May 3, 2024 • 48 mins
Rusty Lee is back to share the new MU Extension handout with Tim about grazing milo.
Grazing Milo Handout: https://extension.missouri.edu/publications/g2079
MU Extension Website: https://extension.missouri.edu/publications
Every month, Tim Reinbott produces a podcast called Tim's Take. He invites a researcher, MU Extension Specialist, or an expert in the agricultural world to sit down with him and discuss hot topics.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
[♫]
All right. Well, welcome to Tim's Take! And today we have a wonderful, uh... guest who's
a... who's a repeat, Rusty Lee! (Rusty) Good morning! Good morning! (Tim) Good morning. And
you're an Extension Specialist at... station what? Montgomery County? Warren County? (Rusty) Yep! I'm
(00:22):
a Field Specialist in Agronomy. I'm based in Montgomery City, uh... and I cover about 10
counties in the East Central/Northeast Region of the state. (Tim) Right in the middle of both
grain and forage production. (Rusty) Exactly. So I get to... I get to work with producers just as
concerned about their, uh... pasture forage as... as they are with their soybean diseases. So,
(00:42):
you bet. (Tim) And that's what we're going to talk about. You have really championed this,
uh... grazing milo, and we're going to use milo/grain sorghum back and forth today because
it's... (Rusty) Kind of interchangeable. (Tim) Yeah, it's kind of the same thing.
But uh... grazing milo... now, why in the world would somebody want to do this? (Rusty) So,
grazing milo is something that... that I've done for several years on my own farm,
(01:06):
and I've learned it from... from neighbors, and it all came about due to the cost of winter feed. So
the biggest expense for a cow/calf producer is... is winter cow feed. Uh... stored... stored forages
are just expensive. That's our single largest expense. (Tim) Storage meaning making hay or...
or silage in the... in the summer? (Rusty) Yeah, so... so feeding... feeding cattle outside of the
(01:29):
normal growing season, so that winter feed. That's what... that's their... our single
biggest expense with cow/calf. (Tim) So are you... so you kind of, uh... promoting that we could do
almost a year round grazing possibly... or mostly year round? (Rusty) So the way we utilize the milo
is animal removal, animal grazing of it, so we don't... we don't have to combine, right? We save
(01:51):
that expense. So the cattle are grazing through the winter, um... but this is a component to...
you... you can graze 365. Um... maybe, uh... as... as with a lot of things, uh... zero... zero is an
expensive number, so if you want to, you know, if you want to graze 100% of the time and have zero
down time, that might be a little much. But I have done it. Uh... other producers have grazed all
(02:16):
winter long. Um... but it... it's nice to have a little bit of hay on hand, uh... and, um... but...
but milo will certainly decrease the amount of hay. (Tim) Well, and like this summer, we went
from a... a very dry summer, so hay production wasn't there like we really like. And most of
our hay production, whether we like it or not, are cool-season grasses. (Rusty) Right. So that's
predominantly what we see (02:39):
the orchard grass, the tall fescue, the cool-season grasses. (Tim) And
they got hammered this year! We had a hot, dry summer. (Rusty) Yeah, we... I did some, uh...
forage reduction analysis for several counties, uh... in the state and, yeah... 50% - 60%,
uh... reduction, so we were at 40% to 50% of normal forage yields this year... this previous
(03:02):
year. (Tim) But grain sorghum, or milo, is a warm-season annual crop, fairly drought tolerant,
uh... so this... this fits really well... well in all in... in Missouri with our unusual weathers
from year to year. (Rusty) It... it does. Uh... grain sorghum/milo has a very fibrous root system.
(03:23):
Um... it's considered to be drought tolerant. You can have good productive soil, uh... good enough
for growing corn, but if your moisture is a little questionable, you'll find that producers will...
will switch, uh... from corn to... to milo. So as we move south and west in the US, we start
seeing more milo and less corn, uh... just... and that's just due to the rainfall. Um... Missouri,
(03:50):
uh... ranks number seven in the state, uh... on milo production. Did you realize that? We're...
we're number seven U.S.-wide in... in milo production. (Tim) With Texas probably number
one. (Rusty) Right. So... (Tim) It's a country all of its own now. (Rusty) You get in that arid
Southwest and, yeah, they... they pretty well... milo is a... is a... their prime driver there.
(04:10):
But... but for us, it... it's a good fit. It's a good way to hedge. Um... if you have good rains,
you're going to have fantastic milo yield. And if it's a kind of a droughty year, you, uh... you're
still going to get some grain yield. (Tim) I think this year we were 85% of what we had the year
before... (Rusty) Right. (Tim) ...on grain yield. (Rusty) Right. (Tim) And we got hit hard. We got
(04:32):
hammered hard. But, uh... probably... Missouri's probably, if it's seventh in acres, we're probably
number one in yield per acre. (Rusty) Hhmm, have to look at that. Yeah, I mean, milo yield,
we... we have enjoyed a year-over-year increase in... in average milo yield. Just like corn.
Just like beans. You know, every year since back in the 50s, corn yield just creeps up a little,
(04:56):
uh... each year, and milo has done the same thing. So there... there... there's been plenty of,
uh... sorghum improvement dollar spent, you know. So there's some good... there's some decent grain
yields in... in milo. (Tim) Well, and you've got a new Extension publication out. (Rusty) Oh!
I'm proud of this! Proud! (Tim) It's hot off the press! (Rusty) Absolutely! So we have an MU Guide
Sheet, uh... G2079, and it's titled "Strip-Grazing Milo as a Low-Cost Winter Forage". So I, uh...
(05:26):
we've made a few YouTube videos, and have, uh... made presentations at producer meetings and talked
about this subject through PowerPoints, and it... it's generated a lot of interest. Every year I add
a... a few more producers to the... to the list of... of folks that, uh... that utilize this. And so the
questions just repeat, uh... for new people, um... the how-to's and the why-to's, and so we've got a
(05:52):
little four-page guide sheet that outlines, uh... some of the expected cost and benefits to doing
this. Uh... it's a... it's a really good read to help a producer think about it. Because if you
want to look at this coming winter, uh... being able to graze milo, the time is now to be thinking
about seed purchases and getting planted. It... it's milo planting season right now. (Tim) Right!
(06:15):
Cuz you told me before we aired that, you know, we always think June 1st as being... being the milo
planting time. It... it'd be more of a warm-season crop, but you just show... showed me some data that
after May 15th yields start going down in south Missouri. (Rusty) Yep. So, uh... you look at,
uh... southern Missouri and the optimum planting time is April 15th through May 15th,
(06:38):
uh... so regardless of where you are, uh... milo, just think soil temperature. So that 2 inch depth,
think 65 degree soil temperature. Once you get there, it... it's time to plant milo. (Tim) About
like soybeans. What... what we used to think soybeans were. We've kind of changed on that,
haven't we? (Rusty) Everything we thought we knew is backwards now. We're planting beans
before corn, (Tim) Yeah. (Rusty) ...etc. But... but, um... seedling diseases. It doesn't matter
(07:05):
what the plant is, I think, but the... the best way we can set our crop up for success
is to put seed in the ground at that optimum temperature that it can germinate quickly and,
uh... emerge and... and get to growing. Uh and for... for milo, that's a 65 degree temp,
(07:26):
we can pop that, you know, pop that kernel out of the ground and get it growing. (Tim) Well,
two things that just jumped out at me on your... on your, uh... publication. We talked
about economics was seed cost at $10.80 per acre. (Rusty) How about that! (Tim) Compared to what?
(07:46):
Corn would be $108 an acre? (Rusty) Yeah. (Tim) I mean really! And fertilize at $90... almost $91
an acre. That's half of corn. (Rusty) Right. (Tim) Your expenses are much less in grain sorghum than
they are in corn. (Rusty) It... they are. Uh... nitrogen being one of the biggest expenses. You
(08:09):
know, the uh... it's all about the... the yield potential that you have, but I would use 120 units
of nitrogen as my minimum, uh... and I really don't see a need to go beyond 140... 150. So
with... with our corn, a lot of... a lot of fields we're putting 200 plus units of nitrogen down,
(08:30):
but we're pushing for that 200 corn yield. With milo, if... you know, 100. I do a lot of my, uh...
cow days per acre, my carrying capacity formula is based on 120 bushel milo. Uh... most years
that's not that difficult to achieve. We'll... we'll get moisture, so we... we try to fertilize
(08:51):
for that 120 bushel yield. (Tim) Now, when you're going to graze your milo, you want to graze it
just like a grain crop? (Rusty) Correct. So we're grazing milo, but just don't use the word forage,
uh... with sorghum. Uh... in this situation we're not growing a forage sorghum, we're growing a
(09:11):
grain sorghum. And so the carrying capacity is the energy, and the energy is the grain,
so there's a direct relationship. If your... if your yield, grain yield, is half, your cow
days per acre is half. Okay? So 120 bushel milo, we can, uh... we can get 400 cow days to the acre
(09:32):
out of it. (Tim) 400 cow days a acre?! (Rusty) Isn't that... ain't that fantastic?! There's not
much you can... can do on an acre that'll generate 400 cow days, um... but it's all about the... it's
all about the energy. When we take the, uh... we notice the parts of the plant that the cow
consumes. They'll consume the grain head. They consume the fodder leaves and the top half of
(09:56):
the stalk. And when we, uh... take those parts of the plant and combine it into a composite forage
sample... so grain mixed with stalk, mixed with fodder leaves and test that, we get TDN values
above 70. Uh... it's... it's normal to get a 74... 75 TDN, which is just a very... it's just a very
(10:19):
digestible, uh... lot of energy. The... the net energy maintenance is around 0.84, something like
that. Uh... so protein will be a little deficient. Protein will run about 7%, but between the two,
energy and protein, protein is the cheaper to supplement. Okay? Uh... energy is... is where
(10:43):
you spend a lot of money getting cattle through the winter. (Tim) So a typical, cool-season grass
bale of hay, what kind of numbers are we talking about there? (Rusty) Everything! It depends on
when you cut your hay, right? That's the biggest thing. So the... the, you know, the old joke is...
is for physiological maturity with our cool-season grasses, the best time period normally to cut hay
(11:08):
is May. (Tim) Yeah. (Rusty) Uh... of the 12 months out of the year, what month has the most rainfall
for us? It's May. (Tim) Right. (Rusty) So the month that's the best for, uh... stage of growth
of... of grass for hay cutting is also the most difficult month to get hay dried. So we'll see
a lot of June hay, uh... and then, you know... you... you hate to say it, but we do see fescue
(11:33):
with seed heads in it, and people making hay. At that point you're making straw, you know. I mean,
the... so the digestibility is much lower. If you take orchard grass or fescue early and... and cut
it properly at proper maturity, you can have some high protein and... and high TDN hay, but if you
(11:54):
look at forage test of hay, uh... typically you'll see, uh... TDN values for fescue in the
50s. That's pretty normal, and that's... that's pretty low. That... that requires supplementation.
