“How many cattle should I put on my cover crops and how long should they graze?” We went right to North Dakota State University's Miranda Meehan to get an answer and here’s what she said. Read more in this article from AgWeek.

Adding livestock to a cover crop system is considered the last step in bringing cover crops full circle in an operation. One Kansas grower and livestock producer shares insights from 35-plus years of no-till, 23 years of cover cropping and using livestock to increase his soil’s health and productivity while significantly reducing input costs.

The university, in partnership, with the University of California at Davis; University of Minnesota; The Organic Center in Washington, D.C.; and the USDA-Agricultural Research Service in Beltsville, Maryland, were collectively awarded a nearly $1 million grant to “investigate the benefits of livestock integration through cover-crop grazing on bacterial population dynamics, food safety, and soil and environmental health,” said Dr. Fawzy Hashem, a research associate professor in the university’s Department of Agriculture, Food and Resource Sciences. Read more in this article from Lancaster Farming.

Options for cover crops after a June harvest of 2019 corn with anticipated crop in 2021 being soybeans. If you have livestock, then the options are limitless and focusing on including a cool season grass (oats or barley), warm season grass (sorghum), cool season legume (peas) and cool season broadleaf (radish) could work really well. Read more in this article from AgWeek.

Cover crops have been gaining a reemerging acceptance over the last decade, with very few producers disagreeing about the potential soil health benefits of adding cover crops to their farming operation. However, with low commodity prices producers are trying to reduce expenses on inputs, especially on inputs with a varying or unknown return. Read more in this article from South Dakota State University Extension.

The Stiefvaters use cover crops as additional feedstuffs for their 140-head cow-calf operation near Salem, SD.