilleries in North Dakota. They produce a lot of distillage grains. When you look at the previous slide, I said we had 700 ton of wheat mills just in this facility. We have four more facilities to produce about two thirds that amount as well in North Dakota. Now, if you go to the ethanol, you can see that we produce a lot of tonnage of the distillage grains in North Dakota. Matter of fact, there's so much distillage grains, we could feed seven pounds of distillage grains to every cow in North Dakota every day. That'd be enough to meet the protein needs no matter what. But of course, we've got usually cattle grazing. So if we wanted to feed mature cows in the wintertime for seven months, that'd be 12 pounds. That's enough to provide a sizable amount of energy. So what I'm getting at is if you're short on products, we certainly have things produced in North Dakota. Of course, ethanol byproduct, the distillage grains is 30% protein and high energy content equal to corn, if not more. Again, it's low in calcium and tripling phosphorus. So you definitely have to be aware, worry about your calcium phosphorus ratios. Now, here's your ethanol plants in North Dakota, Castleton, Hankinson, those are both million, 100 million gallon plants. As you look at the other three plants, Dakota Spirit, Spiritwood as well as Underwood and Richardson, those are 50 million gallon plants. And then of course, there's a new plant located up in Grand Forks that's dealing with potato waste and beet tailings. And it creates a bio product that some people are now using to that. I always comment and say it looks a little bit like silly putty. Maybe that reminds me of a different age group. But it certainly is a new product out there that people are using. Distillage grains comes in different forms. Of course, dry, modified or wet, depending upon what plant they come out of. Corn distillers, we call it corn syrup. It's really condensed. It's all your solubles. Please note that the wet distillers grains has got the same moisture content as corn syrup. It's just that one is pumpable while the other one is not. They're both very palatable. They really add a lot to the ration. The only downside right now is that they cost a lot. And when the corn price went up to $5 a bushel, so did the distillers grain follow with that increase as well. So people are looking for other alternatives. If you're looking for other alternatives, please go to the county extension agents. They have a list of coproducts from across North Dakota. And you can actually find it on the internet too. There's a website there. And I think that might be included in the chat box at some point. But that's available from a county agent. Please go to their office or call them up and see if you need a list and get it there. We do need to supplement our grains and coproducts. Remember, coproducts, we take out the starch. So what's left over concentrates everything by three fold. And again, I just can't underscore this issue of phosphorus content being high. And that requires balancing for extra calcium, which is usually added supplementation. Now, normally, grass is high in calcium, so a few pounds of coproducts to provide a protein need would work out. But at any time you go to using a coproduct as an energy source, it really pumps it up. So for short on, hey, what do we do? We can replace with grains or we can replace with coproducts. And you can see the list is pretty exhaustive. There's a lot of stuff out there in which to choose from. Whether it be corn or oats, which you don't hear too much of, but people that do raise it certainly works well in your feed. To feed and build peas, if it doesn't go into the human food market, it certainly works well in our cattle rations. And grain screenings obviously work quite well. I was on the phone with the producer this morning that talked about using soybean screenings and wondering how much we could add. And you certainly can add a few pounds of that into a cow ration. But remember, always look for whatever type of noxious weeds might be in those screenings because you hate to bring those things home, especially with the addition of polymer amaranth and those types of screenings the seeds that could be in those screenings from across the up from the west. You can replace it with coproducts like I visited before, distillers grains and wheat mids, of course, soy halls. They don't usually crush at our plant at Enderland soybeans right now. It's usually canola meal or sunflower meal. But if we do go with soy halls, we could go down to Aberdeen at that large plant and and procure it out of there. Corn gluten feed is out of Wapiton, North Dakota. That's a wet corn milling facility. A lot of that is sold as wet product now and actually most of it goes into the dairies. So getting a hold of that product is pretty tight right now. And of course, barley malt sprouts was very popular and now not quite so much in availability. Beet pulp. If you're close to the beet production facilities, that almost turns into a no-brainer and we'll talk about that later. Of course, beet tailings are not available anymore. So that means there's now a higher demand for beet pulp. The beet tailings is being used by that new ethanol facility. So consequently, beet pulp is available, but everybody else wants it too. And of course, you can feed it as a dry product. And dry products work well. It's belleted or you can get it in shreds, but usually it's belleted. The problem is it usually sold out early in the year in priced high. So if you're by a potato facility, you've got peelings and fries and that certainly works quite well. Of course, if you really need proteins, you can always look at soybean, but we produce a lot of canola, sunflower, and linseed meal in North Dakota. Now let's look at some diets for feeding cows. I'm going to use a 1,400-pound cow, late gestation. I like to see cows gain a half a pound a day. So let's just look at a few rations here. I use alfalfa here at $120 a ton. Grass hay at 70, cornstover at 40, wheat straw at $40 a ton. Canola bill at 332, that's without freight. And then I throw in a little mineral because I've been talking about the calcium issues that we need in some of these rations, as well as trace minerals too. So just think of this one ration that's grass hay over there at 40 pounds. Add a little mineral to it and we're spending a buck and a half a day on the cheap side just to feed our cattle. Well, let's cheapen this up by using wheat straw. But in order to feed wheat straw, we got to feed some better quality hay to go with it like alfalfa. And next thing you know, we got 20 more cents involved in defeating that cow. But if you don't have grass hay this year because of drought, that's one of your options. Another option is to just use, we got half a crop of grass hay. So we're going to use 23 pounds. We're going to find corn stover, but that's going to be short on proteins. Let's go with something like a cake that's made out of canola meal. That might be priced a little bit cheaper, but the idea is you're feeding a high protein feed at three pounds a day. Again, we're up quite a bit more in cost. It's under $2 