So you'll see people feeding hay and shell corn. You know, that kind of thing. (Tim) So you're...
you've got a fairly good product already then with your... with your grain sorghum
(12:18):
grazing? (Rusty) Oh, absolutely! Some... you know, sometimes things just work out. Uh... blind hogs
find acorns ever so often. And this grazing milo, it's not because the producers, you know, that
showed me are these geniuses. It's because they... they try things. They experiment. They get outside
the box, and they go, "Why not?" And, uh... so it turns out, there are many attributes about milo
(12:41):
that just makes it fit so well, uh... with cattle grazing. (Tim) Now you mentioned cattle. How about
small ruminant? Sheep? Goats? Would they also? (Rusty) We have producers that... that run some
goats and sheep on standing milo. It does work for them. Um... it depends on your flock. Uh...
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I've seen flocks that were finicky, and... and they resisted, uh... consuming the milo grain,
and then I've seen sheep flocks that, uh... went over it just like... like cattle do. Cattle... cattle
even have to learn. Uh... cattle that have never grazed milo before, it takes them a few days to
(13:22):
sort of figure out what's going on. And, uh... but after that, they remember from one year to
the next, and as long as one cow remembers what to do, the rest of them learn real fast. (Tim) Would
they go after the grain first? Or they go with the leaves or both or... ? (Rusty) So they do
the grain first. Uh... in fact, we use that to help determine if we allocated a big enough
(13:46):
area. Because see, we have to give cattle, uh... a defined area every day so the allocation is never
more than one day's nutritional needs, otherwise, trampling. There's just the loss of it. So... so,
um... when you give the correct area, you'll find that the grain heads all disappear in about 30
minutes. Right? 30 minutes. (Tim) Wow! (Rusty) And... and then it takes them about 2 hours to
(14:10):
consume the fodder and the stalks and... and what all that they're going to... going to take. But
nope, they'll go around and... and harvest the grain heads first. (Tim) That's amazing. Um... so
what's the field look like after... after a winter of... of grazing? (Rusty) You can go into a field,
it looks like a checkerboard, uh... in the spring, and I can tell you what the actual weather was
(14:32):
every day through the winter. Uh... when it's warm and wet, the cattle pug... you know,
their... their hoof action, uh... breaks the ground up. Uh... when it's frozen and solid,
it... it looks just like a great no-till field ready to go in... in for spring planting. Uh...
so there are some issues where, uh... we're doing this in crop fields, so it's not that difficult to
(14:57):
apply some tillage to smooth things out from the hoof traffic. Um... that's not really... I haven't
noticed any... any issues from that. It's more aesthetics than it is anything. (Tim) And you're
talking about a light till. You're not talking about a... a... (Rusty) One pass with a disc
or a Turbo-Till, and you're ready to plant beans or whatever your subsequent crop is. (Tim) Sure.
(15:18):
Sure. You know, another thing you mentioned, uh... the... the nutrients that you... the P and the
K that you use on your grain sorghum... (Rusty) Yep. (Tim) Most of it stays back in the field when
they're... when they're grazing. (Rusty) You know, we... we joke about people buying hay, and you can
buy hay a lot of times for not much more money than the value of the nutrients in that bale of
(15:40):
hay, the phosphorus and the potassium. (Tim) It's about $30 a bale, isn't it? (Rusty) It is $25 to
$30 a bale depending on fertilizer prices. Uh... so there's a lot of value. So when you're making
hay and selling off your farm, you're exporting those... those nutrients off your farm. Well,
the same with grain. When we harvest a bushel of soybeans, corn, milo, uh... put it on a truck and
(16:02):
send it to town, we're exporting nutrients off of our farm. The removal rate is what that's called.
Uh... milo has a removal rate of about 4/10 of a pound of phosphorus per bushel. 120 bushel, uh...
milo, and you're exporting 50 pounds of phosphorus per acre. And then if you look at, uh... potassium
(16:24):
has a little lower removal rate. 120 bushel crop is about 30 pounds. So there's 80 lbs of P and K,
uh... per acre gone, and you know, depending on fertilizer prices, that can work out somewhere
around $40. (Tim) Right. (Rusty) So when we graze that, that nutrient never left our farm. Now it
may be relocated. Uh... it's going into manure, uh... so maybe it goes back on some pasture.
(16:50):
Because it's common when we graze milo, like I said, they'll be there for about 2 hours, uh...
and then they go back to some pasture area, maybe go do some stockpile fescue grazing, what have
you, and so the manure gets deposited where it hits. But, um... (Tim) It's still staying on your
farm though. (Rusty) It's on your farm! (Tim) So you're talking about, you have your grain sorghum
(17:11):
and adjacent to your pasture, so you have them doing both. (Rusty) That... that seems to work
best. We... we know that we have to supplement protein and, on average from forage analysis,
we find that a... a beef cow, a fall-calving, lactating beef cow is going to be about a half
a pound of protein a day deficient. You got to come up with some way to put a half pound of
(17:36):
protein in... in her. Uh... protein doesn't have to be fed daily. It can be fed twice a week. Um...
and so you know, for example, 2 pounds of, uh... uh... distillers grain will, uh... give us that...
that needed three days worth of... of protein supplementation. If... if you have some good
(17:59):
stockpile grass, you can go pick up, uh... your protein from that. Some... some producers feed a
very high quality hay in limited amounts where you're using hay as a supplement as opposed to
just true rumen fill. So cattle having a place to... to go back to pasture, uh... you know, you got to
have access to water, of course, and uh... to go back and graze some stockpile, you'll... you'll
(18:23):
find that... that this milo grazing gets used in concert with some pasture area. (Tim )So, but what
if I have just stockers? Can I just leave them on the milo and go? (Rusty) So this is... this is an
area that I want to evaluate further. So one of the bigger challenges to, uh... putting stockers
on milo is that the daily allocation requires the use of... of electric fence, uh... because we got
(18:50):
to move this wire every day. And if you're raising your own calves and then, uh... to background, then
okay, they're already broke to an electric fence. But if you're going and buying a pot load
of stockers and turning loose, um... I've seen barbed fence not stop, you know, fresh stockers.
So I'd hate to put them out there and expect one wire of poly to... to hold them back. Producers
(19:15):
that have raised their own calves, I've seen them take weaned calves, put them in the milo,
let them graze milo through most of the winter, when the milo's gone they are conditioned and
ready to move right into the, uh... feed lot. So if they're doing on-farm feeding, they take
five weight weaned calves, put them in the milo, turn them into seven weight calves and walk them
(19:38):
into the feed lot. Kind of... daily gains in that three plus pound range. (Tim) Now when I
was a kid, we had stockers on corn... cornfields. (Rusty) Okay. (Tim) After we harvested the corn,
maybe have some wheat planted in there, maybe some cereal rye, and they're on that. How's
that compared to what we're talking about? (Rusty) Well, grazing stalks is a fantastic way to stretch
(20:01):
forages and to get cattle through the winter. Um... (Tim) But we're probably losing, what?
We... we probably could not keep their protein up. (Rusty) Right. And the... and the energy as well
because the corn's gone. Uh... but, so the corn's gone, but so are all the fences, Tim! (Tim) Yeah,
exactly! (Rusty) It's getting harder and harder to move into cornstalks for grazing. Um... and then
(20:22):
the other piece we have to watch out for, this is becoming more and more... read your label on
your herbicides. Um... there are some herbicides that we can use in corn production that prohibit
grazing stalks after corn harvest. So we got to be careful about that because we're planting
cover crops in the corn stalk, you know, the corn fields, and we want to go out and graze it, and
(20:44):
that's a wonderful thing, but producers, we really have to pay attention to the herbicides we're
using because some do explicitly prohibit the grazing of the fodder... of the stubble, after grain
harvest. (Tim) I thought I heard that corn and grain sorghum herbicides are the same. Are we okay
on the... on the grain sorghum side? (Rusty) Well, so, on the milo we're so far so good. Um... a... a
(21:09):
common, uh... herbicide mix would be some atrazine and some metolachlor. (Tim) Right. (Rusty) So
we'd use either some 2,4-D and glyphosate for a burn-down prior to planting, and then we'd do a,
uh... an atrazine meto... dual metolachlor application, uh... before emergence and, um...
(21:31):
yeah, we're good. (Tim) It's when we get some more those broadleaf herbicides, that's when we start
getting in some issues. (Rusty) And some of the newer chemistries. See you going back to some old
chemistry of atrazine and... and metolachlor. Uh... I don't... I'm not aware of an issue there, but it's
when we get into some of the newer options... (Tim) Right. (Rusty) ...that we're starting to see those chemistries have
restrictions. (Tim) Which, don't... only you don't put those on grain sorghum because they ding the grain sorghum
(21:56):
also. (Rusty) They can. (Tim) They can. Yeah, it's a... that's close to corn, but they're not the same. They still... they
are still different. All right. Well, Rusty, let's talk about grain sorghum production. Let... I mean,
we're going to start that here now, so what... what's some things that we need to do? (Rusty) Well, we know that,
um... for planting dates for... for Central Missouri for for us is we're... we're there. (Tim) Yeah. (Rusty) We're looking for
(22:19):
65 degree soil temperature, um... (Tim) At 8:00 in the morning! (Rusty) Well, okay. (Tim) Is that... is that... is that the
rule of thumb? (Rusty) You know, I don't... I don't really have that defined. You know, you hear about 2 inch soil
temperature. I think of a average, but it dips a little lower at night and peaks out during, you
know, 1:00 or 2:00. So you go with 8:00 a.m.? Is that when you look at it? (Tim) That's what I like to look at it.
