Planting pasture, lime, fertilizer etc.

M-Farm

Member
We bought a small farm in Western Kentucky 2 years ago and I have been busy cleaning it up and mending and building fences to have cows. I have no previous experience but am motivated. I only have a few head right now but would like to expand.

2 basic questions.

1: I am renovating some weedy pasture, 20 acres or so. The soil test came back horrible, I have already taken care of the fertilizing, but I can not get the lime guy to come out and now he wants to wait until spring. Will take 3-4 tons of lime per acre. I read in another post that the pasture will only take 1 ton a year per acre if I am not incorporating it into the soil. Why would the extension office or the lime/fertilizer people not tell me this? I guess hit this up with 2-4d in the spring?

2: I am converting 15-20 acres of rowcrop (soybeans this past year) into pasture. It calls for 3 tons of lime per acre. It is currently in winter weeds (don't know what kind, but the cattle like to eat them). I assume I will either run a disc over it in the spring to plant annual ryegrass, or rent the seed drill and kill the weeds with roundup? If I lightly disc it, is this enough to incorporate the lime and kill off the weeds enough to get the ryegrass started?

I will have to wait until fall to plant the permanent grass, which will be mostly orchardgrass, I don't think we have any luck around here planting cool season grasses in spring.

Any possibility of getting by with just frost seeding early this year? I just want something growing that the cattle will eat, and I know they love ryegrass, and it comes up pretty easy, I am just concerned with the weeds out competing, but if I did not have to disc it, that would be great. I only have 2 Ford tractors and a 7' disc. 861 and an 850, gas, and a limited budget.

Thanks in advance, and I apologize for the long post, and I have a million more questions to come!
 
Lime can take awhile to breakdown. If it were me I would start with the least amount of pasture as I could and rotate crops on the rest for atleast 3 yrs and seed your next pasture spot. By what your telling us it's going to take some time to clean it up. Good luck...
 
You are on the right track with rye grass early, plant it the sooner the better and get something green and growing on your land, also, rye grass is one of the best organic soil builders there is and will grow on marginal land with little more than nitrogen. When renovating pasture the depth or amount of tillage required to incorporate lime is dependent on the clay content of your soil and the liming material used and how finely ground the lime is. Standard calcium carbonate based aglime dissolves fairly fast in the soil but travels slowly through the soil profile of high clay soils, so the deeper it is initially incorporated into the soil the faster it will effect the yield of deeper rooted legumes and sod forming grasses. A couple of good, easy to grow follow ups to rye grass are sudan grass and pearl millet, you can scratch plant either or both in rye grass sod in Mid may in most areas of the south and have feed by the first of july. Fall seeding orchard grass with ladino clover and oats should give you grazing in late winter or early spring from the oats and serve as a nurse crop for the orchard grass. I have found over the years that in the first stages of pasture development/renovation incorporating lime and building organic content of the soil, which increases water retention and decreases leaching, give the most bang for the buck. There are several good reference books pertaining to pasture mangement and production but one of the best I know of was written in 1949 and pertains exclusively to the South, ''the pasture book'' by W.R. Thompson, available on amazon, the book contains reccomendations for varietties to plant, fertilization rates, time to plant etc. for every southern state, extensive information regarding renovating pastures etc. The 40's and 50's were times of much interest in diversified farming, almost every state agriculture service as well as the USDA encouraged all farms to run livestock in addition to cropping, most farmers in most areas of the country would still be better off if they were diversified.
 
35 acres of pasture, that's more than a hobby!

I live in an area of high lime soils, they mine limestone not far from here. My understanding is its better to work the lime in, but it works on the surface, takes longer maybe.

I like your tractor lineup, I learned to drive on a ford 960, still have it.

Paul
 
Thanks everybody, I don't want to sound too stupid but what do you mean by "scratch planting"? Lightly disking or just broadcasting on what is there?

All of this land used to have horses and it was overgrazed for years. Has been probably 5 years since horses though and land was left fallow with tons of blackberry bushes, weeds, and locust. But, I can really tell a difference already which is pretty exciting.

I will check that book out on Amazon, thanks.
 
Yes, that is what I meant by scratch planting, I have an old 3 gang rotary hoe that I welded together and converted to 3 point hitch with a broad cast spreader mounted on top that I plant all kinds of seed with.
 

Oh, you mean that equipment I practically gave away when I bought this farm. Had a nice big rotary hoe and cultipacker that came with the place, I sold them both for next to nothing not knowing how I would ever use such "outdated" equipment. Live and learn.
 
