Researching Benefit of Dual Purpose Winter Canola

Washington State University Grad Student Ely Walker's thesis project is on examining the practicality of using winter canola for both silage in the fall and then a grain crop. Walker shares more about his research about using winter canola as a dual purpose crop — both grain and forage crop. The research is in its second year.

Canola is not a crop that has traditionally been used as a forage, Walker explains some of the issues of canola as a forage

Walker: "There are some challenges that come along with canola forage that we are trying to solve by using it in siloing it. Canola can accumulate high levels of nitrates and siloing can effectively reduce nitrogen concentrations. There has also been reported problems with scours after feeding lots of canola. And so if you have in a silage then you can mix that Total Mix Ration which controls the amount of canola that you feed. That also helps control the amount of sulfur intake so you don't run into sulfur toxicities because canola can accumulate large amounts of sulfur in it. So the silage really helps reduce some of the risk you would have if you were grazing it."

One thing they are doing to address the excessive moisture of the canola silage is to augment alfalfa cubes to the silage to help keep the nutrients in the silage.