(22:41):
(Rusty) Okay. That... I can go with that. Sounds good. But, uh... the trick is, we want that... we want that milo
seed to, uh... have a quick germination, uh... and get as much of that pure life seed we put in the ground
to pop up as possible, so that puts us somewhere April, you know, from mid-April to mid-May is a...
is a pretty good window for planting. I... I like to think about milo planting in the month of May for
(23:03):
Central Missouri. Seeding rates, um... if, you know... on dry land, uh... 60,000, uh... is not a bad number. And milo
is interesting, and it confuses some people. If you plant milo early enough, okay? You can reduce your
seeding rate. (Tim) Cuz it'll... (Rusty) Cuz it will tiller. (Tim) Mmhmm. (Rusty) Milo tillering is impacted by nighttime temperatures at
(23:32):
a certain stage of growth. So it takes cool night temperatures once we have a plant up and growing,
and then you'll see tillering take place. If we plant late enough, uh... you know, we do these June plantings,
by the time that plant is able to decide about tillering, the nighttime temperatures are too
(23:53):
warm to foster tiller development. And so, you're planting in June, you want to up your seeding rate
because you're going to miss the tiller. (Tim) That's why where I grew up, grain... milo was always what
we planted almost last. (Rusty) Uhhuh. (Tim) It was always that end of May/1st of June, down in Missouri Bootheel,
and our seeding rates were 120 to 150,000. (Rusty) Right! And so if you... were you irrigated? (Tim) No. (Rusty) Because you'll find
(24:20):
irrigated milo, it's, uh... it's thought that you'll benefit from a higher seeding rate than dry land.
Uh... if you plant later, a higher seeding rate. Um... so absolutely. And we have producers that have success
after wheat. So when you're doing after-wheat milo, you're... you're not going to be getting tillering.
(Tim) No. (Rusty) So you're going to need a higher seeding rate. (Tim) So if I'm planting this milo to... to graze, do I want
(24:47):
lots of... find... do I want it to tiller a lot? Or do I want more main stalks then? (Rusty) So when we're grazing
milo, it's the same as... as combining for grain to sell bushels. We're trying to produce grain. That's
the... that's the secret. The carrying capacity is the grain. So, you perform management to... to
(25:08):
optimize grain production. Period. And if you can... I... I think we see higher grain yields, uh... with a full
season planting, full growth season. Um... if we do a double crop milo, or we do a later planted milo,
you'll see reduced yields, and... and that just takes away cow days. (Tim) Okay. So... so I want to get that... that
(25:33):
population to give me... so tillering is all right? (Rusty) Yeah, tillering is beneficial. We... we'll put on more
heads. Mmhmm, that's right. (Tim) And maybe even thinner stalks, maybe could be a bit more digestible?
We got to look at that some more. We got to look at that. That's something good... that's something good
to look at. (Rusty) Right. They, um... if you're used to, you know, I... I... I enjoy milo on 30 inch rows. I like the way
(25:56):
it grows on 30 inch rows. Um... that also facilitates the, um... putting up a fence. We can take a four-wheeler
and drive down a couple of rows, and you got a nice open spot to, uh... to put your polywire up.
Um... milo, if you plant milo too thick, cuz you can grow milo with a grain drill, you can do 7 and 1/2 inch
(26:17):
rows, but if you're not careful, you'll get the population so high that you create more of a
forage crop than you do a grain crop. Uh... 15 inch milo works really well for a lot of producers. 20 inch milo,
uh... 30 really does good. So I... I see no reason to... to not plant 30 inch rows. I have producers in
(26:39):
parts of the state that are predominantly cattle, uh... and they don't have a lot of corn production,
and so they're faced with using the no-till drill from the Soil and Water office. And... and that works!
I... I encourage producers to, uh... to use those drills. Maybe let's block off every other hole, and we can
turn that drill into a 15 inch spacing instead of 7 and 1/2, but... but that works. Um... if you're
(27:05):
new to planting milo, using a corn planter, uh... you get the... the milo, you know, cups or plates going, but
just remember, we don't want to plant it as deep as corn. Milo seed needs to be half inch minimum
to 1 inch maximum. So somewhere in that half to... to 1 inch depth is all you want to do. 3/4 is really good.
(27:26):
You know, with corn we have a minimum depth of inch and a half for... for the root development. Uh...
but milo, inch and a half would be too deep. So... (Tim) And you can no-till it like bean stubble. (Rusty) Oh! Absolutely.
(Tim) That's no... that's no problem. (Rusty) Yeah, no... no reason to not no-till. You bet. Um... after that, you know, you...
(27:47):
you... you did your soil test. You took your sample to your Extension office, and you had your soil
test done ahead of time, right? So you know your P and K needs. So we're going to put on the P and K,
the recommendations. It's going to be, uh... not that much reduced than a... than a, you know, like a 0-60-80,
typical rate of P and K for a corn crop. There'll be something similar for this milo. But we will
(28:13):
find that the nitrate and nitrogen needs are a little less. Um... I... I like a minimum, uh... 120 units of
nitrogen on a milo field, uh... but I don't really see a need to go past maybe 150. So somewhere in there.
That... that... that will be plenty of nitrogen to... to push the yield for rainfall. (Tim) And put... and put that
(28:35):
N down however you like whether it's anhydrous in the... (Rusty) Mmhmm (Tim) ...fall or spring or... or top dressing later
on. (Rusty) Yeah, I'm... I'm a person that... that appreciates anhydrous. Um... I like spring applications, especially in my
no-till fields. I just don't like having those tracks through the winter for... for rain to sort of channel.
(28:58):
Um... but, yeah... spring applied, but er... nitrogen. We have producers that'll work in urea. You
know, SUPERU or... or different nitrogen products. Ammonium nitrate if you can find it. Um... but just
realize you have the potential for volatilization if you just leave urea lying on top, so if you're...
if you're no-tilling, you got to time those rains a little better. If you're working your ground, well...
(29:23):
you can incorporate the urea, so... (Tim) Or you can sidedress liquid N. (Rusty) You can. Uh... split applications
are always a good idea if you've got the time and equipment to do that. Um... personally with milo, I do
a spring application, uh... uh... pre-plant, and then... and it's the full amount, and get along just fine with
(29:44):
it. (Tim) And back on the other fertility. Any special micros that grain sorghum is... ? I don't... I can't
think of any that... that... you know, sulfur becomes a big issue at time in wheat and corn. (Rusty) Yeah, I'm not
a micronutrient expert for sure. Um... I haven't found a... a benefit as of yet to adding any of
(30:06):
the micros. I mean, we do the standard soil test and, uh... just follow the University recommendations
is what we've been doing. (Tim) All right. And then your herbicide, it's... it's pretty well laid out. (Rusty) You're
a... you're a grain farmer when we're doing this now, so you want to keep the weeds controlled.
Weeds will take your yield away, you know, really quick. We have a lot of the cattle producers that
(30:33):
are going to graze milo, they... they do this the first year and then they asked the question,
"Well, why don't we, uh... incorporate some other green plants in there? Some protein sources?"
Uh... well, milo is very hard to overseed to cover into a companion crop because there's so much
(30:53):
light interception. Milo shades the ground out very well. (Tim) Those nice leaves it has. (Rusty) All those leaves, um... and
that's a benefit to weed control, but early on we have to have early season, uh... weed control. And, um...
yeah, a typical atrazine + metolachlor combination really works well to help protect that plant
(31:15):
in those first few weeks of life when, uh... when weeds can take it if we don't control it. (Tim) Let's
say I really wanted to harvest that grain. So I harvest that grain, can I graze them afterwards
then? (Rusty) So, uh... it's common to graze milo stalks after a grain harvest just like grazing corn stubble. Um...
(31:36):
but realize the energy's gone cuz you took the grain away. (Tim) Okay. (Rusty) And so your carrying capacity
is much reduced. But there's... there's some good to to be had. Milo is interesting when you compare
it to corn. Corn is a plant that... that dies. Okay? It grows through its cycle, and corn will, uh... dry
(31:58):
down, and it will die. Milo is killed. The frost finally kills milo. So it's green. It's growing. It's
full of juice. It's full of sugars and sap fluids, and frost kills it. Um... so you can go into the
winter into a milo field and take a pair of pliers out of your pocket and squeeze a milo stalk and
(32:20):
squeeze juice out. So there's... there's carbs. There's... there's sugars in that... in that liquid, in that milo
stalk. And so even after grain harvest, cattle can go in on some fresh, combined milo and get a lot of
good out of that. (Tim) But now, when frost kills, you need to leave off... the cattle off a few weeks, don't we?
(32:41):
(Rusty) I... I tell producers that you can graze milo anytime of the year except for two weeks. (Tim) Yeah. (Rusty) And, uh... so
prussic acid is always a concern. When we look at,uh... at... at fall frost, um... so that middle October to
first of November, that two weeks in there is a... is a time you don't want to be on a milo field.
(33:02):
Uh... the... the tissue damage from frost, uh... causes prussic acid formation which is very similar, I'm
told, to like cyanide poisoning, and it will kill cattle quickly. Um... so, but it volatilizes and... and it
leaves the plant. It will... it will move away. Uh... but we need, you know, a couple of weeks time for that
(33:24):
to occur, and then it's safe to... to graze all winter long. So we graze milo green, uh... dough stage. You know,
you... you can utilize it during summer slump when your fescue pastures aren't... aren't performing so
well. (Tim) So we can start August then? (Rusty) You can. I say you can graze milo any... any month, any time of the year
(33:45):
except for those two weeks at fall frost. (Tim) Cuz your son William had a idea. I thought it was a great
idea. Let's... let's save our pastures, let them stockpile in August/September/October, and graze our grain sorghum,
(Rusty) Right. (Tim) ...and then turn them loose in the... in the winter on their stockpiled. (Rusty) Absolutely. So we've,
uh... started doing some of that where we plant milo this time of the year, uh... and we're going
(34:08):
to actually have more than we need for winter, so it's going to give us opportunity to graze some
green during the summer. So we hit summer slump, or we want to stay off of some pastures, and we
do some August, uh... nitrogen on 'em for stockpiling, uh... and we need somewhere to go with... with cattle... yeah,
we can graze some... some milo green. The interesting thing about grazing green milo is it regrows. You
(34:33):
can... you can have milo that's in the dough stage, you can graze it to the ground and cattle will eat
it to the dirt! (Tim) When it's in the dough stage? (Rusty) Mmhmm. When it's in the dough stage, they take the whole plant
all the way to the dirt. (Tim) About 8-10 inches above? (Rusty) And you get off of that, it'll grow back. You can actually get a second
graze off of that before... before fall frost. And the growing point from milo stays below ground.
(34:58):
See corn, the growing point, uh... comes up above the soil surface, and when cattle graze that off, um...
it doesn't grow back. But with milo, that growing point stays below soil level, and it'll grow back.
(Tim) Now are you worried about in drought, your nitrate poisoning? (Rusty) So... we have, I've got producers, uh... in
(35:23):
Montgomery County that have grazed milo every winter since 1996. This is nothing new. Now, this is new for
a lot of people just now hearing about this, but I've got producers who have been doing this for 30
years, and we've yet to have a founder issue. We've yet to have a nitrate poisoning issue. I would use
(35:47):
some caution in my nitrogen applications. Don't... don't go crazy. Don't overdo it. (Tim) 120 is still okay?
