From page 31 plan forms of supplementation. Organised smallholders will already have planted winter crops as forage for their animals. Lucerne, winter ryegrass and oats are popular and can be planted as late as March. Lucerne is semi-permanent but annual varieties are also available. It is strongly recommended that it be grown amongst grasses. One of the reasons for this is that nitrogen levels build up to unhealthy levels in pure legume pastures. This way the grasses benefit as well. Smuts Finger( Digitaria eriantha) combines well with lucerne, because it is nitrogen hungry. It provides better autumn grazing and early winter forage. Another crop that should be considered as a winter feed crop is oats. This crop has quite a few
Lucerne, oats, stooling rye, plantain & sainfoin... all are options for winter fodder
advantages: it is suitable for almost all regions of South Africa, it also has a depressing effect on soil-borne diseases such as take-all and it a significant contributor to sustainable agriculture as it canbeusedasanatural herbicide, fertilizer, mulch and biomass, groundcover and to control erosion. Witteberg oats and Overberg oats are used for fodder crops. Other varieties are more suited to milling. The crop is widely adapted to most soil conditions. The planting time for oats is January to April in warmer areas. It is recognised that your pasture will be more successful if it is multi-specie. Stooling rye is a valuable fodder( for pasture, hay or silage) and has the added advantage of being a cover crop during winter. During late autumn, livestock can graze stooling rye forage once it has reached a height of 15 ~ 20 cm but the animals should be removed when the grass height is reduced to 5 ~ 7 cm, to avoid the danger of strangles and other problems. But there are other forage crops that you might not have considered. Plantain provides an improved supply of some trace elements to animals( Cu, Zn, Se), which has a positive impact on animal performance. It is also extremely palatable to stock. The autumn planting is March to April. Sainfoin is a perennial legume that has much to
LIVESTOCK offer Highveld smallholders. It is a non-bloating, highly digestible and nutritious pasture. Perhaps the most outstanding feature of Sainfoin is its excellent frost tolerance. Managed correctly, it can provide green pasture in the middle of winter. Triticale has also been planted successfully in warmer regions of Gauteng. It can be used for grazing, hay, silage as well as a grain feed. Planting months are April – May. Remember that your fields form the foundation of your enterprise, providing the bulk of the forage. Controlled selective grazing( CSG) has for many years been recommended as the most suitable veld management system for the sweet grass veld areas in South Africa. Seasonal resting of veld leads to a dramatic increase in production of
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