without yardage, but still there's a cost to it. And of course alfalfa hay, grass hay, and corn stover, you can do them different mixes and the costs still come up about the same. But as you can see there's different ways to feed cows with just those. Now let's go to a different set of rations that include some beet tailings. So we got eight pounds of alfalfa hay, 15 pounds of grass hay, six pounds of wheat straw, a little bit of everything, and then 20 pounds of beet tailings. And that's wet beet tailings. So dry matter wise that's only about five pounds of the actual dry matter. And you can see the cost gets pretty competitive. Now if we don't have alfalfa hay, but we can buy wheat mids and haul that easier, we can do a ration with just wheat mids included with the beet tailings of wheat straw. And that's one of our cheapest rations out there. But remember the reason it's a cheapest is because the beet tailings are priced at $25 a ton. And if you can get it for that, that makes a cheap ration. If you can do it for $35 a ton, it increases the cost when it gives up to $40 or $50, then all of a sudden it's just as expensive as any other ration if you can get it. And again, the reason it's that expensive because of freight costs. You're hauling a lot of water across the state. You can do a rations just alfalfa hay and grass hay and you can see that's just another one out there that that'll meet the cow's needs at a different cost. Well, let's use some different rations here. Some more. Let's use the stiller's grains. I'm looking at a half a pound a day gain again. Grass hay at 70 pounds per ton, excuse me, $70 per ton. Again, wheat straw at $40, corn stover at $40, corn grain at almost $5 a bushel, and dried distillers at $220. That's without freight at the plants as of a couple days ago. So if we look at the different rations, you can see grass hay dominates the background of all those. We add a little straw if we have straw available or we can add corn stover if that's available. And in order to get enough, as we increase some amount of corn stover or wheat straw, I should say, and grass hay, we got to include some more energy and corn grain certainly works as a source of energy in these rations. But distillers grains is kind of a mainstay in all these, provide extra protein, extra energy. And then, of course, you got to add the minerals in there to balance it appropriately. But if you look at the cost, it's not a no-brainer to feed these things. It's competitive. But at least if you're looking for alternatives to feeding 100 percent hay diet or a hay-corn-salage diet, there's lots of options to feed cattle. And my point right now is most of our diets need more energy. We can find a lot of poor quality feeds to feeder cows, but we need to feed them some extra so they don't have body condition scores of three or four. When you see a backbone on a cow, she really is thin. So it's always good to add extra weight to the cows, offset some cold weather, allow the feedists to grow. So always look at a half a pound a gain or a pound a day gain to put these cows into condition, especially when you have 20 below weather. If a cow is in a good shape at 20 below, she just needs her meals. She doesn't need extra care and attention to feed because she's got a little bit of condition on her back to handle the cold weather as well as the condition. So if we have our cattle in good condition, we can end up with healthy calves being produced. And I believe that is our goal. So be sure to look at the rations you have available and balance them accordingly. A well balanced ration is all I ask for. I don't ask for any extra than feeding a nice ration that has enough protein and energy, as well as vitamins and minerals to make out the mix. So if you do need co- products, do think about contracting them early. Those people that contracted the distiller's grains back in October this year are smiling pretty good right now. If you know you're going to have feed, and I talked with some of the wheat plants, wheat middlings plants yesterday, and they're kind of sold out for the next few weeks. But when it gets to be April and May, they have availability. So if you're looking at a drought situation and you need to hold some feed home, now is the time to be talking to them for opportunities on what to price that and buy it, or at least availability of being able to get it. I hate to be stuck in that situation where I need some feed, but I can't find any for a month. Always being proactive is important. So with that, I'll end up my comments and switch over to the next speaker. Thank you, Carl. Good afternoon. My name is Kevin Sadovic. I'm the Extension Rangeline Management Specialist with NDSU and the Director for Central Grasslands Research Extension Center. And my topic is going to look strictly at four options coming into a drought. And it's kind of an oxymoron statement because it still takes rain to grow forages. But we can look at some options that, you know, that maybe do a little better on drier conditions, better scavengers. And so we'll kind of go through these scenarios for four options. And I broke these options up into three different categories. One is looking at spring, summer plantings, coming into the spring. If we look like we're going to be short of feed, whether it's hay or grazing pasture, we can look at some strategies to put in a crop that you may use for hay or you may use for grazing. And it's always more than not, a producer wants to also dual crop those and they want to take a hay crop off and then grazing. So we'll look at some options there. If there are those options, you can look up for winter cereal options. And of course, this is one of those that if you haven't seeded your winter cereal in 2020 in September, there's not going to be an option for this spring. But winter cereals are a really good option to look at for opportunities to graze something the following spring early in the year. And so you can look at 2021 and look forward to think about 2022 in terms of what you can use for grazing or for haying. And the winter cereals fit both those opportunities. And we'll talk about fall grazing these winter cereals versus spring grazing and what's your best options are in terms of winter cereal types. And thirdly, we're going to look at emergency programs and options. And this is kind of looking at, you know, if we get into a severe drought and we'll get some of the emergency scenarios could pop up. What are your options in terms of haying or grazing these drought impacted crops? And then where does CRP or Conservation Reserve Program lands fit in? It tends to be that over the last 20 some years it seems like CRP has been one of them programs that fits the emergency window well. And it always comes up as an opportunity for producers to look at. And so we'll kind of talk about that as one of our options. So let's look at forage options for hay and we're going to look at planting forages that are a little more drought tolerant and cost effective. And I put cost effective in there because it was always a risk of a bust with anything you plant in a dry year it may not grow. And so you want to make