(Rusty) I... I say 120 is a minimum, uh... and I would top out at 140... 150 if I had a real high yield environment,
that'd be fine. Um... but we know that... that nitrates will accumulate higher in the lower portions of
(36:09):
the stalk. Um... it works to our advantage that in the winter time, cattle... they don't eat that bottom 18
inches of the stalk, so it's kind of like cutting silage where you kind of chop a little higher
if you're in drought conditions and you're worried about nitrate, uh... accumulations. So the cattle are
just automatically leaving that portion behind. Uh... we didn't over fertilize to begin with, so... so far,
(36:33):
so good. No issues. (Tim) All right. So your publication walks us through all that? (Rusty) Yep. Guide sheet G2079,
'Strip-Grazing Milo as a Low-Cost Winter Forage'. Absolutely.
We... we try to cover some of the, you know, the benefits and the things to think about.
Uh... it's a... it's a good introduction. It gets your appetite stirred up so you'll give me
(36:57):
a phone call. (Tim )Now how do they get this publication? (Rusty) So this publication is hot off the press. Uh... it's not
even out yet, but on the Extension website would be the best place to go search this. So if you go
to, uh... Extension.Missouri.edu, uh... on your browser, and then there will be a search... search box, and
(37:19):
you can just search for 'milo'. In fact, if you just search 'milo', you're going to find several
articles and stories about this whole grazing situation. (Tim) And there you have your... well, on grazing,
but is there also a... just a, uh... MU guide just on milo production? If you've never produced it, maybe you
want to read some more about it? (Rusty) Yes. What you'll find when you go to that search box and type in
(37:42):
'milo', the majority of the articles are going to be about utilizing it through grazing, (that's kind of
the hot topic right now) but, um... you'll find some production guides in there as well. (Tim) Good. Good.
All right! Cuz this is a... might be new for some folks... (Rusty) Oh, absolutely! (Tim) ...to... to plant this. (Rusty) Well, it's very novel, you know... it's a
very it's a... a very novel take on, uh... on feeding cattle. (Tim) And the nice thing, if the cattle prices
(38:07):
tank and grain sorghum goes up, which probably doesn't going to happen, you can always harvest it
for grain. (Rusty) That's right. And I see producers that, uh... that plant milo for grazing and then in at harvest
time the... the... the prices per bushel are just so high that they just can't stand it, and they bring
the combine in the field. And when they finish, I... I go to them, they... they tell me about this after the
(38:31):
fact, and I say, "Well, you realize that based on the MU Extension Ag Econ Crop Management Budget,
okay? If you look at all the expenses for producing milo that 40%... 4-0 percent of the total production cost is
(38:52):
combine, trucking, grain storage transfer. So, yes, you... you went to a higher, you know, price and you... you
harvested that bushel, but you... you increased your expenses by another 40%. So we stop spending money
on milo when we plant it and put the herbicide down. (Tim) Right. (Rusty) You know, uh... so 60% of normal production
(39:17):
expense is... is all that you're going to have in this. We're going to let the cattle be the
harvesters. It's a beautiful thing. They got mouths. They got feet. Let's... let's let them go to it. (Tim) And
they're putting those nutrients back into a better form even. (Rusty) Oh, recycling it! Goes through that rumen, comes
out the other end. Absolutely. Stays on the farm. It's... it's a good thing! And we're... we're learning
(39:38):
more all the time, uh... looking at the benefits of... so cover crops are great for our... our lands, right? But
now we've got research going on, uh... in multiple states where we're trying to evaluate the value
of the cover crop going through the rumen and then coming back out on the ground. How does that
activate? And how does that do what it does? (Tim) See... you could have a nice cover crop, graze that up until
(40:06):
now, (Rusty) Right. (Tim) ...and then no-till a milo right into it, (Rusty) Yes. (Tim) ...and then start grazing again in August. (Rusty) Yes. It... it's
very interesting. There's a lot of potential here. Um... one of the things... so the work that I've done
the last several years has been just a fall-calving, cow/calf herd getting through the... getting through the
winter. And we can take take that single, largest expense of a cow/calf operator, and we can chop that
(40:31):
in half, okay? You're going to feed over a dollar a day per cow in hay. I'm going to feed 50 cents
or less per day per cow in milo cost. So we're going to chop that in half. All right. But now I
want to move into, you brought it up earlier, the stockers, or you know... conditioning cattle for the
feed lot, that sort of thing. What kind of value can we add to our milo when we're... when we're pushing
(40:57):
that to... to muscle on a... on a frame? So I think there's some good opportunities to do some work
there as well. (Tim)Yes. One of our farmer friends who direct sales to the public, some of his, uh...
customers want a no-corn/no-soy product because of the GMO contamination. You could have it right
(41:22):
here, couldn't you? (Rusty) Marketing, I mean... you know, you... you... there... there's as many avenues to market a
product, you know, uh... as there are people to... to... to purchase it. Um... you know, so milo is... has remained
a non-GMO crop if that is a value to you. I mean, there... there's an option there. You got a high, dense
(41:44):
energy grain crop that, um... is going to be non-GMO. Um... yeah. I... my focus honestly has just been on cost
of production, (Tim) Right. (Rusty) ...and it just... it just works in our favor that, um... milo as opposed to corn is a
better material for direct grazing. (Tim) Okay. (Rusty) Well, let's compare some things. Uh... everybody has heard that...
(42:10):
that milo is, uh... difficult to digest, for example. And you got to process it before... (Tim) The seed! (Rusty) The seed. The
grain. Um... when we harvest grain, uh... sorghum, that... that product has to be ground before you can feed it
to hogs or chickens, or what have you, so it can be digested. Well, that works to our advantage. Corn, if
(42:32):
we were grazing corn, that material is so easily digested that it would be easy to overload the
rumen and... and... and get too... too many carbs going too fast. Right? And our livestock animal science people
can explain this much better than I. But it is the fact that the milo is a little slower to break
down in the rumen that works to our advantage. This is why we don't see the acidosis issues. This
(42:58):
is why we don't see the overeating issues in... in milo that you would have to be concerned about
in... in corn. The other thing is just the physical height of milo. You don't think about it, but we
noticed it with the sheep and goats. Cattle will walk through milo and... and not be excited about
it, and they'll just wander the entire field if you... if you let them. A sheep or a goat will not
(43:24):
do that. They stay on the outside edges. And so, just observations are that the sheep, when they
walk into a milo field, they're blind. They can't see. The milo's taller than they are, so they're...
they're... they're not able to see predators perhaps. Where a cow can walk into milo, and she can just
look over the top of the grain, and she sees all of her surroundings. And so, that got us to
(43:49):
thinking about when cattle get into a corn field, if... if cattle ever get into a corn field, you... you
got to have some time for them to calm down. They get excited. And I wonder how much of that is about
not being able to see. (Tim) You're... you're... you're about like a sheep in a milo field there. (Rusty) Exactly. And so... so
it is kind of nice. Uh... we're looking for a crop to stand all through the winter, so the... the milo does
(44:14):
a little better job of that than the corn does. I think the grain of milo is easier for a cow to
get into her mouth than that ear of corn that's dried down. Um... there's just a few things about
that I think give milo the advantage over corn. (Tim) And it's pretty resilient out there... the grain.
(Rusty) Oh, yeah. Yeah, it... it weathers well. Um... there... there have been some, uh... forage and... and grain, you know,
(44:40):
tests done, you know about, um... that have showing that there's very little degradation in feed
quality through the winter. Right? (Tim) Of the leaf and the grain. (Rusty) Right! (Tim) So that's... that's great! It's just
as good in November as it is... in March as it is in November. (Rusty) Exactly. (Tim) And no telling how good it is
in September and October. (Rusty) Right. (Tim) So... all right. Well, Rusty, anything you want to conclude with? (Rusty) No, just
(45:05):
that, uh... sometimes the, uh... some of the best ideas are some things you've never heard of and never tried
before. I would encourage producers with... with a cow herd to, uh... consider a small patch of milo.
Don't try to go from zero to... to a full winter's, uh... supply. Just grow yourself 30... 45 days worth.
(45:27):
Right? I'm telling you, you're going to get 400 cow days to the acre if you can pull off 120
bushel yield. Um... so you know your herd size. Do the math. Maybe you need five acres to get you through
a month. Maybe you need a couple acres to get you a month. Try it. Enjoy that savings. Make your mistakes,
uh... on a small area, and then the next year you'll be ready to go bigger. (Tim) Cuz you had a producer try
(45:52):
it this year on a big scale. (Rusty) You could say that! Uh... I had a producer in Southwest Missouri,
the first year he did that was this year, uh... and he has a 600 head cow herd that... that he wintered on
this, and he absolutely loved it. He went from zero milo graze to 115 acres. And he, uh... he did the math and
(46:17):
came out with the hay savings that he felt that he had and with the hay prices in his area... yeah.
He... he saved somewhere between $90 and $100,000 in... in feed expense on that... on that herd this winter. (Tim) And that
milo cost him, what? $25,000 to... to put in? (Rusty) Right. So the... the hay savings, uh... was about $140,000. (Tim) Oh, okay.
(46:41):
(Rusty) So after we discount the cost of production of the milo, I'm saying he put $90 to $100,000 in his
pocket. (Tim) Oh! (Rusty) That was... that was 100 grand he did not spend! Okay? And... and even bigger than that was the
cost he would have had. He would have had to sell cows. And when... when he... he was faced with being forced
(47:04):
to reduce the herd, uh... for no other reason than no feed available, and when you do that you lose
genetics, right? And now you've got to start over. You got to build those genetics back. So there's
an expense there. (Tim) When cattle prices are high. (Rusty) Yep. So there... there's that, you know... there's a pound and
there's a price per pound expense, but then there's the time investment in... in cultivating up the
(47:27):
genetics, the selections, that you want and that sort of thing. So he... he made savings beyond just dollars
this year, and he did not have to sell any cattle. (Tim) That's... that's great. Well, that's all that we have
today, and we can talk for another hour or two on this! But remember, uh... it's publication, what number?
(Rusty) G2079. Or you can just search the Extension website for,
(47:51):
you know, 'strip grazing milo' or 'milo' and... and this will come up.
I will throw out my phone number. (Tim) Yes! (Rusty) Uh... the Extension office is 573-564-3733.
Give us a call. I'll be glad to talk to you about... (Tim) Or your email too. (Rusty) Yep. Email me at
Leerw@missouri.edu. Spell out Missouri. Uh... don't abbreviate it. And it's l-e-e-r-w.
