We're just beginning our sixth season on a leased 200 ac. farm, which
includes a riverside fescue pasture of about 12 acres, no doubt planted
under some sort of conservation plan years back. The river floods at
least twice yearly, and that just seems to please the fescue.
I cow-seeded the fescue with alsyke and tripoli clover in 03, and used
it mostly for young stock, who would eat out all of the clover and other
grasses, and completely avoid the fescue. By this past season, the
clover made sufficient inroads that I was able to put it into my
rotation, broken up into four paddocks.
The cows clearly prefer to leave the fescue for last, but they do eat it
in the end. I trust their judgment.
This past season, after two traversals in rotation, I let the fescue
field grow out and then cut some pretty amazing hay from it: I got 44
big (4X4X4) round bales. It dried, tedded and baled beautifully. The
cows are totally loving the fescue-clover hay, and my handful of winter
milkers are doing quite well on it.
Even better, the regrowth after haying gave me another seven grazings,
right up until cold weather forced me to stop (the field gets its trough
water from one of my portable solar-powered seasonal pumping systems).
I'm not sure that I'd plant fescue, but I have learned to make some good
use of it.
--
Jonathan & Nina White, cheesemakers
Bobolink Dairy & Bakeyard
Vernon, NJ USA
