Sumner,
Your grazing management has a large part to do with your clover
problem. You said that the ewes are grazing the paddocks quite close.
Close grazing favors white clover and bluegrass. Removing the animals
while you still have 2-3 inches of residual forage and letting the grass
get a bit taller than you normally would before turning the animals in
on a new paddock will favor the taller growing grasses like orchard,
timothy and fescue and discourage the white clover (white clover doesn't
like shade and competition). You might try a longer rest period until
you get the clover knocked back to about where you want it. Nitrogen
fertilizer will also help but you are going into the slow growth time of
the summer for grasses, so the response to N now will be less than in
the spring. I think the key for long term is modifying your grazing
managment to leave more residual. You may also need to adjust your
clover seeding rate downward in the future -- 1 lb of seed/acre can
provide a lot of clover under the right conditions.
Les Vough
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Lester R. Vough Phone: 301-405-1322
Forage Systems Management
Dept. of Natural Resource Sciences Fax: 301-314-9041
3109 H.J. Patterson Hall
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742-5821 E-mail: vough@umd.edu
Maryland Forages Web site: http://www.nrsl.umd.edu/extension/forages/
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