(48:19):
(Tim) All right. Well, thanks so much, Rusty. And this is it for Tim's Take on a very
exciting and hot topic! (Rusty) You bet. (Tim) We'll see you next time.
[♫]
[♫]
All right. Well, welcome to Tim's Take! And today we have a wonderful, uh... guest who's
a... who's a repeat, Rusty Lee! (Rusty) Good morning! Good morning! (Tim) Good morning. And
you're an Extension Specialist at... station what? Montgomery County? Warren County? (Rusty) Yep! I'm
(00:22):
a Field Specialist in Agronomy. I'm based in Montgomery City, uh... and I cover about 10
counties in the East Central/Northeast Region of the state. (Tim) Right in the middle of both
grain and forage production. (Rusty) Exactly. So I get to... I get to work with producers just as
concerned about their, uh... pasture forage as... as they are with their soybean diseases. So,
(00:42):
you bet. (Tim) And that's what we're going to talk about. You have really championed this,
uh... grazing milo, and we're going to use milo/grain sorghum back and forth today because
it's... (Rusty) Kind of interchangeable. (Tim) Yeah, it's kind of the same thing.
But uh... grazing milo... now, why in the world would somebody want to do this? (Rusty) So,
grazing milo is something that... that I've done for several years on my own farm,
(01:06):
and I've learned it from... from neighbors, and it all came about due to the cost of winter feed. So
the biggest expense for a cow/calf producer is... is winter cow feed. Uh... stored... stored forages
are just expensive. That's our single largest expense. (Tim) Storage meaning making hay or...
or silage in the... in the summer? (Rusty) Yeah, so... so feeding... feeding cattle outside of the
(01:29):
normal growing season, so that winter feed. That's what... that's their... our single
biggest expense with cow/calf. (Tim) So are you... so you kind of, uh... promoting that we could do
almost a year round grazing possibly... or mostly year round? (Rusty) So the way we utilize the milo
is animal removal, animal grazing of it, so we don't... we don't have to combine, right? We save
(01:51):
that expense. So the cattle are grazing through the winter, um... but this is a component to...
you... you can graze 365. Um... maybe, uh... as... as with a lot of things, uh... zero... zero is an
expensive number, so if you want to, you know, if you want to graze 100% of the time and have zero
down time, that might be a little much. But I have done it. Uh... other producers have grazed all
(02:16):
winter long. Um... but it... it's nice to have a little bit of hay on hand, uh... and, um... but...
but milo will certainly decrease the amount of hay. (Tim) Well, and like this summer, we went
from a... a very dry summer, so hay production wasn't there like we really like. And most of
our hay production, whether we like it or not, are cool-season grasses. (Rusty) Right. So that's
predominantly what we see (02:39):
the orchard grass, the tall fescue, the cool-season grasses. (Tim) And
they got hammered this year! We had a hot, dry summer. (Rusty) Yeah, we... I did some, uh...
forage reduction analysis for several counties, uh... in the state and, yeah... 50% - 60%,
uh... reduction, so we were at 40% to 50% of normal forage yields this year... this previous
(03:02):
year. (Tim) But grain sorghum, or milo, is a warm-season annual crop, fairly drought tolerant,
uh... so this... this fits really well... well in all in... in Missouri with our unusual weathers
from year to year. (Rusty) It... it does. Uh... grain sorghum/milo has a very fibrous root system.
(03:23):
Um... it's considered to be drought tolerant. You can have good productive soil, uh... good enough
for growing corn, but if your moisture is a little questionable, you'll find that producers will...
will switch, uh... from corn to... to milo. So as we move south and west in the US, we start
seeing more milo and less corn, uh... just... and that's just due to the rainfall. Um... Missouri,
(03:50):
uh... ranks number seven in the state, uh... on milo production. Did you realize that? We're...
we're number seven U.S.-wide in... in milo production. (Tim) With Texas probably number
one. (Rusty) Right. So... (Tim) It's a country all of its own now. (Rusty) You get in that arid
Southwest and, yeah, they... they pretty well... milo is a... is a... their prime driver there.
(04:10):
But... but for us, it... it's a good fit. It's a good way to hedge. Um... if you have good rains,
you're going to have fantastic milo yield. And if it's a kind of a droughty year, you, uh... you're
still going to get some grain yield. (Tim) I think this year we were 85% of what we had the year
before... (Rusty) Right. (Tim) ...on grain yield. (Rusty) Right. (Tim) And we got hit hard. We got
(04:32):
hammered hard. But, uh... probably... Missouri's probably, if it's seventh in acres, we're probably
number one in yield per acre. (Rusty) Hhmm, have to look at that. Yeah, I mean, milo yield,
we... we have enjoyed a year-over-year increase in... in average milo yield. Just like corn.
Just like beans. You know, every year since back in the 50s, corn yield just creeps up a little,
(04:56):
uh... each year, and milo has done the same thing. So there... there... there's been plenty of,
uh... sorghum improvement dollar spent, you know. So there's some good... there's some decent grain
yields in... in milo. (Tim) Well, and you've got a new Extension publication out. (Rusty) Oh!
I'm proud of this! Proud! (Tim) It's hot off the press! (Rusty) Absolutely! So we have an MU Guide
Sheet, uh... G2079, and it's titled "Strip-Grazing Milo as a Low-Cost Winter Forage". So I, uh...
(05:26):
we've made a few YouTube videos, and have, uh... made presentations at producer meetings and talked
about this subject through PowerPoints, and it... it's generated a lot of interest. Every year I add
a... a few more producers to the... to the list of... of folks that, uh... that utilize this. And so the
questions just repeat, uh... for new people, um... the how-to's and the why-to's, and so we've got a
(05:52):
little four-page guide sheet that outlines, uh... some of the expected cost and benefits to doing
this. Uh... it's a... it's a really good read to help a producer think about it. Because if you
want to look at this coming winter, uh... being able to graze milo, the time is now to be thinking
about seed purchases and getting planted. It... it's milo planting season right now. (Tim) Right!
(06:15):
Cuz you told me before we aired that, you know, we always think June 1st as being... being the milo
planting time. It... it'd be more of a warm-season crop, but you just show... showed me some data that
after May 15th yields start going down in south Missouri. (Rusty) Yep. So, uh... you look at,
uh... southern Missouri and the optimum planting time is April 15th through May 15th,
(06:38):
uh... so regardless of where you are, uh... milo, just think soil temperature. So that 2 inch depth,
think 65 degree soil temperature. Once you get there, it... it's time to plant milo. (Tim) About
like soybeans. What... what we used to think soybeans were. We've kind of changed on that,
haven't we? (Rusty) Everything we thought we knew is backwards now. We're planting beans
before corn, (Tim) Yeah. (Rusty) ...etc. But... but, um... seedling diseases. It doesn't matter
(07:05):
what the plant is, I think, but the... the best way we can set our crop up for success
is to put seed in the ground at that optimum temperature that it can germinate quickly and,
uh... emerge and... and get to growing. Uh and for... for milo, that's a 65 degree temp,
(07:26):
we can pop that, you know, pop that kernel out of the ground and get it growing. (Tim) Well,
two things that just jumped out at me on your... on your, uh... publication. We talked
about economics was seed cost at $10.80 per acre. (Rusty) How about that! (Tim) Compared to what?
(07:46):
Corn would be $108 an acre? (Rusty) Yeah. (Tim) I mean really! And fertilize at $90... almost $91
an acre. That's half of corn. (Rusty) Right. (Tim) Your expenses are much less in grain sorghum than
they are in corn. (Rusty) It... they are. Uh... nitrogen being one of the biggest expenses. You
(08:09):
know, the uh... it's all about the... the yield potential that you have, but I would use 120 units
of nitrogen as my minimum, uh... and I really don't see a need to go beyond 140... 150. So
with... with our corn, a lot of... a lot of fields we're putting 200 plus units of nitrogen down,
(08:30):
but we're pushing for that 200 corn yield. With milo, if... you know, 100. I do a lot of my, uh...
cow days per acre, my carrying capacity formula is based on 120 bushel milo. Uh... most years
that's not that difficult to achieve. We'll... we'll get moisture, so we... we try to fertilize
(08:51):
for that 120 bushel yield. (Tim) Now, when you're going to graze your milo, you want to graze it
just like a grain crop? (Rusty) Correct. So we're grazing milo, but just don't use the word forage,
uh... with sorghum. Uh... in this situation we're not growing a forage sorghum, we're growing a
(09:11):
grain sorghum. And so the carrying capacity is the energy, and the energy is the grain,
so there's a direct relationship. If your... if your yield, grain yield, is half, your cow
days per acre is half. Okay? So 120 bushel milo, we can, uh... we can get 400 cow days to the acre
(09:32):
out of it. (Tim) 400 cow days a acre?! (Rusty) Isn't that... ain't that fantastic?! There's not
much you can... can do on an acre that'll generate 400 cow days, um... but it's all about the... it's
all about the energy. When we take the, uh... we notice the parts of the plant that the cow
consumes. They'll consume the grain head. They consume the fodder leaves and the top half of
(09:56):
the stalk. And when we, uh... take those parts of the plant and combine it into a composite forage
sample... so grain mixed with stalk, mixed with fodder leaves and test that, we get TDN values
above 70. Uh... it's... it's normal to get a 74... 75 TDN, which is just a very... it's just a very
(10:19):
digestible, uh... lot of energy. The... the net energy maintenance is around 0.84, something like
that. Uh... so protein will be a little deficient. Protein will run about 7%, but between the two,
energy and protein, protein is the cheaper to supplement. Okay? Uh... energy is... is where
(10:43):
you spend a lot of money getting cattle through the winter. (Tim) So a typical, cool-season grass
bale of hay, what kind of numbers are we talking about there? (Rusty) Everything! It depends on
when you cut your hay, right? That's the biggest thing. So the... the, you know, the old joke is...
is for physiological maturity with our cool-season grasses, the best time period normally to cut hay
(11:08):
is May. (Tim) Yeah. (Rusty) Uh... of the 12 months out of the year, what month has the most rainfall
for us? It's May. (Tim) Right. (Rusty) So the month that's the best for, uh... stage of growth
of... of grass for hay cutting is also the most difficult month to get hay dried. So we'll see
a lot of June hay, uh... and then, you know... you... you hate to say it, but we do see fescue
(11:33):
with seed heads in it, and people making hay. At that point you're making straw, you know. I mean,
the... so the digestibility is much lower. If you take orchard grass or fescue early and... and cut
it properly at proper maturity, you can have some high protein and... and high TDN hay, but if you
(11:54):
look at forage test of hay, uh... typically you'll see, uh... TDN values for fescue in the
50s. That's pretty normal, and that's... that's pretty low. That... that requires supplementation.
