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Hello, welcome back to the Extension Connection Podcast. I'm Cassie LeMaster, extension Livestock, equine and forage agent. I've been getting a lot of calls about fall forage management and establishment, so I wanted to cover that in today's podcast. Fall is an excellent time to focus on your pasture quality and make some major stand improvement. If you feel like your pasture is weedy, not as productive as you would like for it to be, or full of undesirable grasses like broom, sedge, and foxtail focused fertility and management this time of year can really help thicken cool season grass pastures. Cool season perennial grasses like fescue and orchard grass are best established in the fall. When cooler temperatures provide good growing conditions and the plant can continue its root growth even through the winter months. Our cool season grasses grow best when air temperatures are between 70 and 80 degrees. Even though we get those nice temperatures in the spring as well. Spring seedlings often can't make it through the first summer because they don't have the root growth that the fall seedlings do. It is estimated that spring seeded fescue can have up to an 80% failure rate. Yikes. So when exactly should you be seeding something like tall fescue? That can be a little tricky because we can get dry here in Polk County in the fall. The ideal window for seeding is September 15th through October 15th. If we have adequate soil moisture. Later plantings in November will likely still work pretty well if we hit a dry spell in October, which we commonly do now. You shouldn't have to seed fescue every year. If you find yourself having to do that. Your pasture is likely overstocked and has too much grazing pressure to get an idea of the overall composition of plants in your pasture. You can walk your pasture or even I can come out and walk it with you. If your pasture has 40% or less of desirable forages, then it's likely time for a complete renovation. If it's in the 50 to 70% desirables range, then you can add some seed fertilizer and maybe lime depending on your soil pH, and see some big improvements. If you have more than 70% cover of desirable plants in your pasture seed, likely isn't necessary unless you have an isolated bare spot that you're trying to fill in. In this case, maintaining soil fertility will be your best course of action. So how and when should you go about fertilizing? For this time of year, fertilization should also take place during that same fall seeding window, September through October. There's also another fertilization window for fescue between February and March for spring growth. Hopefully your soil pH is already at the target. Between six and six and a half. Lime is what we use to correct acidic soil and bring the pH up. But it does take several months to activate in the soil. This is something to consider if you have plans to seed warm season grasses in the spring. Go ahead and get the lime out to correct any soil pH issues by the time you want to plant, then fertilize based on the desired forage growth and the current soil analysis. Soil samples can be sent to the North Carolina Department of Agriculture Soil Lab for free through Thanksgiving if you live in North Carolina. Now for some seeding tips, if you are spreading or drilling seed into an existing pasture, you'll want to mow or graze the forage low, maybe about three inches. This is going to allow more sunlight down on the young seedlings and allow for better soil contact. Fescue can be drilled using a no-till drill, or the seed can be broadcast with a spreader at a slightly higher rate. The seeding rate for drilled fescue is 15 to 20 pounds of seed per acre, or 20 to 25 pounds of seed broadcast per acre. Be sure to check your seating depth on the drill. For fescue, the seeding depth is about a quarter to a half a inch. Planting too deep can result in poor stand emergence. You can also mix your fescue stands with five to 10 pounds of orchard grass or clover seed per acre to increase the nutrient density and diversity of your pasture. Orchard grass is a high quality, highly palatable forage, but unfortunately it has a shallow root system and doesn't persist on its own for more than about three years In our warm climate, mixing it with fescue allows the heavy fescue canopy to shade the orchard grass and keep those roots a little cooler. You'll want to avoid planting cool season annual grasses like rye grass, cereal, rye, or wheat. In fescue stands, this includes contractor mixes, which often contain these grasses. These annual grasses are more prolific and will compete with the perennials like fescue and orchard grass. Thinning your stand. Then they die off in May or June when the temperatures get too hot and you're left with a very thin, weak fescue stand. So what if you're establishing a brand new pasture or if the pasture fell into that complete renovation category? First, you'll want to kill the existing vegetation four to six weeks prior to your planting date. You can do this mechanically by tillage or by using a non-selective herbicide. If you're tilling the area, this is the perfect time to disk in lime and phosphorus into the soil, especially if you're converting a forested area to pasture. Our native soil is typically low in phosphorus and acidic, but it's even more so if it's been in trees and all the top soil has been pushed up in that clearing process. Prepare a level seed bed and plant your seed either by drilling or broadcasting. I encourage you to look into the benefits of planting a novel endof fight variety of tall fescue, especially if you're starting from scratch with a brand new pasture. If you haven't heard me talk about the toxic qualities of Kentucky 31 tall fescue before, I'll mention it quick. Kentucky 31 has an endophyte that lives within the plant and improves its hardiness. Fescue without the endophyte does not survive in our warm climate. Unfortunately, though this endophyte produces a toxin that most