Well, if your extension office folks are anything like the ones around me, they have no concept of practical farming practices and just regurgitate information from whatever text book they use, which most of the time you could go find out the exact same info with a little researching online. As far as the fertilizer/lime outfit, what do they care? They're just peddling a product, the more they sell the better for them. Lime on pasture seems to work better at a low application rate on a yearly basis, however, most guys wont spread less than a ton/acre, so just go with that every year. Also, if you can get the soil life active and feed it with plenty of organic matter that helps some as everything that comes out the back of an earthworm is PH neutral.
Ok, enough of that, lets see if I can offer some helpful advice.....Ok first off LAA pretty much nailed what you should probably be focusing on as far as the ryegrass and new pasture establishment goes. I really like to frost-seed a clover mix in early march (in PA) to get some legume action happening and "scratch plant" some grasses in late summer/early fall.
Also, do you subscribe to any grazing publications? If not, get a subscription to The Stockman Grassfarmer pronto. TONS of good grazing information.
The pasture part of the property that was not in beans last year - What currently grows there (other than weeds)? Are you familiar with High Stock Density grazing?
 
The pasture part of the property that was not in beans last year - What currently grows there (other than weeds)? Are you familiar with High Stock Density grazing?

Most of my pasture grass is fescue, with a little orchard, bermuda, lespedeza and white clover. All new planting will be orchard, well, ryegrass temporarily, then orchard.

I have been watching a lot of the Joel Salatin stuff as well as those winter strip grazing videos which are great. I am working out a plan for more cross fencing to rotate better. I did some temporary stuff this year that worked out OK but not enough grass to winter graze.

So, is the 1 ton per acre of lime the way to go on the existing pasture?
 
A ton to the acre should suffice as I would think that unless
you are working it in, more than that may a have trouble being
absorbed into the soil. I would think less than a ton to the acre
would probably better but as I said before, it may be difficult to
get anyone to come spread less than that. This process would
be done every year in the fall until soil tests show the ph is
back to where it should be.

Salatin is very interesting and extremely thought provoking as
far as the direction our farming practices and food production
should go, however im not sure how much "meat and
potatoes" he offers as far as grazing info.

The reason I mentioned high stock density grazing is that it
offers a lot of advantages for renovating worn out pasture. Do
you use polyrope? Are your cows trained to respect single wire
electric fences? What class of cattle are you grazing? Cow
calf pairs, stockers, steers?
 
The reason I mentioned high stock density grazing is that it
offers a lot of advantages for renovating worn out pasture. Do
you use polyrope? Are your cows trained to respect single wire
electric fences? What class of cattle are you grazing? Cow
calf pairs, stockers, steers?

Do I need to wait until next fall to lime? My pH levels are WAY off and I missed my opportunity this fall trying to wait for the soybeans to come off. Maybe if I switch lime guys I can get somebody else to come out while it's frozen?

5 Black heifers, 2yo and a registered black angus bull, docile and respect single wire well. Hoping to increase to 10 cows/calfs after improving pasture and more with additional rowcrop converted if I can handle it (or afford it).

I have no idea what I'm doing, we never even owned a dog before moving out here, but I'm learning and reading what I can. Is that the same as what they are calling strip grazing or mob stocking?

Hardly anyone does cattle around here anymore. They have taken out fences and converted land to rowcrop or let it grow up to hunt on (insanity, deer are like rats around here).
 
You can lime anytime but I dont think I would lime with the ground frozen because rain may wash it around and not get an even distribution. You might want to attend some spring farm equipment auctions in your area or look on tractorhouse.com and fastline.com for a lime spreader, you can then get anybody with a dump truck to haul you in a load, dump it off and you can spread it yourself at your own pace and not have to be at the mercy of a commercial operator who is always going to service the large operators first, in my area you have to spread it yourself on less than 40 acres because no one will come do small patches, I have several pastures less than 40 acres and I spread all of my own. This link is the type of spreader i am talking about, there old school and cheap because no one wants them anymore but do a real good job.