sure your costs are cheap enough so that if you do have failures it's not going to cost you an arm and a leg per se. So the two that fit really well based on the research that I've been looking at and we've seen is you want to plant those some of those Hayes early early May to early June those are your cool season crops. It seems like forage barley and spring tritical tend to be a little bit more effective at growing in drier conditions. Both of them are shorter growing at 56 to 60 day period when you get a hay crop off them and our trials at the grassland station forage barley seem to tolerate drier conditions better than say a forage oat. And so if I'm going to look at an emergency crop I'm going to look at forage barley and spring tritical this spring. If you're seriously going to look at these crops you need to look now for availability of seed like every year when you also need to run for crops it runs out and so look early you're going to look at these options. The other option that works really well is a warm season crop and there's a number of warm season crops available. You'll probably plant these in late May early June and up to as late as mid July and you know we get into July of course it's really gets risky with moisture but the foxtail millet in my opinion is probably the best drought resistant or drought tolerant warm season crop that we have and the Siberian type is probably the best of all of our foxtail millets. We normally grow common or German millet in the Katoa region of North Dakota east and the Siberian type in the western Dakotas west and so coming into this drought year I'm going to look at Siberian is my major go-to millet throughout the state because I just look like it's going to be a dry fall and I'm going to look for Siberian millet. When you plant these grasses I also want to think about if I'm going to graze these as an aftermath type of growth and so I'm going to sneak in a brassica in here to add some some protein add some more moisture into that content and I'm going to put about a half a pound to three quarters of a pound of a brassica in that mix and you don't want to go more than that and the reason I say that is you know we always say well we should probably do one pound or two pounds and in the case of brassicas too much can be can be a negative you get too much brassica in your mix it's hard to get it to dry down it tends to shatter more and so you want it to be in there where it's growing in that crop but not a dominant part of the crop till after you take your hay crop off and those brassicas tend to flourish after the hay crop comes off so I'm looking at about a half a pound to three quarters a pound per acre whether you do a turnip a radish a kale a cabbage there's a number of them that are out there in a drought scenario I'm probably going to go with a turnip just because it's a it doesn't produce as much height as a kale and I won't have so much of a problem in that when I put it up for hay also when you look at seeding these you know it's critical to look at moisture availability you know we always you know most farmers and ranchers are always optimistic and they say that well if it didn't rain today it's going to rain tomorrow so look at those forecasts and time you're seeding more on when you think it's going to rain you know we did that last year we planted our cover crop on June 13th because it's supposed to rain June 14th and of course it didn't rain June 14th but you still be an optimist and take the best you have and seed it when you got some moisture you need to get that seed to break the cotyledon and germinate and then just hope you get some moisture to keep it growing so there are other forage options out there and one that's commonly used in emergency situations are forage oats forage oats take a little more water than the forage barley or the triticale so they're not quite as drought tolerant especially the newer varieties that you see on the market the risk with the oats is they tend to be probably the greater accumulators of nitrates and so nitrate toxicity risk will increase with stress with the oat versus the barley and we did test the barley, the triticale and the oats in 2020 during a drought year and only the oat was the one of the three that actually got to levels where they were reached toxicity so that's just a risk you're going to look at if you're looking at an oat oats are easy to establish and they tend to be cheap so it's one you can look at just know there might be a little more risk with that one and in terms of alarm season I'm really a big fan of the sorghum sedan hybrids they can be very productive when you have moisture they just take a lot more water to grow and so they're not quite as drought tolerant and you have to deal with prusic acid toxicity any time you have a drought situation toxicity levels of anything that you're going to deal with is going to go up and so if you got a sorghum sedan and you're going to get a drought situation no prusic acid could be a higher risk and to make sure you test those forages for the nitrates or the prusic acid in the scenario sorghum sedan grass so let's look at at a forage option that's going to be strictly used for grazing and in this scenario I really like using a diverse cover crop mix it takes away some of those risks among some certain species some species will do better than others when you have a mix and so if you get a dry scenario there'll be a certain species that will shine and other species that will not shine and so I like to go with more of an 8 to 10 way mix if not even greater to spread that risk out across your plant mix and you need to get it in early enough so let's talk about some mixes here you know I'm going to look at a cool and warm season grass mix whether it's a forage barley a millet a sorghum sedan you can put in some oats here just look at a nice diverse mix of cool seasons and warm season grasses you're going to add a brassica here to give you that quality even when if it's up and it gets dry the protein value and energy value will be high on the brassica then look at other cost effective forages you know I like to look at my cover crop mix is being fairly cheap and ineffective or effective so not ineffective of course we want to be reasonably cost so if you do have some low low production years like we saw in 2020 it's not going to break the bank so look at those other after whether it's a sunflower whether it's a flax or just something to add some diversity in that mix to give you a good forage mix throughout the season you know and lastly you want to see this as early as possible so if you know you're going to look at some some opportunities for grazing a cover crop mix to spread out your risks throughout the season you're going to be short of grass get them in as early as you can so you can capture what moisture do we have so you're looking at trying to get in late May early June you know you can run your risk across even into later June just remember the later you get in the season the odds of moisture goes down and heat goes up and so your success will also deteriorate as you go later in the season so plan early plant your mixes and