 I'm going to start out with just thank you for all joining us, thanks to our speakers especially for being flexible and adjusting from an in-person meeting to this online platform with the circumstances, and we want to especially thank our sponsor in our central region there. We will be putting these on the NDSU extension livestock page under the grazing management topic area. Tuesday's webinar is already up there if you weren't able to join us for that one. And with that I'm going to turn it over to our first speaker Dr. Kevin Sedevic, the Range Land Management Extension Specialist and the Interim Director of the Central Grasslands Research Extension Center in St. Louis, North Dakota. And he's going to be talking about the cover crop grazing research that is being conducted in the state. Well thank you Miranda. I do appreciate you all coming on today. Hopefully we'll get a little bit out of this information and what we're going to try and do is present research or some findings that we've been looking at for about the last 12-13 years now in terms of some cover crop work. So we're going to start out with a little bit more on the basic questions that you see with grazing cover crops and that we've kind of come about with some of the research we've been doing and some of the work that's been done throughout the Northern Plains on cover crop grazing. So one of the common questions we get is what should I seed? What are my seed mix options and why should I seed specific plants within a cover crop mix? And we always tell producers you know base that seed mix on your soils. What's your production goals for those soils and what are your planned uses for that cover crop mix in terms of a livestock grazing scenario? And it will vary. Your seed mix will vary based on what your planned use will be. That planned use could be a full season cover crop which really is your largest array of options in terms of picking and selecting species within the cover crop mix. Traditionally we've seen a lot of work done with dual cropping and that's a crop or cover crop that follows either a cash crop or follows a hay crop. We've seen more of this last year following preventive planted acres. And then the third one really is that because that fall seeding that's going to be used in the late fall time period or for early spring grazing. You know so your mixtures are a lot of options and you need to look at what's available in those mixtures. And a good mix should include cool season plants, warm season plants, and look at competitiveness. There are certain species that do not compete very well in a mix but they do very well by themselves in the monoculture. And look at frost tolerance or frost sensitivity. If you're planning on grazing in the fall into the early winter the least sensitive they are to frost the better they are for an option in terms of retaining their quality in production for that late season grazing option. And so I kind of broke these up into different groups and when you look at soil goals there are some options where you're looking at trying to put in plants that are high fiber consumers. And these are plants that tend to be high in nitrogen, high in crude protein. They create a lot of microbial activity and tend to break down fiber quicker than those high fiber producers. All your brassicas will fall in this category, your turnips, your radishes, your canolas and beets, your legumes will fall in this category no matter which one you're looking at whether it's a pea, the soybean, the clover, these are all high fiber consumers. And even immature small grains at a time when they're if they were senesco or froze down in the immature stage will do some high fiber consumers because of the higher protein value. Your second big category are really high fiber producers. These are for producers who are looking to try and build organic carbon in that soil profile they're looking for plants that tend to have a lot of fiber and tend to be higher in production. Your warm season crops are going to fall in this category. Your foxtail millets, your sorghums, your chutexes, pearl millet and corn will fall in these categories tend to be very high fiber producers. Once your small grains go to maturation you get to the boot stage and seed set stage they now become high fiber producers versus high fiber consumers because they've shifted more of their growth into a fiber base versus a nitrogen base. The third category that's gotten a lot of press over the last few years is really the pollinator group and you can work these pollinator mixes in with the other two mixes. What you're looking for in pollinators is trying to add more diversity in that mix to produce flowering plants and really the best pollinator mixes will create flowering plants throughout the season versus a one-time bloom of flowers and then they're lost and NRCS programs are very popular in adding this within their equip program with the pollinators. So you can think about those broadleaf plants that create flowers and how they may fit in there. They may not have the forage value for livestock but have a secondary value for ecosystem services. So most of you who've looked at cover crops are always familiar with brassicas. Brassicas tend to be always in these mixes for one they tend to be cheap they're easy to produce and are very popular because of that side. They're also very high in quality and forage based for livestock production and it doesn't matter if it's a cow or a sheep they fit a lot of different luminance in terms of consumption. The most popular brassica over the last really 15 years has been the purple top turnip. It was accessible easy to get it was cheap. It's probably my least favorite of the brassicas only because it's probably the lowest producer among the brassica species in a mix so in terms of forage production you do give up some tonnage at least above ground tonnage