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Detailed information and articles on grass seed and related matters |
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Lucerne – a Safe Bet
Lucerne often appears to be heading for a revival, Then along comes a wet summer and there is not much interest.
It has been grown for more than two hundred years and is a major forage crop in the USA and France. In fact in these two countries alone it accounts for 13 million hectares. So what makes this crop attractive to farmers abroad and what benefits can it offer UK producers?
Lucerne is drought tolerant – this is its trump card – and once established it produces regular and reliable yields for 4 years or more.
The reason for this regularity comes from a root structure which is known to penetrate to a depth of more than two meters and thus enables moisture to be drawn when other shallow rooted crops have stopped growing.
Lucerne silage yields are in the region of 15 tonnes DM/Ha which is comparable with Italian ryegrass. The latter will marginally out-yield lucerne in a wet season,but lucerne provides insurance against a dry time and has the advantage of lasting twice as long. It is not just yield and persistence that makes lucerne viable. It also requires no nitrogen, as in common with other legumes it fixes its own nitrogen from the atmosphere and has a high protein content of 15-20%.
So why isn’t lucerne more widely grown?
Well, it does have some restrictions. Firstly, it is important that the crop is grown in the correct field. It will not perform well unless the soil pH is in the region of 6.2-7.8 and is well drained. Lucerne will not tolerate poor drainage or acid soils. Sowing time is critical and it is best sown the spring, undersown into an arable silage barley is ideal, or by late July perhaps after an early harvested cereal. Late autumn sowings will not give reliable results.
Will silage making be difficult?
Modern procedures with equipment for rapid wilting and the wide variety of appropriate additives for effective fermentation have dispelled many of the fears that farmers once had about lucerne. Growing lucerne is different and will take some adjusting to, but if guidelines are followed there is nothing difficult about it as the principles are the same as grass silage. Once lucerne is established, growers can expect a first silage cut in mid May followed by three further cuts during the season.
Can lucerne be grazed?
It is not recommended that lucerne be grazed by cattle as it carries the risk of bloat. However, it can be grazed by sheep at the end of the growing season to tidy up prior to the winter.
So does lucerne have a future?
In the wet western areas of the UK where rainfall can be relied upon there are few advantages over ryegrass but in drier regions where sufficient rainfall can not be guaranteed then lucerne offers a good degree of certainty.
Lucerne – A Farmer’s Experience
Mike Trevena farmed at the Cotehouse Farm Partnership, Bampton in Oxfordshire, a farm of 470 acres is in the Thames Valley and with 118 Holsteins, milked three times daily. This district, has an average annual in the region of 20 inches. The soil varies from silty loam to sand and gravel.
When Mr Trevena arrived at Cotehouse Farm he had previously experienced growing lucerne in Worcestershire. Eager to establish lucerne on his new farm he grew the crop for five years but had to stop for a while when the soil borne disease Verticillium Wilt became a problem. But in recent years he has been able to grow the crop again thanks to newer, disease resistant varieties.
Currently, one fifth of the dairy cows’ diet comes from lucerne silage with the rest from grass, maize, straw and fodder beet. Mr Trevena found that lucerne was the ideal complement to maize, being high in protein and low on fibre.
Mr Trevena’s main reason for growing lucerne was as an insurance against dry summers and low rainfall. ‘It produces four to five cuts of silage each year,’ says Trevena. ‘and gave consistently high production through two dry summers with DM yields in excess of 15T/ha. It is critical to make the silage well.’ he insists. ‘it should be cut at first sign of flowering with a mower/conditioner then wilted for 36 hours being careful to avoid excess movement so that leaf loss is kept to a minimum. It is essential to use a silage innoculant and in my experience big baling results in less wastage than clamped silage,’ he said.
Mr Trevena usually direct seeded his lucerne in the early autumn. However after dry weather in the autumn, he sowed in the spring and added a half rate of barley seed as an arable silage in order to push up the yield in the establishment year. Weeds were not a problem and herbicides were not usually needed. The lucerne crop is left in the ground for 5 years and is sown with a non-aggressive companion grass mixture of cocksfoot and timothy which helps fill the base of the crop and assist the silage making process.
Based on an article in “Forage Matters” 1999.
- by Ian Wilkinson of Cotswold Seeds
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