we've been picking our we've been already ordering our cover crop mixes so we can get our species mix in hand already but we've been doing it for the last two months so if you want to hey this mix you know there's still people will all want to do a nice mix and I want to hey it first just like it did in the other other option within that brassica you want to reduce your brassica in that mix to reduce the water content to make it so it's easy to dry so then you can graze that regrowth that's a great opportunity one thing you can look at here is if you do put more brassicas in there you can maybe look at putting up as a halage or a silage to take away some of that risk of mold within a hay type of situation so you look at haying it halage, silage and then graze that regrowth we get one thing about these cover crops the difference between a perennial grass mix is when we do get those rains in August they will actually capture it and grow if they haven't gone to seed so it does give you a great opportunity to capture some rains those timely rains that we may get in August and we saw that in 2020 you know as dry as you were in the spring we were fortunate in many areas to get some rain in July and August and that really gave us a bump in our cover crop mixes that we're still hadn't gone to seed especially the warm season crops so the other option you're going to look at is emergency feeds the conservation reserve program option has always been on the table the U.S. Department of Ag has already came out on February 18th of 2020 listing throughout the United States of counties that are eligible for emergency haying and grazing that meet the D2 drought status and you can see most of North Dakota is either in a D2 status or a county borders of D2 status and they will be eligible for the emergency haying and grazing program so watch this throughout the next few months and see where we're at if it stays dry this will definitely be an option for producers to look at for emergency haying and grazing and also think about most of our producers who have CRP they already may have a management plan in place where they've been able to put up part of their stand usage one third of their stand for hay and you can look at picking and choosing among their based on the regulations from FSA on how to hay these and get the most out of them so when you look at regulations or rules associated with haying and grazing CRP they are usually not available until after August 1st and that's because North Dakota falls under the primary nesting season dates of April 15 to August 1 the caveat to this is almost year in and year out and I don't want you to bank on this but there's often been times we've been put in place where they move this emergency up to July 15 and so this is something to think about obviously these CRP lands have been put in place and they fall under different rules and guidelines within the contract and water and wildlife habitat is one of those guidelines and so primary nesting season dates is going to drive when they're going to be open but I just want you to be aware of these dates and so you can look at this as one of your options you can look at for 2021 if we stay in the D2 status or greater so like I said visit with your local FSA office for rules and regulations and if your county still stays eligible in the summer and we'll hear a lot of news release that come out on these when it gets to about the month of May and especially in June if we're still in the dry conditions the North Dakota Department of Ag is really good at getting news releases out on the opportunities for using CRP for emergency hanging and grazing the one thing about grazing with this with this program is they tend to open that up earlier versus hanging it all right so let's look at at the other option here and we saw this in 2020 2017 where we looked at hanging and grazing failed crop fields so the drought of 2017 which was in my opinion was probably more severe in the western Dakotas and eastern Montana than it was in the Cato region east many of these these fields actually failed and we saw a number of these wheat fields barley fields rolled up as emergency feeds and it's really important to understanding you deal directly with your insurance agent or your provider to make sure you take advantage of these actions and know the rules so you know when you can actually put these up most times you can get paid for your insurance there'll be a time period in place that you can't put it up and then once it's approved by your agent provider then you can put them up for feeds it's important to also understand that these feeds tend to be very low quality feeds another high risk of toxicity so if you're going to put up wheat for instance as emergency feed have it tested for nitrates have it tested so you can balance your rations on these they make nice feed especially if you can create a balanced diet for the for livestock feeding scenarios the last one the last one however is winter cereal forages and this one really falls into you know producers who may have took the opportunity of planting a winter cereal in September 2020 and the opportunity to graze these this spring is really good it may be an opportunity to where you you might run out of might be looking at planting for shortage of feed and instead of putting it up for hay you may want to graze it your best winter cereal forages for grazing will be winter rye and winter triticale they're the two that grow the most aggressive in the month of may and give you the best opportunity to harvest as much biomass through the cow we also showed in our trials that cows actually perform well our heifers did very well on our winter rye in 2020 if you're looking for a hay option to me winter wheat is probably your best option your winter wheat forage types will be your best option versus winter rye and winter triticale the caveat here is you're looking at putting this up for hay probably in mid June versus early June the varieties that are out there the one that we hear most of is willow creek it's a very high quality very palatable feed that tends to be put up about the third week in June and gives you an opportunity for a high quality feed that you can feed your cattle for late in the season two new varieties have been released our hay rye has been released by Montana State in 2019 and MTF 1435 is one that's looking to be released in 2021 both these varieties are earlier in maturation in willow creek they're both very similar in quality where rye has a tend to be a little bit higher in totaled municipal nitrogen the caveat on 1435 is it is a higher grain producing forage winter wheat and so does provide opportunity for taking it off as a grain crop as well or putting more grain in that forage type the caveat with with any of the winter wheats or winter rise is once you get into the heading stage especially past that that milk stage palatability tends to go down because lignin tends to go up the winter wheats tend to be a little lower in lignin content and that's why they fit a little better in a non grinding scenario like a rye or a critted kale something to think about for 2021 where winter