So you'll see people feeding hay and shell corn. You know, that kind of thing. (Tim) So you're...
you've got a fairly good product already then with your... with your grain sorghum
(12:18):
grazing? (Rusty) Oh, absolutely! Some... you know, sometimes things just work out. Uh... blind hogs
find acorns ever so often. And this grazing milo, it's not because the producers, you know, that
showed me are these geniuses. It's because they... they try things. They experiment. They get outside
the box, and they go, "Why not?" And, uh... so it turns out, there are many attributes about milo
(12:41):
that just makes it fit so well, uh... with cattle grazing. (Tim) Now you mentioned cattle. How about
small ruminant? Sheep? Goats? Would they also? (Rusty) We have producers that... that run some
goats and sheep on standing milo. It does work for them. Um... it depends on your flock. Uh...
(13:02):
I've seen flocks that were finicky, and... and they resisted, uh... consuming the milo grain,
and then I've seen sheep flocks that, uh... went over it just like... like cattle do. Cattle... cattle
even have to learn. Uh... cattle that have never grazed milo before, it takes them a few days to
(13:22):
sort of figure out what's going on. And, uh... but after that, they remember from one year to
the next, and as long as one cow remembers what to do, the rest of them learn real fast. (Tim) Would
they go after the grain first? Or they go with the leaves or both or... ? (Rusty) So they do
the grain first. Uh... in fact, we use that to help determine if we allocated a big enough
(13:46):
area. Because see, we have to give cattle, uh... a defined area every day so the allocation is never
more than one day's nutritional needs, otherwise, trampling. There's just the loss of it. So... so,
um... when you give the correct area, you'll find that the grain heads all disappear in about 30
minutes. Right? 30 minutes. (Tim) Wow! (Rusty) And... and then it takes them about 2 hours to
(14:10):
consume the fodder and the stalks and... and what all that they're going to... going to take. But
nope, they'll go around and... and harvest the grain heads first. (Tim) That's amazing. Um... so
what's the field look like after... after a winter of... of grazing? (Rusty) You can go into a field,
it looks like a checkerboard, uh... in the spring, and I can tell you what the actual weather was
(14:32):
every day through the winter. Uh... when it's warm and wet, the cattle pug... you know,
their... their hoof action, uh... breaks the ground up. Uh... when it's frozen and solid,
it... it looks just like a great no-till field ready to go in... in for spring planting. Uh...
so there are some issues where, uh... we're doing this in crop fields, so it's not that difficult to
(14:57):
apply some tillage to smooth things out from the hoof traffic. Um... that's not really... I haven't
noticed any... any issues from that. It's more aesthetics than it is anything. (Tim) And you're
talking about a light till. You're not talking about a... a... (Rusty) One pass with a disc
or a Turbo-Till, and you're ready to plant beans or whatever your subsequent crop is. (Tim) Sure.
(15:18):
Sure. You know, another thing you mentioned, uh... the... the nutrients that you... the P and the
K that you use on your grain sorghum... (Rusty) Yep. (Tim) Most of it stays back in the field when
they're... when they're grazing. (Rusty) You know, we... we joke about people buying hay, and you can
buy hay a lot of times for not much more money than the value of the nutrients in that bale of
(15:40):
hay, the phosphorus and the potassium. (Tim) It's about $30 a bale, isn't it? (Rusty) It is $25 to
$30 a bale depending on fertilizer prices. Uh... so there's a lot of value. So when you're making
hay and selling off your farm, you're exporting those... those nutrients off your farm. Well,
the same with grain. When we harvest a bushel of soybeans, corn, milo, uh... put it on a truck and
(16:02):
send it to town, we're exporting nutrients off of our farm. The removal rate is what that's called.
Uh... milo has a removal rate of about 4/10 of a pound of phosphorus per bushel. 120 bushel, uh...
milo, and you're exporting 50 pounds of phosphorus per acre. And then if you look at, uh... potassium
(16:24):
has a little lower removal rate. 120 bushel crop is about 30 pounds. So there's 80 lbs of P and K,
uh... per acre gone, and you know, depending on fertilizer prices, that can work out somewhere
around $40. (Tim) Right. (Rusty) So when we graze that, that nutrient never left our farm. Now it
may be relocated. Uh... it's going into manure, uh... so maybe it goes back on some pasture.
(16:50):
Because it's common when we graze milo, like I said, they'll be there for about 2 hours, uh...
and then they go back to some pasture area, maybe go do some stockpile fescue grazing, what have
you, and so the manure gets deposited where it hits. But, um... (Tim) It's still staying on your
farm though. (Rusty) It's on your farm! (Tim) So you're talking about, you have your grain sorghum
(17:11):
and adjacent to your pasture, so you have them doing both. (Rusty) That... that seems to work
best. We... we know that we have to supplement protein and, on average from forage analysis,
we find that a... a beef cow, a fall-calving, lactating beef cow is going to be about a half
a pound of protein a day deficient. You got to come up with some way to put a half pound of
(17:36):
protein in... in her. Uh... protein doesn't have to be fed daily. It can be fed twice a week. Um...
and so you know, for example, 2 pounds of, uh... uh... distillers grain will, uh... give us that...
that needed three days worth of... of protein supplementation. If... if you have some good
(17:59):
stockpile grass, you can go pick up, uh... your protein from that. Some... some producers feed a
very high quality hay in limited amounts where you're using hay as a supplement as opposed to
just true rumen fill. So cattle having a place to... to go back to pasture, uh... you know, you got to
have access to water, of course, and uh... to go back and graze some stockpile, you'll... you'll
(18:23):
find that... that this milo grazing gets used in concert with some pasture area. (Tim )So, but what
if I have just stockers? Can I just leave them on the milo and go? (Rusty) So this is... this is an
area that I want to evaluate further. So one of the bigger challenges to, uh... putting stockers
on milo is that the daily allocation requires the use of... of electric fence, uh... because we got
(18:50):
to move this wire every day. And if you're raising your own calves and then, uh... to background, then
okay, they're already broke to an electric fence. But if you're going and buying a pot load
of stockers and turning loose, um... I've seen barbed fence not stop, you know, fresh stockers.
So I'd hate to put them out there and expect one wire of poly to... to hold them back. Producers
(19:15):
that have raised their own calves, I've seen them take weaned calves, put them in the milo,
let them graze milo through most of the winter, when the milo's gone they are conditioned and
ready to move right into the, uh... feed lot. So if they're doing on-farm feeding, they take
five weight weaned calves, put them in the milo, turn them into seven weight calves and walk them
(19:38):
into the feed lot. Kind of... daily gains in that three plus pound range. (Tim) Now when I
was a kid, we had stockers on corn... cornfields. (Rusty) Okay. (Tim) After we harvested the corn,
maybe have some wheat planted in there, maybe some cereal rye, and they're on that. How's
that compared to what we're talking about? (Rusty) Well, grazing stalks is a fantastic way to stretch
(20:01):
forages and to get cattle through the winter. Um... (Tim) But we're probably losing, what?
We... we probably could not keep their protein up. (Rusty) Right. And the... and the energy as well
because the corn's gone. Uh... but, so the corn's gone, but so are all the fences, Tim! (Tim) Yeah,
exactly! (Rusty) It's getting harder and harder to move into cornstalks for grazing. Um... and then
(20:22):
the other piece we have to watch out for, this is becoming more and more... read your label on
your herbicides. Um... there are some herbicides that we can use in corn production that prohibit
grazing stalks after corn harvest. So we got to be careful about that because we're planting
cover crops in the corn stalk, you know, the corn fields, and we want to go out and graze it, and
(20:44):
that's a wonderful thing, but producers, we really have to pay attention to the herbicides we're
using because some do explicitly prohibit the grazing of the fodder... of the stubble, after grain
harvest. (Tim) I thought I heard that corn and grain sorghum herbicides are the same. Are we okay
on the... on the grain sorghum side? (Rusty) Well, so, on the milo we're so far so good. Um... a... a
(21:09):
common, uh... herbicide mix would be some atrazine and some metolachlor. (Tim) Right. (Rusty) So
we'd use either some 2,4-D and glyphosate for a burn-down prior to planting, and then we'd do a,
uh... an atrazine meto... dual metolachlor application, uh... before emergence and, um...
(21:31):
yeah, we're good. (Tim) It's when we get some more those broadleaf herbicides, that's when we start
getting in some issues. (Rusty) And some of the newer chemistries. See you going back to some old
chemistry of atrazine and... and metolachlor. Uh... I don't... I'm not aware of an issue there, but it's
when we get into some of the newer options... (Tim) Right. (Rusty) ...that we're starting to see those chemistries have
restrictions. (Tim) Which, don't... only you don't put those on grain sorghum because they ding the grain sorghum
(21:56):
also. (Rusty) They can. (Tim) They can. Yeah, it's a... that's close to corn, but they're not the same. They still... they
are still different. All right. Well, Rusty, let's talk about grain sorghum production. Let... I mean,
we're going to start that here now, so what... what's some things that we need to do? (Rusty) Well, we know that,
um... for planting dates for... for Central Missouri for for us is we're... we're there. (Tim) Yeah. (Rusty) We're looking for
(22:19):
65 degree soil temperature, um... (Tim) At 8:00 in the morning! (Rusty) Well, okay. (Tim) Is that... is that... is that the
rule of thumb? (Rusty) You know, I don't... I don't really have that defined. You know, you hear about 2 inch soil
temperature. I think of a average, but it dips a little lower at night and peaks out during, you
know, 1:00 or 2:00. So you go with 8:00 a.m.? Is that when you look at it? (Tim) That's what I like to look at it.
(22:41):
(Rusty) Okay. That... I can go with that. Sounds good. But, uh... the trick is, we want that... we want that milo
seed to, uh... have a quick germination, uh... and get as much of that pure life seed we put in the ground
to pop up as possible, so that puts us somewhere April, you know, from mid-April to mid-May is a...
is a pretty good window for planting. I... I like to think about milo planting in the month of May for
(23:03):
Central Missouri. Seeding rates, um... if, you know... on dry land, uh... 60,000, uh... is not a bad number. And milo
is interesting, and it confuses some people. If you plant milo early enough, okay? You can reduce your
seeding rate. (Tim) Cuz it'll... (Rusty) Cuz it will tiller. (Tim) Mmhmm. (Rusty) Milo tillering is impacted by nighttime temperatures at
(23:32):
a certain stage of growth. So it takes cool night temperatures once we have a plant up and growing,
and then you'll see tillering take place. If we plant late enough, uh... you know, we do these June plantings,
by the time that plant is able to decide about tillering, the nighttime temperatures are too
(23:53):
warm to foster tiller development. And so, you're planting in June, you want to up your seeding rate
because you're going to miss the tiller. (Tim) That's why where I grew up, grain... milo was always what
we planted almost last. (Rusty) Uhhuh. (Tim) It was always that end of May/1st of June, down in Missouri Bootheel,
and our seeding rates were 120 to 150,000. (Rusty) Right! And so if you... were you irrigated? (Tim) No. (Rusty) Because you'll find
(24:20):
irrigated milo, it's, uh... it's thought that you'll benefit from a higher seeding rate than dry land.