with the purple top. I'm a bigger fan of the hybrids. Paja, Winfred are two popular hybrid varieties of the turnips that are more productive and I think also give you a little more benefit in terms of soil profile because they have more woody systems that surround that bulb versus just a bulb. Then you can look at kale and the Swedes these are tend to be higher producing brassicas but they really fit the full season cover crop mixes. They're not typically recommended for that dual cropping system because they need a longer growing season to be productive. The purple top and the Paja, the radishes they fit in both full season as well as late season mixes for cover crop grazing. The one that I struggle with the most with producers is the legumes. We like we always talk about legumes. We talk about the benefits of legumes in a mix in terms of nitrogen fixation but the legumes are going to be your most costly addition to any cover crop mix. They also tend to be the least competitive in a mix in terms of most of your species. The cow pee in particular the soybean, the forage soybean don't compete well in a mix but do very well by themselves. I like the field pee. It tends to be my most productive especially in a dual cropping system. Harry Vetch gets a lot of press. It can be very productive. It's one of those legumes though that can stick around for a couple years so you need to at least think about that one when you put in a mix. It also does have some toxicity issues with ruminants and so we try to minimize that is a small part of that mix. And then of course sweet clover is one that gets some some press because it's cheap. I typically will only use sweet clover in that fall seeding mix because it's a biennial. And so when we look at the grazing options, I put this in the three different categories for our producers to think about. The one that we get questions on is what's my options for early spring grazing for turnout for those cows, especially if you have cows and calves you can put on for a high quality diet. And these really only fall into one category and that's a fall seeding. So if you know you want to spring graze a cover crop in 2021, you're going to be looking at seeding these in the fall of 2020. The most popular winter cereal that's been out there is winter rye. It is a cheaper seed. It's also we know the most reliable and overwintering in the northern plains and so it has a lot of popularity because of that. I do like the winter wheat and the spring and the winter triticals as some other options. We just don't have a lot of data on those two species in terms of winter hardiness in the northern plains as well as growth in the spring and palatability. We did plant these three species in 2019 in a trial at Central Grasslands where we'll look at the production aspects of these three different species as well as livestock performance and cost. So the other big option is the full season cover crop mix which really has the least amount of data out there on what to plant, what to expect for costs. And so this is one that I think has a lot of potential in looking at research for summer grazing options. And this will be your biggest option. You can look at a number of different brassicas in this mix. This is where I would look at a kale and a swede because of the growing season you're going to look at. You can put in one to two small grains. Your warm season grasses work well in this scenario. They give you lots of biomass and they give you the production and quality during that growing season. And of course legumes do fit better in these kind of mixes because they got more of a growing season. The plant I don't have in here is also a broadleaf and so you'll see more broadleafs added in here especially if you're looking at a pollinator. You could bring in something like a sunflower or even trying to think of flax would work in this scenario just to add some more flowering plants in there. And so this gives you your greatest option of what you can pick. I like to pick mixes in this scenario. There are going to be a lot of biomass, lots of production so I can get that soil carbon built up as well as feed for those livestock. And the last one which is one that has probably more of the data on it especially in the North Dakota is your late season cover crops or your dual cropping scenarios where you're planting a cover crop following a hay crop or a small rain crop. These tend to be seeded in late July to mid-August. Some years we just don't have the time sometimes. We're not harvesting until mid to late August and then it gets a little bit touchy on is it cost effective to put in the cover crop in those scenarios. Typically I do not put a legume in this mix but that's my preference. It doesn't mean it's your preference. It's hard though to get the value of that legume in this mix with that short growing season. Although worms and grasses don't produce a lot of biomass in this scenario, it still gives you the fiber to help in terms of room and function for those livestock that are raising that cover crop mix in the fall early winter. And so that's kind of a group you're going to look at for late season cover crop option. Another one I haven't talked about here but we'll see in here is also is interseeding of crops. And so you may see the interseeding or the aerial seeding of cover crops in corn to give you a late season use within that crop for the in a corn crop. We're seeing more and more work done with relay crops and mixing the crops that will see some more data coming out probably over the next five years in this scenario. So the other question we get is is what can I expect for forage production and what's the cost? As a producer they're going to want to know what should they plant what can I expect for production and if it's costly or not and that that cost will drive what they're picking what they don't pick. It's one of