cereals can fit in your operation as part of just a normal feeding program or forage program or emergency scenarios so we look at winter cereals if you do have winter cereals planted can you graze them in the fall and this is one of the questions we get asked a lot and I struggle with my answer on this because there's just not a lot of data in the northern plains on grazing these winter cereals in the fall if you're going to graze them in the fall the caveat is you may want to see them earlier than the traditional mid-september you want to get at least six weeks of growth to get enough biomass to justify grazing this and that and that's September, October, November period one thing I've noticed when I when I put in a winter cereal is once they freeze hard and you get a killing freeze they desiccate quickly and they'll go from being a foot tall to four inches tall in a matter of two days and so it comes down to is there enough biomass anymore to actually fall graze that and is the risk of grazing in the fall going to hurt you in the spring in terms of production so I've always been one to push these as a spring option for grazing the winter rye and winter triticale I think the winter the winter rye in particular could probably take a dual cropping of a fall grazing following by a spring grazing I just don't know how much biomass should give up by dual cropping that and that's something we need to do at the research centers to do a better job of see that where these fit in a forage system and so in terms of grazing options I think you're looking at spring grazing after winter fertilization to me winter rye is probably the most productive and cost effective compared to winter triticale it's cheaper seeds cheaper tends to grow a little faster than winter triticale the winter triticale tends to be higher in quality but when I'm spring when I'm grazing in spring as you can see in this picture these are cattle on either spring rye spring triticale or spring wheat I'm sorry winter rye winter triticale or the winter wheat and that winter triticale even though it's higher in quality the nutritional quality of even the rye still high enough for these heifers in this example that where they performed about a pound a day gain on this rye and we graze these from about May 8th to June 8th in 2020 let's just give you an idea of production you can expect so this was on a trial at Central Grasslands in 2020 the left bar shows you shows you if I can get this to work the winter rye winter triticales in the middle and winter wheat is to the far right and if you just look at the blue bar that's on May 8th and our winter rye did about 1200 pounds an acre by May 8th our winter triticale was about 800 pounds an acre and our winter wheat about 900 pounds an acre the big difference is that winter rye by 14 days later was already over a ton an acre and by June 1 it was approaching two tons an acre even the winter triticale which was slightly lower gave us a lot of biomass in that month of May and this is why I think they fit really well into a spring grazing scenario the other caveat is you can put them up for hay it was funny in 2020 I saw quite a bit of rye put up and producers were putting this up around June 15th and I think they missed the opportunity of putting up a better quality feed by putting it up on May on June 5th, June 8th versus June 15th their gain was probably 500 pounds but the quality deteriorated by 20 to 30 percent by waiting an extra week and you can see on that winter wheat it's just a much slower growing winter cereal and fits more of a June 20 time period for putting it up for hay it is a really good option I really like the winter wheat forages for hay so my take home message here is start thinking about annual forage options early see the availability like every year it'll become tricky and see what's out there and so plan for what you want to look at in terms of forages that you're going to put into your operation if you do need hay or grazing forage or both you need to assess your cropline availability and where you're going to seed these do you have availability for fence or temporary fence and if you're going to graze them think about what you have for water availability think water first seeding a crop second because it's never fun to haul water in any scenario seed a species or a mixture that fits your needs your availability when you want to harvest that or graze that so you're going to think out when you want to use that an availability of soil moisture and if we're drying this fall soil moisture we know is already limited right now and so if we're dry we're going to have a really low soil availability and it's going to be tricky on on getting some growth but kind of time that with your moisture since you have for availability and if you look at that winter cereals I do think they're a great option use your winter rye and winter triticale for that spring grazing or an early haying crop and use your winter forage your winter wheat forage varieties for a hay type of production scenario visit with your local FSA office for emergency use of CRP if that's an option there's still quite a bit of still probably close to a million acres of CRP in the state there's more than that for how many there's a lot of CRP still in the state and so CRP could still be an option and I think there's been actually times availability within the protocol where you can actually figure in a contract that put up CRP from another owner and how that may tie out when in terms of if you can get availability those fields from that I'm going to turn our the mic over to Nathan Spickler who's our in in station producer to talk about what he's doing in terms of forage options okay well thanks guys thanks for asking me to come in here it's been a pleasure so far to listen to both of you guys present I'm Nathan Spickler and I don't have a PowerPoint I guess you get to see just us on your screen but I ranch with my wife family and our family east of Carrington here we have registered Angus cattle sell bulls and heifers and breeding stock in the James River Hills area so when Carl asked me stopped out and asked me to come on in it was it was a really cold day and it seemed like yeah it'd be fun to sit in here and now today it's it's about 40 out there and but I came anyway Carl so anyhow so at our operation we've done quite a bit with with winter cereals as Kevin talked about and then a lot with cover crops that will hay and graze just graze etc and I guess something to kind of start on the the winter cereal thing we have had a high level success using rye into our our cropping system and where our cropland is in the James River Hills it's lighter soil and we're always we're inches away from being in a drought before the rest of Foster County is in a drought is what it feels like I mean we're always a week or 10 days away it seems like from stuff drying up and several years ago we seeded rye as a way to capitalize on snowmelt very early season rain and also to try to jump start seeding warm season cover crop mixes in behind it and when we have the very first year we did it we we bailed it and we would have been those people you