March 16, 2007

As temperatures warm and spring nears, cool-season grass pastures will be greening up. If you're planning to fertilize your pastures, get the most from your investment by combining fertilizer use with efficient harvest of the extra growth.

If you fertilize pastures in spring and then let animals graze continuously throughout the season, most of the extra growth is wasted. Livestock will trample some of the grass and manure will foul some of it so that cattle won't bed down in it and may refuse to eat it. Eventually, as little as one-third of the grass produced will end up in the mouth and stomach of your livestock.

To make fertilizer pay, manage grazing so more of what you grow actually gets eaten. This will happen if you subdivide pastures with cross-fences and control when and where animals graze. Give animals access to no more than one-fourth of your pasture at a time and preferably less. Then graze off about one-half of the growth before moving to another area.

Another step is to time fertilization to stimulate grass growth when you need it. Many pastures grow faster than we can use them in spring. Why fertilize the pasture in early spring to grow more grass than you can use at that time? Instead, fertilize some pastures now, and wait until mid-May to fertilize the other pastures for extra summer growth. If it happens to be dry at that time, you can save your fertilizer dollars since fertilizer will do little good without rain.

Bruce Anderson
Extension Forage Specialist