There are as many varieties of annual ryegrass as I have fingers and toes... There are a few that are suitable for pasture. Those would be the diploid and tetraploid italian varities. Maris Ledger and Fabio are common around this area, as was Ajax at one time. Ajax gave us our best experiences. We've grown it strictly for pasture, and strictly as an annual. We never try to over winter it. Generally it will survive the winter, but it's first year is it's production year and the second year is it's reproduction year where it shoots a seed head. When it does that you may as well feed bullrushes to the cows... These are low growing varities, but they are very lush feed, produce a good tonnage and regrow very well with some moisture... but they're not really practical for mechanical harvesting. Let the cows get it themselves.
There are a multitude of other varities that grow more upright that you could harvest for hay/silage, but I have no real experience with them. I think David mostly filled in that bit anyway. I will say that this is likely our last year with the annual ryegrass too. It's gotten to be too much work for us to plant every year, we had a poor germination this year, and we've had two years now out of ten where it bolted and set seed under some stress... so it's gotten to be a somewhat costly and unpredictable crop. I think we'll go with a preannual ryegrass and Huia white clover next spring, perhaps with a bit of annual mixed in for the first year. I don't see that we've got much to lose that way even if it does winter kill...
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Today's Featured Article - History of the Cockshutt Tractor - by Danny Bowes (Dsl). The son of a very successful Toronto and Brantford, Ontario merchant, and himself quite an entreprenuer, James G. Cockshutt opened a business called the Brantford Plow Works in 1877. In 1882, the business was incorporated to become the Cockshutt Plow Company. Along with quality built equipment, expedious demand and expansion made Cockshutt Plow Works the leader in the tillage tools sector of the farm equipment industry by the 1920's.
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