saw that was cutting it too late we were cutting near the end of June and it didn't go real well we ended up getting I think we had three quarters on the ground and we made 88 bales and then we got 10 days of rain and we had a bunch of essentially rye a rye straw with grain in the heads it was a it didn't go well so anyway the next year we we still wanted to do this again and we switched to silaging our rye and that has really fit our operation really well we're able to we still actually cut around the the middle of June which is later from a quality standpoint then where we'd probably want to be but it helps us max tonnage a little bit and then utilizing it as a silage it's much more palatable than if it was bailed and something else I like about rye because I've I've never grown winter triticalia or winter wheat I've always just done rye and I felt that rye is um it's just so tough I mean we've had we've had a rye that we've grazed in the fall off to absolutely nothing I mean we've had it to where you look like he killed the field the next spring the rye comes we had a a time in five or six years ago where it germinated it was a dry dry fall germinated the end of October never broke the surface but it germinated and the next spring we had about a it hurt our yield we had about a six ton silage crop but we had a rye crop so it's been for us it's been really dummy proof that you can just you see it then it seems like it works almost no matter what and like again this spring I have a whole bunch of rye in that we were we're intending on silaging it but we also as the prospect looks that it might be dry and we may need to hold off our native pastures even longer to try to let them grow we have a bunch of rye and fenced in fields that we could graze you know as we get into May et cetera and the one thing we have learned with rye is if you're gonna do rye and come in behind it with a second crop I know one of the first years we silaged it we I thought it was so cool I took a picture of us cutting chopping and seeding all in the same quarter at the same time and the rye come back the volunteer rye and it choked out that second crop millet and thankfully that year we had a devastating hail storm the middle of July it hailed out the volunteer rye and about a week later we had millet coming back so I guess it saved us the devastating hail storm it took out all of our second cutting alfalfa but it saved our second crop millet so anyway what we've learned is is that if you're gonna seed anything in behind rye it has to grow back enough so you can kill the rye because it will be toxic to our our grasses and what we've done in behind it is we'll always seed like Sam millet and a turnip and radish or a millet and a sorghum sedan turnip and radish and I really like the millets because the risk of for there again I guess basically when I see millet we don't have to think we don't have to think about is it going to be high in nitrates is it going to be toxic we give up some to yield potential there's only generally just one cut there's generally not as much upside yield potential the millets we can get them drier in a swath better we found but I've also had really good luck with sorghum sedans as well and seeding brass goes in with it one thing I have thought and I don't know what your guys' thoughts is but I we've always went with just warm season in brassicas and I think this year I'm going to start seeding cool season in with that like an old or something of that nature just so you have more diversity in species out there and and I guess always when we started doing these second crops is you have to be able to withstand the the economic failure if it doesn't work at all because we've done the oh it's going to rain we've got to get this seeded and then doesn't necessarily rain and it doesn't necessarily work but I know in 2018 we were dry I know in eastern foster I don't know if you remember driving you crossed in the river hills and they were just gray and I mean our we had enough rain to grow some grass early and then it just shut off and our our second crop middle of June seeded millet turnip radish kale and millet sedan turnip radish kale that absolutely saved us in our grazing season we were not able to hay that stuff like what our intent was but it allowed us to have at least some forage quality to rotate off our native into there and let our native grow a little bit when we get some rain so we weren't just hammering our native repeatedly so anyway I guess we've had really good luck as a just a general management strategy doing doing the winter cereal followed with a warm season grass and we'll still after our old hay or barley hay we always see a cover crop because I always feel like you never know you never know when it's going to rain and you never know what's going to work and we always got to be prepared so and it's just like how right now we're talking about the drought right now we're trying to prepare for it I know a while back my wife said to me when it was so dry in the winter well do you think we're going to really dry this summer and I said that might be I said but we're not going to talk about it we're going to think about it we're going to think about being dry but we're not going to talk about it today we're going to enjoy the fact that it's nice today but still be thinking about what might be coming down the road so anyway so that's something we've done on the on the forage side and then on the the feeding side as Carl kind of mentioned it's I found it amazing just how cheap you can make a ration if you're willing to deviate from this is what we've always done and like we got into a situation of that at our own place this year where we always feed our cows in the winter dry hay and we feed our calves a TMR and that way we can get chores done it maximizes our time our cows are fed out in fields long ways from the ranch and and then after post calving we'll feed a TMR to the cows but anyway we ended up with as dry as we got in June our old hay was really high nitrates our sedan was like devastatingly high nitrates and that was hay that was all going to be channeled through a hay buster to cows and I had to figure out now what are we going to do we can't feed any of this to pregnant cows at all and so we were able to put up some corn stover which was awesome and we were actually able to keep one set of cows completely on dry hay by feeding it's a 35 percent corn stover diet through a hay buster and we're turning around and bale processing out stover bale processing alfalfa right on top of it and then we're also feeding those cows some low nitrate grain hay and they eat that corn stover just like they're grazing stocks it has been just amazing how we're able to keep that ration costs low and then our other group of cows actually had to go on a TMR and we fed them it was our first and second cowers we fed them a 30 percent straw diet to keep costs down and then also added beet pulp we were able to get some into the diet for some energy and then fed them alfalfa as well and it was a very simple very cost effective ration and I didn't want to have to feed those cows a TMR and have chores take