Uh... if you plant later, a higher seeding rate. Um... so absolutely. And we have producers that have success
after wheat. So when you're doing after-wheat milo, you're... you're not going to be getting tillering.
(Tim) No. (Rusty) So you're going to need a higher seeding rate. (Tim) So if I'm planting this milo to... to graze, do I want
(24:47):
lots of... find... do I want it to tiller a lot? Or do I want more main stalks then? (Rusty) So when we're grazing
milo, it's the same as... as combining for grain to sell bushels. We're trying to produce grain. That's
the... that's the secret. The carrying capacity is the grain. So, you perform management to... to
(25:08):
optimize grain production. Period. And if you can... I... I think we see higher grain yields, uh... with a full
season planting, full growth season. Um... if we do a double crop milo, or we do a later planted milo,
you'll see reduced yields, and... and that just takes away cow days. (Tim) Okay. So... so I want to get that... that
(25:33):
population to give me... so tillering is all right? (Rusty) Yeah, tillering is beneficial. We... we'll put on more
heads. Mmhmm, that's right. (Tim) And maybe even thinner stalks, maybe could be a bit more digestible?
We got to look at that some more. We got to look at that. That's something good... that's something good
to look at. (Rusty) Right. They, um... if you're used to, you know, I... I... I enjoy milo on 30 inch rows. I like the way
(25:56):
it grows on 30 inch rows. Um... that also facilitates the, um... putting up a fence. We can take a four-wheeler
and drive down a couple of rows, and you got a nice open spot to, uh... to put your polywire up.
Um... milo, if you plant milo too thick, cuz you can grow milo with a grain drill, you can do 7 and 1/2 inch
(26:17):
rows, but if you're not careful, you'll get the population so high that you create more of a
forage crop than you do a grain crop. Uh... 15 inch milo works really well for a lot of producers. 20 inch milo,
uh... 30 really does good. So I... I see no reason to... to not plant 30 inch rows. I have producers in
(26:39):
parts of the state that are predominantly cattle, uh... and they don't have a lot of corn production,
and so they're faced with using the no-till drill from the Soil and Water office. And... and that works!
I... I encourage producers to, uh... to use those drills. Maybe let's block off every other hole, and we can
turn that drill into a 15 inch spacing instead of 7 and 1/2, but... but that works. Um... if you're
(27:05):
new to planting milo, using a corn planter, uh... you get the... the milo, you know, cups or plates going, but
just remember, we don't want to plant it as deep as corn. Milo seed needs to be half inch minimum
to 1 inch maximum. So somewhere in that half to... to 1 inch depth is all you want to do. 3/4 is really good.
(27:26):
You know, with corn we have a minimum depth of inch and a half for... for the root development. Uh...
but milo, inch and a half would be too deep. So... (Tim) And you can no-till it like bean stubble. (Rusty) Oh! Absolutely.
(Tim) That's no... that's no problem. (Rusty) Yeah, no... no reason to not no-till. You bet. Um... after that, you know, you...
(27:47):
you... you did your soil test. You took your sample to your Extension office, and you had your soil
test done ahead of time, right? So you know your P and K needs. So we're going to put on the P and K,
the recommendations. It's going to be, uh... not that much reduced than a... than a, you know, like a 0-60-80,
typical rate of P and K for a corn crop. There'll be something similar for this milo. But we will
(28:13):
find that the nitrate and nitrogen needs are a little less. Um... I... I like a minimum, uh... 120 units of
nitrogen on a milo field, uh... but I don't really see a need to go past maybe 150. So somewhere in there.
That... that... that will be plenty of nitrogen to... to push the yield for rainfall. (Tim) And put... and put that
(28:35):
N down however you like whether it's anhydrous in the... (Rusty) Mmhmm (Tim) ...fall or spring or... or top dressing later
on. (Rusty) Yeah, I'm... I'm a person that... that appreciates anhydrous. Um... I like spring applications, especially in my
no-till fields. I just don't like having those tracks through the winter for... for rain to sort of channel.
(28:58):
Um... but, yeah... spring applied, but er... nitrogen. We have producers that'll work in urea. You
know, SUPERU or... or different nitrogen products. Ammonium nitrate if you can find it. Um... but just
realize you have the potential for volatilization if you just leave urea lying on top, so if you're...
if you're no-tilling, you got to time those rains a little better. If you're working your ground, well...
(29:23):
you can incorporate the urea, so... (Tim) Or you can sidedress liquid N. (Rusty) You can. Uh... split applications
are always a good idea if you've got the time and equipment to do that. Um... personally with milo, I do
a spring application, uh... uh... pre-plant, and then... and it's the full amount, and get along just fine with
(29:44):
it. (Tim) And back on the other fertility. Any special micros that grain sorghum is... ? I don't... I can't
think of any that... that... you know, sulfur becomes a big issue at time in wheat and corn. (Rusty) Yeah, I'm not
a micronutrient expert for sure. Um... I haven't found a... a benefit as of yet to adding any of
(30:06):
the micros. I mean, we do the standard soil test and, uh... just follow the University recommendations
is what we've been doing. (Tim) All right. And then your herbicide, it's... it's pretty well laid out. (Rusty) You're
a... you're a grain farmer when we're doing this now, so you want to keep the weeds controlled.
Weeds will take your yield away, you know, really quick. We have a lot of the cattle producers that
(30:33):
are going to graze milo, they... they do this the first year and then they asked the question,
"Well, why don't we, uh... incorporate some other green plants in there? Some protein sources?"
Uh... well, milo is very hard to overseed to cover into a companion crop because there's so much
(30:53):
light interception. Milo shades the ground out very well. (Tim) Those nice leaves it has. (Rusty) All those leaves, um... and
that's a benefit to weed control, but early on we have to have early season, uh... weed control. And, um...
yeah, a typical atrazine + metolachlor combination really works well to help protect that plant
(31:15):
in those first few weeks of life when, uh... when weeds can take it if we don't control it. (Tim) Let's
say I really wanted to harvest that grain. So I harvest that grain, can I graze them afterwards
then? (Rusty) So, uh... it's common to graze milo stalks after a grain harvest just like grazing corn stubble. Um...
(31:36):
but realize the energy's gone cuz you took the grain away. (Tim) Okay. (Rusty) And so your carrying capacity
is much reduced. But there's... there's some good to to be had. Milo is interesting when you compare
it to corn. Corn is a plant that... that dies. Okay? It grows through its cycle, and corn will, uh... dry
(31:58):
down, and it will die. Milo is killed. The frost finally kills milo. So it's green. It's growing. It's
full of juice. It's full of sugars and sap fluids, and frost kills it. Um... so you can go into the
winter into a milo field and take a pair of pliers out of your pocket and squeeze a milo stalk and
(32:20):
squeeze juice out. So there's... there's carbs. There's... there's sugars in that... in that liquid, in that milo
stalk. And so even after grain harvest, cattle can go in on some fresh, combined milo and get a lot of
good out of that. (Tim) But now, when frost kills, you need to leave off... the cattle off a few weeks, don't we?
(32:41):
(Rusty) I... I tell producers that you can graze milo anytime of the year except for two weeks. (Tim) Yeah. (Rusty) And, uh... so
prussic acid is always a concern. When we look at,uh... at... at fall frost, um... so that middle October to
first of November, that two weeks in there is a... is a time you don't want to be on a milo field.
(33:02):
Uh... the... the tissue damage from frost, uh... causes prussic acid formation which is very similar, I'm
told, to like cyanide poisoning, and it will kill cattle quickly. Um... so, but it volatilizes and... and it
leaves the plant. It will... it will move away. Uh... but we need, you know, a couple of weeks time for that
(33:24):
to occur, and then it's safe to... to graze all winter long. So we graze milo green, uh... dough stage. You know,
you... you can utilize it during summer slump when your fescue pastures aren't... aren't performing so
well. (Tim) So we can start August then? (Rusty) You can. I say you can graze milo any... any month, any time of the year
(33:45):
except for those two weeks at fall frost. (Tim) Cuz your son William had a idea. I thought it was a great
idea. Let's... let's save our pastures, let them stockpile in August/September/October, and graze our grain sorghum,
(Rusty) Right. (Tim) ...and then turn them loose in the... in the winter on their stockpiled. (Rusty) Absolutely. So we've,
uh... started doing some of that where we plant milo this time of the year, uh... and we're going
(34:08):
to actually have more than we need for winter, so it's going to give us opportunity to graze some
green during the summer. So we hit summer slump, or we want to stay off of some pastures, and we
do some August, uh... nitrogen on 'em for stockpiling, uh... and we need somewhere to go with... with cattle... yeah,
we can graze some... some milo green. The interesting thing about grazing green milo is it regrows. You
(34:33):
can... you can have milo that's in the dough stage, you can graze it to the ground and cattle will eat
it to the dirt! (Tim) When it's in the dough stage? (Rusty) Mmhmm. When it's in the dough stage, they take the whole plant
all the way to the dirt. (Tim) About 8-10 inches above? (Rusty) And you get off of that, it'll grow back. You can actually get a second
graze off of that before... before fall frost. And the growing point from milo stays below ground.
(34:58):
See corn, the growing point, uh... comes up above the soil surface, and when cattle graze that off, um...
it doesn't grow back. But with milo, that growing point stays below soil level, and it'll grow back.
(Tim) Now are you worried about in drought, your nitrate poisoning? (Rusty) So... we have, I've got producers, uh... in
(35:23):
Montgomery County that have grazed milo every winter since 1996. This is nothing new. Now, this is new for
a lot of people just now hearing about this, but I've got producers who have been doing this for 30
years, and we've yet to have a founder issue. We've yet to have a nitrate poisoning issue. I would use
(35:47):
some caution in my nitrogen applications. Don't... don't go crazy. Don't overdo it. (Tim) 120 is still okay?