http://www.tractorhouse.com/listingsdetail/detail.aspx?OHID=8991363



I can't stress enough how important liming is to your overall pasture renovation, if the PH is out of whack the fertilizers applied are not nearly as effective, in fact, I do not spend much money on fertilizing new ground or expensive seed before I have the PH where it is supposed to be, that is why I love annual ryegrass, it will grow on a bowling ball and respond well with 100 lbs. of urea per acre and give you ground cover and erosion control until you can get your real pasture established. Lime, fertilizer and seed are going to be your biggest expenses, if you are feeding round hay this winter moving the bales around helps to scatter the seed that comes off the hay and also scatters out the manure. Strip grazing and paddock grazing are excellent management tools once you have an established pasture but in the early stages I have found it always helps to allow the cattle to wonder all over the land, they eat some weeds and bushes and scatter the manure, they are also more likely to get enough to eat when the grass is dodgy. As mentioned earlier, seed of almost any kind is expensive, I often buy year old round bales that have been stored outside in the spring when people sell it cheap to get rid of it and set it out around on new ground thats in ryegrass, the cattle crave some dry hay to offset the high moisture fresh grass and again, they ingest and scatter the seeds of the hay grass all over the pasture, most all seed pass straight through cattle because they don't grind there feed when chewing like goats and sheep do, small calves grind bigger seeds like whole corn but not small forage seeds. You are on the right track, since you have a good purebred bull the cheapest way to grow your herd is buy some crossbred, cheaper cows at the sale barn which are 6-8 months bred, get a calf out of them and breed them back to your purebred bull, sell the crossbred calves the heifers from the first purebred cross can be kept back and re-bred and in a few years you have a black herd even if you started with longhorn cows.
 
I've redone some pasture like you have on similar land.Here's what I did and it seemed to work fine.
1)Limed the first year with a Hi mag Hi Cal lime at the rate of 2 tons/acre in the Summer when grass was tall enough to keep it from washing off
2)Seeded with a NoTill drill early Spring.(Orchard Grass is a good hay grass not a good pasture grass)
Fescue,Blue Grass and Ladino Clover worked for me.
3)Spread manure
4)Fenced the fields some with good woven wire some with stock panels and put in cattle and meat goats, the goats keep all the weeds,briars,bushes down and they're bringing more per pound than cattle.And they'll more than pay for the better fencing
5)Feed round bales on the land by unrolling them to spread manure and any seed in the bales.And I don't worry about any weed seed in the hay as the goats will take care of that end of it.
 

LAA, why can't I see your post in modern view? How much will that spreader hold? I have about 40 acres total, I am worried I could not keep it filled fast enough, but that is in my price range and I prefer to do it myself if it is going to save me money in the long run. I may go check it out this afternoon after work.

Traditional Farmer, my perimeter fence is 4 strand electric and not suitable for goats I have heard (well over a mile I am guessing). I have been thinking of adding barbed wire in between though, I wonder if that would do it? I would actually prefer sheep if they eat the same thing, as the wife likes to look at them! Any thoughts on this, other than they can't have cattle mineral? Also, I have 4 board wood fence lining the driveway, I am wondering if they would try to squeeze through there?
 
Those type of spreaders are usually 10 feet wide and probably hold 1/2 ton or so, I thought you might live not too far from that dealer because you mentioned Western Kentucky, you can probaly buy it for $200.00 this time of year but if not it was pretty cheap to start with if it is in usable condition. Those type of drop spreaders are adjustable as to rate of drop and should have a seed chart inside the lid to tell you the settings for various small grains and grass and legume seeds, it should also have a hitch on the back for a culti packer or pull type rotary hoe or disc and you can seed and scratch at the same time. As far as keeping it full, I usually have to shovel mine full out of the pile and that way I'm glad its not any bigger. Sheep are money makers if you can keep the dogs and coyotes out, dogs are the worse because there more of them and they are more brazen than coyotes, if you can put them up at night and if someone is around the place most of the time and if you shoot every dog that comes through you will probably be O.K., plus You can get a trained guard dog. A lot of people will tell you all kinds of horror stories about sheep dying from disease etc. etc. but that is mostly people that never fooled with them or who are not stockmen, sheep are just little cows and need the same basic care, worm them, vaccinate for the various contagions and keep the predators off of them and year in and year out they will make money. Sheep and cattle grazing together works pretty good, we had over 2500 ewes when I was a kid 50 odd years ago, Memphis was the big central market for the lower south at the time and most of the feeder lambs went to Kentucky to be fed out, mostly in the bluegrass region. There were a lot of sheep in Louisana back then, hard to imagine now days.
 
I could handle hair sheep but don't want anything to do with the wooly ones,plus hair sheep bring more these days than wool sheep.Kiko goats is what I have about as trouble free as you going to get in the sheep/goat world but not as trouble free as cattle.
 
(reply to post at 14:31:15 01/09/15)

I don't know where you would sell hair sheep around here, nobody does them, they look a little goat like don't they? If I could figure out how to sell them I would be all over it. For looks alone though, my wife prefers the black faced sheep, though they have a lot of insulation when it comes to electric fencing...

Still on the fence on the lime spreader, I think loading it twice per acre is probably going to rule it out. I hate to pass up a good deal on something I will use eventually though for smaller plots.
 

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