a little longer but it worked really well in our scenario to keep our costs down and just adapt a little bit so I guess a big thing is being able to adapt as things change and take stock of what we have we have for forages and see now how are we going to use this now that it tested like this because I remember when I got my nitrate test back and I was like well this isn't going to work we were going to feed all those cows this hay all winter when they were bred and now we can't do it and I remember just staring at the nitrate tests and my computer being like well well now what are we going to do and actually through just changing our management around a little bit it worked it worked really well and one thing I mean we've fed some different screening products and some different byproducts and and I guess consistency as you touched on your presentation has been something we've fed some barley hulls we've fed some pea hulls before sunflower screenings different products like that and not every semi-low that comes in will test the same and so that is something when it's in a especially like a calf diet is you're not necessarily going to get the same energy out of every load that you thought are the same protein so although those feeds can be cheaper I've found when you start deviating from primary crop a lot of times your changes in crop that you get have to be really well accounted for otherwise atom performance will not be maybe what what one was expecting and they can still be really well utilized but they can you cannot get the same output that you expected based on what they might be that you bring in so Justin what would you do with the iron hatred feed to do the classylized? Well the oats were just pleasantly storing it still and which we haven't we haven't needed it yet and it will get fed I mean we will use it our oats wasn't our oats is low enough that when fed to in nitrates that we can feed it through a hay buster to calved out cows and we'll be okay with it our our sedan was 3,900 parts per million nitrate nitrogen and it's the most beautifulist high nitrate crop you ever saw 13 pro green we got it up dry and just devastating to me how it tested but we've actually put that through all of our our bull calves and heifer calves at about 12 percent of their diet all winter and it's fit in really well with it one thing that it did change a little bit is I I usually feed we grow a lot of alfalfa and so we get our protein and all of our diets from alfalfa and so it ended up I wasn't able to maybe have quite as much protein in our diets that I wanted because I was trying to shovel some sedan that was 13 pro through versus alfalfa that was the alfalfa that I was targeted for those same rations was 20 pro and I wasn't able to feed as much but we're we're getting that sedan gone and we're going to be able to utilize it and it's worked you know we've we've weighed our we've taken yearling weights on our bulls and they've gained very admirably over the winter it didn't affect you know animal performance at all and when we started them on the diets I think I was at 5 percent of high nitrate sedan for a week and then I went 10 percent and then we settled out at 12 percent is where it best fit so we we kind of baby no long as we worked them up onto that stuff we're going to let Kevin start the question on this one answer because it's the forage again maybe Kevin please repeat the question I bet you so the question was as we get in these drought years we do see a lot of volunteer Russian thistle Kosha in these fields that were taken off and so what is the value our what is the precautions on feeding these is either put up as a hay or as a grazing scenario and normally with Kosha and Russian thistle they both tend to be high in nitrates and so especially as a is there early and the younger tissue there tend to be really hot I call it hot and so as they mature out you'll get lower but what I would do is you put them in a bail I would test them so you know where you're at in terms of levels of nitrates in the feed and then do like what Nathan talked about is blend them off within your rations in grazing scenarios it's a little bit difficult because especially Kosha tends to be in the younger stage fairly palatable and cows will actually select it out and so if you don't have a lot of if your other feed is fairly brown and this is what you've seen droughts you'll see your aftermath is brown your Kosha's green and the cows tend to pick it out and if you have Russian thistle tend to also have a little bit of salt in there so they'll come and pick them out and that's where you'll see toxicity levels where you can see some death in the herds you want to watch them closely so that you don't have issues and you can do like Nathan talked about you can bring them in there and take them back out and kind of gradually get them acclimated to the nitrates but I would always test them to see how hot they are and if they're really hot I just wouldn't use them in a grazing scenario and I'd put them up as a bail and blend them off so the question was can you if you put it up can you feed it for two weeks not feed it for two weeks and I'm not like Carl talk about that but I think your risk is there right on toxic is toxic questions whether you should feed it every week every day or if you did two weeks and then be off for two weeks and on these types of feeds I've always think a small percentage is a lot better I have continually fed rather than a large amount at one time seems like our beef cattle are pretty good at at detoxifying things when a little bit is given but as soon as you start overwhelming the system or their body their liver hashes out and one of the problems with the forage that the weeds you talked about earlier was oxalates and that can have problems with kidneys and as well as liver damages so anytime you feed too much at one time yeah so I'd rather circumsand grass it has pressic acid what about grazing it I think you're talking about hating it but what about grazing it that's usually sure I mean that's the it's amazing how every year we get this question on pushic acid toxicity in our sorghum sedans or sedan grasses and the risks and you know I always it's always funny I've been doing this my career for been this 31 years and I have yet to see a case of dead cattle with pushic acid not that it doesn't happen but you rarely ever hear about it and knock on wood knock on your head so in a grazing scenario my rule of thumb is if it's at least two feet tall your pushic acid is is is higher lower in the plant tissue and it gets less and less as it elevates so your your total volume in the plant is less as it gets taller then the caveat is is it stressed so whenever you go through a stressed scenario pushic acid then can elevate normally you get a freeze we'll really elevate it quickly where a drought will elevate it slowly because of the stress scenarios and so for me if it's two feet tall and it's not too stress I don't worry about it in a grazing scenario if I have stress situations I will then take a test send it to the lab and have it come back to see where I'm at and see how hot it actually is should