yellow feed

[dfarms11]

Has anyone made yellow feed before? That is spraying the crop with roundup, waiting till it drys, and then swath and bale. I've heard of guys doing it, but don't know exactly how good it turns out. Is the quality as good as greenfeed? pros/cons?

[perfecho]

Spraying......the catch phrase on modern farming, gotta love it!
Have noticed cattle do not like pea straw that has had a glysophate treatment, but just love it otherwise.
May take a little longer to cure, but in my "little world", we are using chemicals much to freely.(The cumulitive effect, not a one of....but that is another post)
I would think this year would be ideal for greenfeed, lots of hot dry weather in our area anyways. If a customer is close, silage or silage bales may be an option. Or it they are real close and the area is fenced, swath it and let the cattle pick it up in your field.....one load of cattle both ways is cheaper than the loads of bales required to feed that trailer load.
Good luck, as a cattle producer we need options for feeding this year.

[grassfarmer]

Hey perfecho you are being too cynical - "yellow feed" is based on "sound science" don't you know? What could possibly be wrong with spraying a plant with a chemical lethal enough to kill it and then expecting a cow to eat the poisoned plant?

[bluefargo]

dfarms11

Why wait till the feed is yellow?

I am sure 3 or 4 days would be plenty of time for the glyphosate to get into the roots . The feed will still be very green at this point. Check with your agrologist but I'm pretty sure I'm right on this.

[dfarms11]

I was just thinking about it since I wouldn't have to use the haybine, could use the swather instead. Along with the fact that on this field there is a lot of thistles that could be taken care of. There is nobody next door to pasture, and too far away to silage.

[blackjack]

We have sprayed some and mixed it in with the rest of the silage...waited four days with good results on killing the quack.

[blackjack]

Just read your post dfarms...if there is not a quack problem and the weather stays like it is...even swathing I think it would be ready to bale in a week.

[dfarms11]

There is a bit of canola in it, and it is very green, canola is hard to dry with the haybine, I don't believe it would cure in a swath.

[perfecho]

And Grass Farmer, sound science says (the SSS ;-) all of our peas and wheat and potatoes and.........can be handled the same way and it should be good for us.
Gotta luv the SSS 8-)