Winter Rye Pasture Production Programs for Growing Beef Cattle

Abstract

The objective of this study was to determine the effect of different production programs on cattle performance while grazing winter rye pasture. Providing free-choice soybean hulls in winter pasture production programs allows for the following advantages: 1) The leveraging of land resources where initial stocking rates can be greatly increased, thus decreasing the number of cattle that would have to be purchased on seasonally high spring markets to stock pastures heavier after the initiation of rapid spring forage growth, 2) decreased production risk and the addition of stability to an unstable forage supply throughout the grazing period, 3) up to a 3-fold increase in gain/ha without a reduction in cattle performance. Additionally, due to the seasonality of cattle prices and dynamics of breakeven selling prices, having additional cattle on hand for spring grazing is important for the economics of growing cattle on winter pasture.