those things that that tends to be menial as a researcher but for producers it's a lot of value. So I'm going to show you a series of few slides here just to give you an idea of what we have for production. We've done trials at Strater, we've done some trials up by Kandu, we've done some work done in the state and I just want to show you this kind of gives you a series of different groups of plants. These are annual grasses seeded in July and you can look at the production on the second column a seed cost per acre in the third column and seed cost per ton produced and if you just look at the last column your your annual grasses in terms of warm seasons are going to be your most cost effective plants in that mix and so when you look at a full season cover crop you know a millet and a sorghum sedan do well in terms of production as you can see we have 8,000 pounds in this trial for sorghum sedan and that cost was that three bucks a ton or a little under 12 bucks an acre for that sorghum sedan. You get into the small grains which is in red colors here oats tends to be your cheapest small grain and even in the trials we did last year in 2019 the forage oats still tend to be your cheapest options among the cereal grains doesn't mean you can't look at mixing an oat and a barley in that barley tends to be more palatable but it tends to be less productive and a little bit more costly in this scenario here our production action was no difference for oats, barley, or critical and cost was really the driver of what you're going to pick in this in this option you can look at legumes and this is just four legumes we looked at we looked at forage soybean harry batch field peas and cow peas and we did this trial cow peas were extremely popular in cover crop mixes but it's also very expensive and this was seeded in july and early to mid july so our production on some of these would be lower as you can tell but the what i want to point out here is these would be your most expensive of your mixes you can see your cost per acre and you can see your seed cost per ton you know three to four bucks we saw in the last slide versus 17 bucks to 35 bucks with your legumes so so look at your legumes and pick a legume that fits your desired needs and your outcomes and know your cost associated with that so you don't get carried away on a legume and cut a seed at a proper rate and the last one that just looks at different annuals this is we just have a a turnip the pausia turnip and the purple top turnip we have two different cocktail mixes we looked at in this trial then you can see a winter rye and winter tree kale and blue i mean you can see the production numbers here but if you just look at seed cost per acre the turnips are popular because they are cheap looking at six to seven bucks an acre at a full seeding rate um where the winter rye and winter tree on the bottom tend to be your most expensive ones and the rye tends to be cheapest and which is why we still see a lot of rye being done i do have two cover crop mixes here one is with a legume i both have legumes um the first one has a millet the second one has sorghum sedan with a cow pee and the first one is with harry batch and 11 bucks an acre is a really nice cost a cheap cost for a cover crop mix and produced about 800 pounds and the cocktail mix too also produced by 800 pounds but about twice the cost and so you want to look at those cost relationships in terms of production and what your goals are on those soils when we look at the uh this is the last one i have in terms of production at such a grasslands near streeter uh you can see the cost of a straight warm season mix and there's a millet at about eight bucks an acre or terms for just under seven bucks an acre and our cocktail mix that we had which was similar to the last one was that 12 bucks an acre uh they produced about 3000 pounds you can see your warm season is going to give you more biomass um which is why it's a nice nice mixture in these crops so the last question we tend to get is nutritional value so if i'm looking at costs i'm looking at production what can i expect in terms of the nutritional value for these lactating cows or dry cows depending when you're going to graze them i only have two slides here then we're going to finish this topic up but i wanted to show you this is a slide that that looks at your warm season crops uh your first four warm season crops these are your brassicas your next two these are your legumes and the last two are your winter rise and winter triticale and you can see nutritional value the brassicas and legumes will always give you a high quality feed even late into the fall um where the warm season crops you will know that when you get in the late season you get your first frost the quality of these warm seasons are going to become deficient or marginal and so know that when you have a high warm season mix that quality could be low later in the season the beauty of the mix is what the brassicas is you have the quality there that can offset the low quality of the warm seasons the beauty of the warm seasons is they add the fiber so this is just acid detergent fiber 30 is kind of my threshold in terms of rumen function so if you look at your warm seasons we have good fiber function good rumen function versus the brassicas and the in the winter cereals tend to be low in fiber high in water and can create digestive upsets that we see in any of our ruminants so a nice balanced mix will give you that quality as well as fiber in that mixture to get you by on a nice nice composition I'm going to end there and turn it over to Erin Godler to kind of fall up with some different trials that we've done that she has for updates so and then we'll take questions at the end if that works so Erin and while she's getting set up here Erin is one of our range research specialists at Central Grassland REC and so today Erin's