Pasturing cornstalks

Is pasturing corn, milo stalks etc. hard on the cropland. Less and less people mesh with it. If ground is not frozen and it is wet seems like cows tromp it up pretty good and can cause compaction. No tillers usually don't like this. However one guy told me he had cattle on wheat pasture that left footprints in the soft ground.....later a hard 5 inch rain was caught in the hoof prints,acted as little resevoirs, and actually increased the wheat yield latter on for grain. Some years like this year alot of ear corn is on the ground and farmers want it grazed to reduce volunteer for the next crop. What are the advantages and disadvantages of grazing crop residue?

We still do it..   advantages are less volunteer corn in the spring, it's cheap feed, it gets rid of some of the trash that interferes with the no till planter. 
Disadvantages..soil  compaction, especially where they congregate &  get water, limits fall tillage if you are so inclined.     I'm sure there are more arguements for either side.. 

Gettin them off the stocks in the spring before the ground thaws is the biggest thing.  The freezing and thawing will break up most of the compaction.  I do know what one problem is that if they walk over a terrace and wear a path the terrace will erode there and then have a weak spot liable to bust out if you get a gully washer rain.  On a side note is it just me or do cows not like Bt corn stalks as well as conventional???

I think the best way to graze stalks and still have good yields is to strip graze the stalks and rotate the cows through a field.  By doing this, cows eat stalks and cobs not just corn. 

We still do it.  One problem that we have had is if it is  a real warm day, the cows will lay down after loading up on stalks causing them to bloat.  We lost one of our best cow prospects ever a couple years ago because of that.  It always happens to the best ones!

I don't think the weather would cause her to bloat, nor would laying down, she probably had too much corn.

That is a real problem, if alot of corn is lost from harvest.  Cows coming off hay/pasture to stalks with lots of corn can founder/bloat.

simtal said:

I don't think the weather would cause her to bloat, nor would laying down, she probably had too much corn.

That is a real problem, if alot of corn is lost from harvest.  Cows coming off hay/pasture to stalks with lots of corn can founder/bloat.

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Well we didn't think so either.  However, when our vet explained it to us it actually made pretty good sense.  The way he explained it was that she probably loaded up and since it was such a nice day she layed down and basked in the sun.  Meanwhile, the rumination was causing gas.  With her not moving the gasses built up until it was too late.  As far as the corn, they had been out on the stalks for about three months and it was only a 10 acre field. The combine left very little and the cows finished the rest off in the first two months.  Does that make better sense.

How do most people bale stalks. Do they use a stalk chopper then rake and bale it? I guess you can bale cornstalks coming out of rotory combines or not?

You can bale stalks out of a rotary combine but we just never really messed with it.  We have a lot of alfalfa ground and also if we needed anything extra we would bale been stubble for bedding.  I hate messing with bean stubble round bales.  They are the itchiest things ever to deal with!

AJ
Last year Ohio we had not hay. We baled all the stalks last fall and it was GREAT. Saved a bunch. I pull all the cows into a dry lot in the winter. We calf January through April. I started feeding cornstalks in December when we ran out of hay. We racked the field just like we did with hay and round baled them in smaller 500# bales. You could have got 25 bucks a bale last year for corn stalks.

Around here most cornstalks and especially milo end up at least disced so the cow compaction is not an issue remember if you bale all the stalks off you take a lot of nutrients with them we never had any problem graxing them and they will clean up water way and draws in the fields have even turned out on bean stubble not much there except for the grass around the edges

Last year we put our cows on cornstocks all winter to help not damge our pasture.  Can we do the same if it was in soybeans?

I would think it would be ok on soybean residue. Dusty....I have heard that about bt stalks and I don't know. I will try it here shortly. I think the tops of the corn plant break off and are smaller diameter and I think cattle like them the best, along with the leaves and cornshucks,cobs, and ear corn. The lower bigger stalks are where the high nitrate is also.

Does everyone wait for a hard freeze before turning them out? 

We got along fine on the bean stubble had a lot of wild onions come up in it and you could not hardly stand to walk through the cows because they wreaked of onions but they liked them never waited on a hard freeze usually just some time after they got the crop off and we had time to mess with it

We've always tried to wait for the freeze in case there is a nitrate problem.  I guess we haven't really noticed a difference in bt corn stalks. 

The last of our cows went to stalks yesterday and they sure seemed content.   

kanshow said:

We've always tried to wait for the freeze in case there is a nitrate problem.   I guess we haven't really noticed a difference in bt corn stalks.   

The last of our cows went to stalks yesterday and they sure seemed content.   

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Cant wait to get ours on cornstalks!! I am already sick of building fence!! We built fence on five circles  of stalks today and it was less then pleasent in 35 degrees weather with 25mph wind!!