noticeably impacts reproduction in grazing mares and other livestock species. Causing abortions, stillbirths and decreased, or a complete lack of milk production. But even for non reproducing animals like geldings or steers, the toxin causes vasoconstriction, making them feel hotter in the summer and colder in the winter. That lack of blood flow has also been identified as a compounding factor in the development of Laminitis. In some horses novel varieties have a naturally occurring non-toxic endophyte that's been isolated from another plant paired with a tall fescue variety. So you get the high production that we like about tall fescue without the toxicity issues. Okay, so after you've seeded this fall, then early next spring, say February, you'll want to scout for and control any cool season weeds, especially things like buttercup, which we often don't notice until there's a sea of yellow flowers all over the pasture dropping seed for the next year. Then continue to scout and control for weeds throughout the summer. Delay grazing until the plants are at least six to eight inches tall, and you can tug them and break the grass blades off without pulling the whole plant up by the roots and all. So you'll want to delay grazing until that time. To prevent hoof pugging damage or just hoof damage, do not allow animals to graze new fescue when the soil is excessively wet and soft. You also will likely need to avoid grazing through that whole first summer. It really needs to be babied through that first summer. Always leave at least a four inch residual. Do not graze or mow it lower than four inches. And this is a good rule for established fescue as well. Then you'll continue with your seasonal fertility applications. The last thing I'm going to cover in this episode is my favorite use for tall fescue, and that is what we call stockpiling. This is also referred to as a standing hay crop. So fall fescue growth is very vegetative, meaning it's leafy and there's no seed heads. So it's high quality and really remains that way even when it's left sitting well into the winter. So we use these qualities to our benefit and fertilize and allow that fall growth to accumulate through the late summer and into the fall. So September through November. Then we have that forage that we can allocate out for our animals to graze from November or December on into February. This extends the grazing season beyond what a normal grazing period would be and can greatly reduce or even replace the amount of hay needed for winter feeding. We have three elderly horses on our farm that can't chew hay well anymore, so I'm able to stockpile enough fescue so they have a forage source throughout the winter. That way I'm not having to feed excessive amounts of chopped or pelleted forage all winter. You may say, well, I don't have enough extra pasture to take out of my rotation to allow for a stockpiling period. Consider supplementing your livestock now with hay to allow for that fall grass growth. Okay, that may sound crazy, but the animals should need to eat less hay this time of year compared to winter. Or you could feed a lower quality hay this time of year aKA less expensive because they're not trying to maintain body heat. You have very mild temperatures now. Plus fall hay feeding should also be easier on you because you're not having to slop through mud and cold to put it out in the pasture for them. So if you're interested in stockpiling, here's some steps to follow. First step is to select the area to be used for stockpiling before the beginning of your accumulation period. I choose the most productive half of my fescue pasture to stockpile. You'll wanna clip or graze the pastures in mid-August to early September, to approximately four inches. Now I realize we're after this period now. That would help get rid of some of the warm season grass growth that you don't necessarily want out there. This step isn't completely necessary. I'm currently grazing a portion of my stockpiled area, and I will pull the animals off before the end of the month, but they won't have grazed it down that low by then. Then fertilize the pasture with 50 to 60 pounds of nitrogen per acre and then close that pasture off to grazing. Pastures will accumulate growth at a rate of 15 to 35 pounds of dry matter per acre per day during that accumulation period, that September to November period. During this time, graze all your other pastures on the farm first, especially if you have warm season grasses. Because those are gonna be the first to go, dormant and really lose quality when we get a first frost. Or you could feed hay in a dry lot or a heavy use area like I mentioned before. About a half acre of stockpile grass per thousand pound animal will provide about 60 to 90 days of winter grazing, so not that much acreage, and you could supply nearly all of your winter grazing needs. You don't necessarily have to do this part, but to get the maximum use out of what you have stockpiled, you'll want to control the grazing access. To do this, you can allocate it in small amounts or what we call strips of fresh stockpile grass on a regular basis to your horses or livestock. Some people may choose to do it daily or weekly. That's kind of up to you and and your management preferences. This is a similar practice to putting hay in a feeder. Because uncontrolled grazing wastes about 50 to 60% of that forage that you saved because they trample on it. They drop manure on it, they lay in it. So just a simple temporary electric fence and step in post system will allow for managed grazing of that stockpiled area and will maximize the time that your animals can spend on pasture grazing. Okay. That's all I have for you today. I hope that you found it informative. If you have any questions about today's podcast, feel free to contact me at the extension office in Polk County. I'm happy to help walk you through some of the topics I covered today. If you have any other podcast topic ideas, please send those my way as well. Have a great day.