going to talk just a little bit more about the research that her and Kevin have been working on and so Erin took the economic and the soil impact side of things so Erin I will let you take over all right well thanks everyone for joining us through this online format and kind of working through us as you know we continue to figure out this situation I'm actually glad that Mary was able to pair me up with Kevin because for me to talk about the economic and the soil impacts of cover crops you know it was really important to also consider that role of grazing and what that does in terms of you know those management options and also the influences on that landscape as well as the economics so just right off the bat I think you know a lot of us that are joining us today we might be producers that are solely involved with crop production we might be producers that are raising livestock and don't have a lot of crop production in our system but I think you know whatever background we're coming from talking about cover crops is a good opportunity to look at ways of managing our resources and potentially providing some positive impact to the soil health so just kind of keep that in mind as we talk through the rest of our presentation and maybe consider different ways that you can utilize the resources that you have available to yourself maybe partnering up with some neighbors and consider some options that could help you manage that risk you know I think as producers we're used to dealing with all sorts of uncertainty whether it's just the daily fluctuations you know today we woke up and we had snow on the ground a couple days ago it was a warm 50 degrees and we were taking advantage of that to get some work done as we look to manage those risk cover crops I think offer us a lot of potential and that's what I would like to talk through today so at the time that we put together a study here in Streeter there had been a whole lot of work in the northern Great Plains there were studies across the nation that were looking at the potential to use those annual forages to extend that grazing season and that's what we really wanted to focus on here at Streeter just to familiarize yourself with the study location it should be highlighted there on your screen with a red arrow we are in south central North Dakota a lot of people consider it to be part of the prairie pothole region the study that we put together it occurred during 2012 2013 and 2014 and so just to provide yourself with some background information during those years our average precipitation it was about 14 and a half inches from April through September so encompassing that whole growing season this chart displays the moisture in two different seasons spring being April through June and then summer which is highlighted as being July through September and for the most part there was variation which is expected although I do want to point out that in the summer months of 2013 there was a bit more departure from normal and just kind of file that in the backyard memory as I talk through some of the challenges with the project during that year so the project that we put together at Streeter was really focused on evaluating that potential of annual forages to extend the grazing season and in order to do that we wanted to focus on things that we thought were practical from a producer's standpoint and could be really valuable to to understanding what was going on within that system looking at herbage production you know we wanted to focus on the overall pounds of production per acre the livestock performance that we monitored was focused on overall average daily gain as well as just the general body condition of those animals and then the economic efficiency we looked at that in a lot of different ways but for today's purpose I wanted to show the numbers as it pertains to the overall dollars per head per day of costs and then compare that to other other options like maybe keeping those animals in the dry lot or what the cost would be in a native range system the soil health factors that we focused on we were trying to care characterize the physical as well as the biological and chemical components and really look at what was going on within that system so to kind of help you understand the project and the overall layout without getting too in depth basically there was a single crop and a dual cropping system that were put into play so in this study the single crop it was the annual forage cover crop when that crop had been grazed by the animals it then went into a follow system it was also put into a dual cropping system which was the annual forage crop followed up by a typical cash crop and those annual forage crops were seeded in those cropping systems right about the same time so we put that crop into the ground each year by about late july or early august at the latest the grazing treatments that we put into play were full utilization basically a take half leave half or a 50 degree of disappearance and then a no grazing scenario and our control was a dry lot I should also mention that the animals that we grazed in these treatments at the station were midja station angus crossbred beef peppers and the actual grazing it occurred from mid october into late november or early december so the actual forage mix that we used and you can kind of you know see what we selected for based on what kevin talked about in his presentation we wanted to have a good mixture of both cool and warm season grasses legumes you know to really build that diversity to also minimize risks that might occur due to some of those weather conditions that can be variable and then putting together a mix that offered some quality grazing for those animals to be maintained on and then again increasing that potential for soil health benefits for this trial our overall average price range from 15 dollars to 18 dollars an acre and