Forage brassicas like Turnips and Kale provide a valuable, low cost feed for milking cows or growing stock. They can provide a useful buffer crop for grazing when grazing DM and/or quality is compromised.
Why grow forage crops for grazing?
- Easy to grow and relatively trouble free, once established.
- Replace poor performing or badly poached swards to produce a quick growing high yielding crop.
- Makes use of slurry and FYM, particularly on all grass farms where land isn’t as available for spreading.
- An effective break crop on all grass farms, producing a large, palatable crop before an autumn reseed.
- Can produce 3 to 10 tonnes of dry matter per hectare and be ready to graze 8 – 14 weeks after sowing.
- Low cost feed – comparing well with grazed grass.
- A bit of variety in the diet 🙂
- Produce less methane*
The calculator below is provided to help quickly calculate how much to grow:
* Forage brassica: a feed to mitigate enteric methane emissions?