Since we are about halfway through January, it’s a good time to start thinking about a plan for your spring pastures. If winter pasture is limited, it’s a good idea to feed hay in the pasture or allow animals to graze every other day. The cattle priority for limited pasture is: calves by creep grazing, then stockers, then lactating cows, and finally dry cows. This is because calves are growing and have a higher quality nutritional need. The same priority applies for other livestock species.

We also have to be careful about our winter annual pastures that were planted on a prepared seedbed because we’ve had a lot of rain lately. Pastures may be severely damaged if animals trample on them after all this rain. You may have to allow calves or young animals as first priority to these high-quality annual pastures.

If you haven’t already done so, you want to sample your hay and send it to the NCDA laboratory for analysis. We can show you how to do this if you have never done it before. We have a forage probe in our office that you can borrow that cuts a very accurate sample down the middle of the bale. You will get much better results doing it this way rather than using a hand grab sample. A grab sample, is however, better than no sampling at all. All you need to use the forage probe is a hand held cordless drill and we’ll help you with a little paperwork. Within a few weeks, you will get an analysis that tells you how much protein and energy you have in your hay. Then you know how much supplement to give your animals to make up for what may be missing. Now is the time to figure out the animal feed requirements for the year and outline a 12-month forage plan to meet your animals’ needs.

Once we get into February, you will want to apply nitrogen to the cool-season grasses to stimulate early spring growth. You’ll also need to lime any fields that will be prepared for spring plants if you haven’t already done so. You can follow the recommendations from your soil test on how much lime to put out. If you plan to plant any Bermuda grass this year, you will need to locate sources of hybrid Bermuda grass sprigs for planting next month. There are only a few Bermuda grass sprigging companies left in North Carolina and even fewer that are certified, so it is very important to get on their calendars early. For those that only have a few acres that need Bermuda grass, you may want to plant a seeded variety yourself. You can buy the seed from your local farm store.

You’ll also want to burn any warm-season grass residues in late February or early March. Burning provides many benefits such as reducing the residue from last year’s plants to make space for the new growth. It puts some minerals in the ground and helps to warm up the soil. You’ll also want to get herbicide sprayers ready to control weeds in dormant Bermuda grass fields because you will be needing them very soon. Most people don’t worry about weed control until the weeds are several feet high, but by that time it is too late. Most herbicides are only effective when the weeds are a couple inches high. The work you do in the winter for your pastures will pay off for great spring and summer grazing.

 (For additional information on pasture or livestock issues, please contact Anthony Growe, Agricultural Extension Agent at 910-997-8255 or amgrowe@ncsu.edu.)

The previous article was submitted on 1/13/14 to the Richmond County Daily Journal for publishing.