this was the mix that we used year in and year out although in I think it was in 2014 we weren't able to get a hold of sardine sedan grass and so we did swap that out for a german millet so I just want to highlight some of the major results starting off with herbage production so what you can see here is the production pounds production per acre for both the single crop system and the dual crop and looking at it between those two cropping systems it's pretty obvious to see that the single crop produced a lot more biomass as compared to the dual crop looking at the dual crop system we do see that in 2013 you know our production was pretty limited again I interpret that as being correlated with the moisture that was pretty limited when I looked at that a little bit more closely basically as soon as we took the drill out the rainfall cut off and so it was purely a function of moisture to be able to get that second crop in place and to get some biomass out of it I'll just be talking about the average daily gains today but I will mention that you know overall the body condition of those animals was maintained and they did well on the system so looking at average daily gain this chart here displays it in pounds of pounds gain per day for each year of the study looking at it in terms of the different grazing treatments so blue is the full use grazing red is the 50% utilization and then green is our dry lot which was the control so focusing on the years when the growing conditions were a bit more normal so 2012 and 2014 what we see is that there was a significant difference between the full utilization treatment and the dry lot however when we look at it in 2013 you know there was significant difference between both grazing treatments and the dry lot and how I look at that is that you know I think in these scenarios when we have those animals in that dry lot setting we had a little bit more control over the rations that were that we were putting together for those animals one thing that we didn't account for when we were grazing out on these cover crop treatments is that you know there is an energy expenditure happening and we also you know we didn't closely monitor the forage quality though knowing what we knew when we put that mix together it was you know adequately serving their needs let's see now moving into the economics so what this is showing here is the cost associated with each year and each treatment in dollars per head per day and then I also wanted to put up the numbers of actual stock density per acre because I felt like that kind of gives us a sense of how many animals we were actually able to put out there which is closely tied to the dollars of that system so the costs that were factored in they included you know our seed fertilizer planting combining herbicide application and we tried to use as much of the actual costs as we could land rent and a couple of other factors were just custom rate values from the ag statistics service for this county so looking at 2013 and again that was the year when there was a pretty significant departure from normal moisture what we see is that essentially we didn't have enough um herbage production out there to be able to stock those animals at a level where it was an option that was more affordable and so looking at those costs in 2013 you know there was really nothing that could compete with our option in the dry lot focusing on 2012 and 2014 when conditions were a bit more normal our full use grazing treatment offered some competitive costs per head per day even when looking at the costs of dry lot although in 2014 and Kevin might remember a little bit more on why 2014 was so much more affordable in the dry lot system but commodity prices I think is what played a role in the overall cost of the dry lot in 2014 I didn't put it up here but I was going to also mention that so the native range system if we wanted to compare some of these treatment options to that as well as the dry lot in 2014 the average cost for a five-year average was right at a dollar five per head per day moving into soil health I wanted to highlight a couple of things here in terms of the physical structure so aggregate stability is a measurement that basically refers to the ability of soil to disrupt or to resist disruption when something like a moisture event a high wind event when when those forces are applied the aggregate stability is it's a measurement of that resistance so we took these measurements at the beginning of the study and at the end of the study in 2012 it was it worked out quite well because most of our numbers were right on par with each other which gave us a great baseline for comparison after we applied the treatments and taking those measurements at the end of the study in 2014 what we see is that in both grazing treatments there's actually a significant difference occurring and that aggregate stability was increasing whereas in the no use treatments there wasn't really a positive or a negative effect occurring now moving into bulk density so bulk density is essentially a measurement of the overall dry weight of soil that's within a volume container and it is an indicator of soil compaction so relating it to aggregate stability most practices that improve aggregate stability will likely show a decrease in overall bulk density and from a you know just a management standpoint there's a number of different things that we can try and do to promote or maintain some of that soil structure so looking at things like maybe you're trying to reduce the number of trips that are made up and down that field looking at either mixes or practices that will maintain or increase some of that organic matter just really minimizing the overall soil disturbance so maybe selecting for minimum tillage if the option is there those sorts of things looking at it over time from 2012 to 2014 we took our measurements at zero