I or should I not graze it in that scenario if it's in a mix so in a cover crop mix where you'll see sorghum sedan used a lot normally cows when they go in their graze they're fairly good at picking and choosing a number of different varieties especially when it comes to sorghum sedan it's usually not the most palatable unless you're doing a bmr in that mix and so they don't just go in there and pick the sorghum sedan or the sedan grass and so within that diet I rarely ever see any I've never seen any issues in a cover crop mix I keep looking at you but Carl asked a question didn't he well now I gotta follow up with that question since you're talking about about palatability this will be for Nathan have you seen any palatability issues when you're feeding the haze or the silage to your livestock when it comes to rye well we learned with with rye hay that you rebelled it which it was a this devastating failure I mean it was rained on it was they didn't like it and I don't blame them but it also was not put up correctly and then I haven't veiled rye ever since then rye as a silage they don't love it like like say a corn silage were there but I mean they almost it's almost like we got to feed them for a day or two and then they got to accept the fact that this is what we're doing and then they're okay with it but I mean it's it I mean with a blended ration balance for protein energy it works just fine and I really like it as a a cow silage it's a lot of bulk that can be fed to them and it's our rye silage is typically 11-12 pro and upper 20s energy which you got to maybe add some energy to it but it's once they're on it they like it but they don't they would prefer corn silage over over rye is what I found in and veiled I'm assuming if you got it cut you know laid boot or something like that I'm assuming they would like it because if they'll graze it real well before it heads I assume as a veiled forage they would but we're like silaging it we're going after the nexus of max tonnage with quality and we know it's going to be in a silage that they will be able to utilize so but no they they just I guess the answer is they like it okay how about when it's that tall I've actually yet to spring graze it I've grazed it in the fall when it's close to that tall but in the spring we've we've always had it in under the well if we're dry and we have to turn out there we can and we haven't had to yet but in the fall they'll eat it very willingly but I also I think earlier is going to be the key in the fall as as your one slide talked about because we're typically going in the fall in September like after we've taken off say a veiled second crop like say we've had we've had millet that it was under seated with turnip radish or something like that and we'll bale the millet then we'll quick seeder eye in there and hopefully the turnip and radish will come back and we'll get some rye to graze and stuff so we're not getting a lot of fall height but they do like they do they do like grazing it then so to go along with this Kevin oh so the question was on staging of timing of cutting your Siberian millet Siberian millet and kind of like what Nathan talked about it's a really high quality feed till it gets to the to the heading stage or once it starts to produce seed the quality tends to drop fairly dramatic the nice thing about millet is it still retains about an eight percent protein even when it's in that heading stage but then lignin content goes up like most of our our plant species and palatability goes down so if I'm on a stage millet I like to put my millet up right when that gets to the the heading just starts to merge gives me my best palatable quality feed that fits a cow diet if I'm going to look at tonnage you might get a little more tonnage by waiting for the seed production but I know I'm going to give up quality and it might end up being a grinding feed versus a feed in a bale and that's true of most of our feeds and the one thing about rye we're talking about rye and that when you're grazing rye is what we do in our rye is we actually provide free choice straw or slew hay to give them some fiber and once it tends to balance their diet well when you put up rye past that milk stage the lignin content goes from about three percent to five percent and so the palatability drops dramatically in about a five to seven-day window and so that if you know you're going to have to feed that rye in a bale you got to put it up when that lignin content is at three or less if you know you can grind it take the opportunity to get a little more tonnage out of it I will do that put it up around the June 10 day get more tonnage but I know I'm going to grind it and put it in a TMR same with the millet millet fall is very similar to me with the rye and that once it's headed out and you got seed production palatability drops dramatically and it gets really kind of fibrous so if there are any more questions in the audience we'll kind of wrap up you know kind of for me to summarize you know looking at your forage I think the biggest thing for forages is think about what you're going to use for forages how you're going to use them and lay in the seed early so make sure you make your contacts so you can get your hay that you need and more than that it always seems like every year I want something and I can't get it and so think about that now in February first when it gets to April and you're going to well shoot and then price the price also can go up on you it'll be a little cheaper now than it will be if you're looking at buying something a little short in the month of April and May just like to comment we have a lot of additional feeds for feeding in the summertime or in the wintertime freight really affects the cost of these feeds so anything that's in your locale is probably going to be your cheapest thing to go as far as balancing the ration either connect with your nutritionist or a county extension agent or or us and we can help you with that it's just a matter of knowing what's available at what price to figure in and if you think you're going to need it be sure to find it early because it may not be available later on when you think you might need it or actually have to have it come on I don't have a big closing statement I guess but I just thank you guys for including me on this discussion with you guys I've enjoyed it and and also I guess my one thought is for all the other producers out there is just be sure to think outside the box of what you've always done because that's what we've had to do as we've modified strategies with forages that we're growing in the way we're feeding stuff is just because even though it's frustrating when what you wanted to have happened didn't happen this there's other ways there's always another way to figure it out so I guess that's thank you guys and I guess that's my my close and with that we'll just say that next week we have a our next Thursday at one o'clock that'd be noon mountain time we have our next preparing for your drought webinar and I believe Miranda and Jerry Stucker going to be talking about water as water issues during a drought so with that stay tuned thank you