01/15/09 Winter feed solutions

Recent conversations with a few Idaho cattle ranchers have revealed that due to increasing costs, their game plan is changing. Example: Cambridge, Idaho rancher Ron Jaeger says he makes more money with feed than with feeding. "&"Got to the point where the cattle was not as profitable as the hay farming." Researchers have been studying swath grazing as one way to reduce the cost of wintering beef cows. Instead of baling hay - hauling it from the field - and then feeding it to cattle - swath grazing involves cutting the forage - leaving it lie in swaths in the field - and then letting cattle eat the forage through the winter. Now that's a great idea if you're ranching in Florida, but in Idaho there's a little problem called &snow. They also have snow in North Dakota and some scientists are getting creative. North Dakota - Animal Scientist Dr. Eric Scholljegerdes (shole-eh-GRR-dis) says their swath grazing studies are looking at several crops. "We got our first blizzard back in October. They were on the corn residue and they couldn't find the swath so we definitely had to have a back-up plan, and so what we were able to do was just open up the sorghum Sudan and let them graze that." Sorghum-Sudan grass hybrids offer a solution to producing forage when other alternatives aren't available.