to three and five to eight centimeters and while there wasn't a statistical difference that occurred the overall trend was decreasing which was something that we liked seeing you know if given the opportunity to stretch this out a few more years I would have been curious to see how that would have impacted our results so in general overall management implications and takeaway points essentially in this project our greatest potential for putting a practice on the ground that would be cost effective was a full use grazing treatment in a dual cropping system this essentially occurred because of a function of moisture and you know folks are listening from all over the state as well as outside of North Dakota and I think it's really important to consider where you're located what your climate conditions are like and focus on the overall goal of that cover crop you know it might be a better option for you to consider something that would be more full season or looking at maybe planting a winter cereal grazing or hanging that off in the spring and then moving into some other cropping rotation but really consider the role of moisture and and and what you know what that does for the system where you're located the I guess the big takeaway I had from the livestock performance aspect is I think it's I think it's really important to consider what animals that you're going to be grazing in these units are they animals that are going to be brought back into your herd are they you know what is the expected performance basically are you just looking to keep them around a little bit longer before you take them to the sale barn you know what's the expected performance and I think that's a driver for how we choose to manage the livestock on that system or you know what system we actually put them into so going back to the overall goals of the operation keep those factors in play and as I mentioned earlier you know if you don't have livestock maybe consider working with neighbors or different you know different options and with that I think I think we're open for questions so I'll have Kevin come back around and and can stop should I stop sharing well Kevin's coming back around we do have a couple questions for you guys that we're going to launch as a survey so I will do that right now and I will start priming the pump here for some questions so and don't worry these questions are anonymous so we don't know who it who you are and what your answers are so don't be worried about that as you fill out or complete the poll questions do you want us to scroll through or what's the best I I can actually um ask them ask you if that's okay with you sure yeah okay so uh one of the first questions we had was is there any concerns with the sorghum sedan uh grass causing cyanide to be released when grazing the cattle I believe this happens probably after a frost was the question that's a great question and we get that question every year when we put sorghum sodium grass in a mix um then reality that sorghum sodium grass once it gets to be about 18 inches tall to two feet tall your risk of of cyanide poisoning is extremely low to none um also within a mix the one thing we'll find when you have a warm season cool season mixes the cows tend to select the cool seasons uh over the warm seasons even they may eat the warm seasons is not at a very high rate compared to cool seasons in the trials that we've done we've never seen a problem with cyanide toxicity or HCN uh through the sorghum sedan and so it my response would be if you are feeding a cover crop field that is extremely high in sorghum sedan in the mix then I would be concerned if it's in the immature stage of two feet or less okay awesome and then there was a question um Erin um what were you feeding the dry lot animals do you know what their diet consisted of not right off the bat um I could put that I I could pull that information though and provide that I don't know if there's a way to send that out do you know Mary okay yeah and yep and you can even just send it to me and I can let the the person know or um yep okay and I can give you a general what the mix was there was a corn silage barley corn uh mix with some hay okay and I think that was okay a couple um I'm gonna give you a couple more seconds on the poll before closing it so if you have an answer please take some time to do that um of what were they eating versus yeah oh did you have any issues with sulfate oh did you have any issues with sulfates or nitrates in the in your brassicas did you look at cost per pound gain so the question on brassicas um and and that is an issue on nitrate toxicity in stands of brassicas that have been stressed through drought we have not seen it in non-stressed scenarios um so if it is a droughty scenario and your brassicas are high in the mix then I would test those for nitrate toxicity levels in terms of costs per per cost on the brassicas um the question was there's did your cost per pound gain oh we did not cover that number even although we could and then following that up is how long were you grazing so um I do let me grab those numbers here but in general it was from early October and into um mid October into early December if you know if the biomass was there to graze um I did see another question earlier that was asking to explain the single versus the double crop system again um essentially the single crop it was just the annual forage cover crop um and the double crop was a cash crop that was followed up by that same annual forage cover crop okay and then we have a question agar gets stability what do those numbers really mean again like 0.14 on the on the full use treatment well Aaron except the um the label on it the biggest thing to take out of that is the higher the number the better and it tells you a function of size of pads um look at that soil and break it up those aggregates the larger they are the