Pasture legumes

[greybeard]

It seems this board has some grazers that are innovators or early adopters of somewhat unconventional practices.
With nitrogen fertilizer prices in the $100 cow/season range I am going to have to rely on legumes to provide the nitrogen for my pastures.
I have used primarily Alfalfa but find it is not very persistent if not fertilized with phosphate and sometimes potash and sulfur in this area.
Clovers are wonderful but seem to be selected over grass by the cows.
Cicer milk vetch looks like it has a place. Is anyone using high plant densities and if so how did you get establishment?
Does anyone have a method of over-seeding or frost seeding existing pasture that is reliable?
Look forward to discussion on your personal successes and failures in keeping those cows happy and profitable.
Personally, my pastures and hay fields look poorer over time. How do I make them look better as they get older?

[SADIE]

Just a quick note.

I have used it now for several years. Great establishment and appears to be grazed by the animal.

Works well in our operation.

cheers

[ALLFARMER]

Planted some Hybrid alfalfa this week Hybraforce 400 Put it in with meadow brome. The convensional alfalfa here has not done well also. Hoping this works.

[smcgrath76]

We have a lot of alfalfa in our pastures
that seems to get better as time goes
on. The best thing you can do is force
cows onto your paddock and then get them
off. Without electric fence (or big
numbers and large paddocks) it is
probably tough to do.
I know of folks that are seeding cicer
milkvetch in the mineral, but
establishment is about a 3 yr process.
I would may try either broadcasting, or
no tilling alfalfa into an existing
stand.

[per]

Agriplow makes a good no till drill using colters in front of shanks. It will seed into existing pastures (given the right conditions eg grazed down a bit). Not a bad way to incorporate seed into existing pasture. Lots of success and failure in this topic on this ranch. Not sure if that correlates into a place you might glean advise! There are below ground crown varieties of Alfalfa that can handle abuse. Milkvetch when it gets a chance can be an increaser. It is one of my favorites. There is a thread on Sainfoin on Rancher.net right now that is interesting.

[greybeard]

If I remember right I seeded a 3 ton load of sanfoin and I don't see much anywhere anymore. Some years more than others.
What percent of the stand do you think is Vetch? Is more best? The little I have appears to be peak production in July with slow regrowth. The July production is OK but Alfalfa looks like it will produce more, quicker? What is your experience?
What kind of success/failure rate do you expect with the drill?

[grassfarmer]

We have had most success seeding alsike clover through the cows minerals, alsike does well here because we get enough moisture. Red clover works well this way too although I don't really care for it. We are seeding yellow sweet clover this year as it would be more likely to tackle some hard pan areas we have. I tried cicer milk vetch through minerals and it was a complete waste of time. I like the plant but it is too tough to establish.
The beauty of seeding through the cow is the low cost and the fact it works. There are 700,000 seeds of alsike per pound and a pound only costs $2.75 - great potential there to make money.

The Agrowplow looks to be a really good drill but they are about $50k for a 15 foot model. I'd like to hire one and give it a try but it's got to pencil compared to the cow doing the seeding.

I'm increasingly leery of the newer seed varieties - like the modern cattle genetics they are bred for high production requiring high inputs and have very limited longevity. The seed companies develop them that way so they can sell you more seed in 3 years time versus 20 years time.

I think the most important thing in all this is that you have got to create the environment that legumes will prosper in. No matter how fancy the drill or the establishment method if you lose the legume due to grazing management you've just blown a bunch of money. Good grazing management can put legumes back in your pastures without seeding them. We have volunteer wild vetches all over the place and alfalfa returning on places it was probably last seeded 20 years ago. It's amazing what grazing management and succession can achieve utilising the seedbank that is already in our pastures!

[15444]

Trefoil and then dump the sulfur to it. Good for years. Unless your in really dry country.

[Ruken]

Interesting comments. In the moister part of the province, I will purposely graze a paddock to the ground to spur on a new flush of clover growth. It seems that given the sunlight opportunity, the clover will rally for a year or two following.
The Grey Wooded Forage Association did some interesting work about 15 years ago where they frost seeded red clover into a silage field at about 4 lbs/acre. They also corrected any fertility problems and had the red clover content increase from 7% to about 37% of the stand in about 4 years.
Also, I've seeded in a field in 2004 with Kura clover mixed with timothy and reed canary grass. Man what a beautiful stand. Kura clover is the increaser once established. It spreads by seed, stolon and rhizome. I'm very impressed with it. The only problem with it is that it's hard to establish and needs to be seeded as a mixture into fresh ground as opposed to sod seeding.
Lacombe did some work where they measured its persistance under severe clipping management over a number of years. They mixed it with about a dozen grasses, each plot being kura with a different grass. Kura increased every time. The other issue is that the seed is quite expensive.

[grassfarmer]

Ruken, A friend of mine at Rimbey was the guy that had a lot of the early trial plots on Kura probably in the late 90s. As you said it grew really well and dominated the stands. Then the 02 and 03 droughts came along and he lost all the Kura replaced with dandelions and quack grass. I don't think he has seeded Kura again since. We seeded some on a pipeline in 2002 and it's still there - quite strong but it's never spread off the pipeline.