(Rusty) I... I say 120 is a minimum, uh... and I would top out at 140... 150 if I had a real high yield environment,
that'd be fine. Um... but we know that... that nitrates will accumulate higher in the lower portions of
(36:09):
the stalk. Um... it works to our advantage that in the winter time, cattle... they don't eat that bottom 18
inches of the stalk, so it's kind of like cutting silage where you kind of chop a little higher
if you're in drought conditions and you're worried about nitrate, uh... accumulations. So the cattle are
just automatically leaving that portion behind. Uh... we didn't over fertilize to begin with, so... so far,
(36:33):
so good. No issues. (Tim) All right. So your publication walks us through all that? (Rusty) Yep. Guide sheet G2079,
'Strip-Grazing Milo as a Low-Cost Winter Forage'. Absolutely.
We... we try to cover some of the, you know, the benefits and the things to think about.
Uh... it's a... it's a good introduction. It gets your appetite stirred up so you'll give me
(36:57):
a phone call. (Tim )Now how do they get this publication? (Rusty) So this publication is hot off the press. Uh... it's not
even out yet, but on the Extension website would be the best place to go search this. So if you go
to, uh... Extension.Missouri.edu, uh... on your browser, and then there will be a search... search box, and
(37:19):
you can just search for 'milo'. In fact, if you just search 'milo', you're going to find several
articles and stories about this whole grazing situation. (Tim) And there you have your... well, on grazing,
but is there also a... just a, uh... MU guide just on milo production? If you've never produced it, maybe you
want to read some more about it? (Rusty) Yes. What you'll find when you go to that search box and type in
(37:42):
'milo', the majority of the articles are going to be about utilizing it through grazing, (that's kind of
the hot topic right now) but, um... you'll find some production guides in there as well. (Tim) Good. Good.
All right! Cuz this is a... might be new for some folks... (Rusty) Oh, absolutely! (Tim) ...to... to plant this. (Rusty) Well, it's very novel, you know... it's a
very it's a... a very novel take on, uh... on feeding cattle. (Tim) And the nice thing, if the cattle prices
(38:07):
tank and grain sorghum goes up, which probably doesn't going to happen, you can always harvest it
for grain. (Rusty) That's right. And I see producers that, uh... that plant milo for grazing and then in at harvest
time the... the... the prices per bushel are just so high that they just can't stand it, and they bring
the combine in the field. And when they finish, I... I go to them, they... they tell me about this after the
(38:31):
fact, and I say, "Well, you realize that based on the MU Extension Ag Econ Crop Management Budget,
okay? If you look at all the expenses for producing milo that 40%... 4-0 percent of the total production cost is
(38:52):
combine, trucking, grain storage transfer. So, yes, you... you went to a higher, you know, price and you... you
harvested that bushel, but you... you increased your expenses by another 40%. So we stop spending money
on milo when we plant it and put the herbicide down. (Tim) Right. (Rusty) You know, uh... so 60% of normal production
(39:17):
expense is... is all that you're going to have in this. We're going to let the cattle be the
harvesters. It's a beautiful thing. They got mouths. They got feet. Let's... let's let them go to it. (Tim) And
they're putting those nutrients back into a better form even. (Rusty) Oh, recycling it! Goes through that rumen, comes
out the other end. Absolutely. Stays on the farm. It's... it's a good thing! And we're... we're learning
(39:38):
more all the time, uh... looking at the benefits of... so cover crops are great for our... our lands, right? But
now we've got research going on, uh... in multiple states where we're trying to evaluate the value
of the cover crop going through the rumen and then coming back out on the ground. How does that
activate? And how does that do what it does? (Tim) See... you could have a nice cover crop, graze that up until
(40:06):
now, (Rusty) Right. (Tim) ...and then no-till a milo right into it, (Rusty) Yes. (Tim) ...and then start grazing again in August. (Rusty) Yes. It... it's
very interesting. There's a lot of potential here. Um... one of the things... so the work that I've done
the last several years has been just a fall-calving, cow/calf herd getting through the... getting through the
winter. And we can take take that single, largest expense of a cow/calf operator, and we can chop that
(40:31):
in half, okay? You're going to feed over a dollar a day per cow in hay. I'm going to feed 50 cents
or less per day per cow in milo cost. So we're going to chop that in half. All right. But now I
want to move into, you brought it up earlier, the stockers, or you know... conditioning cattle for the
feed lot, that sort of thing. What kind of value can we add to our milo when we're... when we're pushing
(40:57):
that to... to muscle on a... on a frame? So I think there's some good opportunities to do some work
there as well. (Tim)Yes. One of our farmer friends who direct sales to the public, some of his, uh...
customers want a no-corn/no-soy product because of the GMO contamination. You could have it right
(41:22):
here, couldn't you? (Rusty) Marketing, I mean... you know, you... you... there... there's as many avenues to market a
product, you know, uh... as there are people to... to... to purchase it. Um... you know, so milo is... has remained
a non-GMO crop if that is a value to you. I mean, there... there's an option there. You got a high, dense
(41:44):
energy grain crop that, um... is going to be non-GMO. Um... yeah. I... my focus honestly has just been on cost
of production, (Tim) Right. (Rusty) ...and it just... it just works in our favor that, um... milo as opposed to corn is a
better material for direct grazing. (Tim) Okay. (Rusty) Well, let's compare some things. Uh... everybody has heard that...
(42:10):
that milo is, uh... difficult to digest, for example. And you got to process it before... (Tim) The seed! (Rusty) The seed. The
grain. Um... when we harvest grain, uh... sorghum, that... that product has to be ground before you can feed it
to hogs or chickens, or what have you, so it can be digested. Well, that works to our advantage. Corn, if
(42:32):
we were grazing corn, that material is so easily digested that it would be easy to overload the
rumen and... and... and get too... too many carbs going too fast. Right? And our livestock animal science people
can explain this much better than I. But it is the fact that the milo is a little slower to break
down in the rumen that works to our advantage. This is why we don't see the acidosis issues. This
(42:58):
is why we don't see the overeating issues in... in milo that you would have to be concerned about
in... in corn. The other thing is just the physical height of milo. You don't think about it, but we
noticed it with the sheep and goats. Cattle will walk through milo and... and not be excited about
it, and they'll just wander the entire field if you... if you let them. A sheep or a goat will not
(43:24):
do that. They stay on the outside edges. And so, just observations are that the sheep, when they
walk into a milo field, they're blind. They can't see. The milo's taller than they are, so they're...
they're... they're not able to see predators perhaps. Where a cow can walk into milo, and she can just
look over the top of the grain, and she sees all of her surroundings. And so, that got us to
(43:49):
thinking about when cattle get into a corn field, if... if cattle ever get into a corn field, you... you
got to have some time for them to calm down. They get excited. And I wonder how much of that is about
not being able to see. (Tim) You're... you're... you're about like a sheep in a milo field there. (Rusty) Exactly. And so... so
it is kind of nice. Uh... we're looking for a crop to stand all through the winter, so the... the milo does
(44:14):
a little better job of that than the corn does. I think the grain of milo is easier for a cow to
get into her mouth than that ear of corn that's dried down. Um... there's just a few things about
that I think give milo the advantage over corn. (Tim) And it's pretty resilient out there... the grain.
(Rusty) Oh, yeah. Yeah, it... it weathers well. Um... there... there have been some, uh... forage and... and grain, you know,
(44:40):
tests done, you know about, um... that have showing that there's very little degradation in feed
quality through the winter. Right? (Tim) Of the leaf and the grain. (Rusty) Right! (Tim) So that's... that's great! It's just
as good in November as it is... in March as it is in November. (Rusty) Exactly. (Tim) And no telling how good it is
in September and October. (Rusty) Right. (Tim) So... all right. Well, Rusty, anything you want to conclude with? (Rusty) No, just
(45:05):
that, uh... sometimes the, uh... some of the best ideas are some things you've never heard of and never tried
before. I would encourage producers with... with a cow herd to, uh... consider a small patch of milo.
Don't try to go from zero to... to a full winter's, uh... supply. Just grow yourself 30... 45 days worth.
(45:27):
Right? I'm telling you, you're going to get 400 cow days to the acre if you can pull off 120
bushel yield. Um... so you know your herd size. Do the math. Maybe you need five acres to get you through
a month. Maybe you need a couple acres to get you a month. Try it. Enjoy that savings. Make your mistakes,
uh... on a small area, and then the next year you'll be ready to go bigger. (Tim) Cuz you had a producer try
(45:52):
it this year on a big scale. (Rusty) You could say that! Uh... I had a producer in Southwest Missouri,
the first year he did that was this year, uh... and he has a 600 head cow herd that... that he wintered on
this, and he absolutely loved it. He went from zero milo graze to 115 acres. And he, uh... he did the math and
(46:17):
came out with the hay savings that he felt that he had and with the hay prices in his area... yeah.
He... he saved somewhere between $90 and $100,000 in... in feed expense on that... on that herd this winter. (Tim) And that
milo cost him, what? $25,000 to... to put in? (Rusty) Right. So the... the hay savings, uh... was about $140,000. (Tim) Oh, okay.
(46:41):
(Rusty) So after we discount the cost of production of the milo, I'm saying he put $90 to $100,000 in his
pocket. (Tim) Oh! (Rusty) That was... that was 100 grand he did not spend! Okay? And... and even bigger than that was the
cost he would have had. He would have had to sell cows. And when... when he... he was faced with being forced
(47:04):
to reduce the herd, uh... for no other reason than no feed available, and when you do that you lose
genetics, right? And now you've got to start over. You got to build those genetics back. So there's
an expense there. (Tim) When cattle prices are high. (Rusty) Yep. So there... there's that, you know... there's a pound and
there's a price per pound expense, but then there's the time investment in... in cultivating up the
(47:27):
genetics, the selections, that you want and that sort of thing. So he... he made savings beyond just dollars
this year, and he did not have to sell any cattle. (Tim) That's... that's great. Well, that's all that we have
today, and we can talk for another hour or two on this! But remember, uh... it's publication, what number?
(Rusty) G2079. Or you can just search the Extension website for,
(47:51):
you know, 'strip grazing milo' or 'milo' and... and this will come up.
I will throw out my phone number. (Tim) Yes! (Rusty) Uh... the Extension office is 573-564-3733.
Give us a call. I'll be glad to talk to you about... (Tim) Or your email too. (Rusty) Yep. Email me at
Leerw@missouri.edu. Spell out Missouri. Uh... don't abbreviate it. And it's l-e-e-r-w.
(48:19):
(Tim) All right. Well, thanks so much, Rusty. And this is it for Tim's Take on a very
exciting and hot topic! (Rusty) You bet. (Tim) We'll see you next time.
[♫]
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