better you are in terms of grazing creating porosity um within that soil profile I'm going to close the current poll soon so if you haven't finished that one please do um and I will see another question let's see it what are the problems with feeding harry vetch can you compare harry with common vetch the problem with seeding harry vetch what are the problems with feeding harry vetch so so with harry vetch has the toxicity and I'm going to let jana cover this I believe jana blocks covering this topic uh next week and so I didn't look up the actual um chemical within harry vetch but it is toxic at high levels and it takes a fair lot a fair amount of consumption which is why we don't put harry vetch in a pure stand uh because of that potential toxicity level so in a cover crop mix in our case it made up no more than 15 percent of our mix we would not never have seen an issue in terms of toxicity but that's a great question for jana uh for a follow-up session and jana will be talking about that on tuesday so I'm going to share that slide with aggregate stability again and explain that real quick um so the index that I use for measuring aggregate stability are you guys seeing that yes okay so aggregate stability is um in general those components like those components are measured in terms of millimeters but um the index that I use was measuring aggregate stability that is both accounting for wet and dry um conditions and so that index these numbers are applying that that index rating if that makes more sense so this is correlated to a millimeter measurement and just for a reference erin um abby wick put in the chat pot also usually point one four means 14 percent aggregated and then um leland asked was the aggregate stability was it determined by you or was it determined by a lab it was collected in the field yes and then I calculated it do I stop sharing okay so another question have you done much work with seeding cover crops into some poor performing uh go back pastures to simulate growth we I have not uh but dr ben gumont out of the head of your REC has and he published a paper actually about a year and a go year and a half ago on seeding cover crops into what I call deteriorated grasslands and he actually found a significant increase in production using the cover crop versus not using the cover crop to help that help that plant community do better I'm going to launch our next poll while Mary looks for another question for you our next poll is going to is on the usefulness of this so we really want this is the most important question to us to see especially this platform how how you guys felt this was and if you have any comments please put that them in the chat box or email them to us and so we can kind of use that as we move forward with our programs and developing programs in this type of platform Kevin did you compare harry vetch with common vetch did you answer that no we've never done common vetch and so that I really don't know a whole lot about that compared to harry vetch okay okay one of the questions is did the bmr sandgrass stand at harvest and did you compare the feed value to non bmr sandgrass we actually did not bmr sandgrass the first year and went to the bmr for the last years of the trial because of the increase in palatability reduction in lignin and quality the and it did stand well in the stand throughout the whole season so we didn't have any lodging or breakdown of it during the fall or winter period okay and then what percent of sorghum sedan would you consider a high percent in the clover crop mix as far as being worried about possible plastic acid poisoning i've seen a hail event cause this in early to mid summer when cattle were on it thanks that's a great question and you know my rule of thumb this is my rule of thumb with sorghum sedan or sedan by itself makes up less than a third so a third or less i'd never worry about it i've never tested it we've done that for at least a half dozen years and i've never seen an issue so that would be my threshold but i'm i'm basically on my my gut feeling we haven't done trials to look at different levels and the biggest thing to remember is is sorghum sedan or sedan grass that's over two feet tall and that doesn't not stressed will not have hardly any levels of poison of peric acid poisoning in that in that plant and so the hail damage is a great question if you have hail damage and you get a tremendous amount of regrowth on that crop so your bottom is really is shorter it's green and lush those are the fields that i would be concerned about for toxicity levels a couple more seconds and i'm going to close that poll if you haven't taken that already um there's another question on uh oh it's gone something about no use versus 50 percent or our um full use which no use meant that there was no active grazing occurring no cattle on that it was just grazing was not included in that um in that treatment if there's other questions you guys can keep sending them in um if you did have any technical difficulty today joining if you want to just type that in the chat pod that helps uh we have one of our tech guys on helping us out today and so that helps him to know what to look for next time just in case there are any issues there was a question last time about c us for um certified crop advisors and so you can actually just self report them and i will drop the um agenda into the chat pod here as soon as i am done um the recording can be found um here this is our livestock extension grazing page and so our recording is up from the first webinar and then this one will be um up sometime either later today or tomorrow next webinar is tuesday and presenters are going to be myself we're going to talking about setting stocking rates and current carrying capacity in a cover crop setting and then as we already said um janna block will be talking about toxicity issues with cover crops