Build a Spring Forage Mix with the SmartMix Calculator

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0:04 All right well hello everyone. I'm here with my colleague Dylan and we're going to kind of discuss spring cover crop forage options. Spring times upon us we're at mid-March here, temperatures are warming up and just wanted to kind of talk through some options. So Dylan, could you maybe walk us through some of the different cover crop mixes that you're putting together for guys right now?

0:27 Yeah absolutely Nathan, I'd be happy to do that. So I'll walk you guys, I'll walk everybody through kind of what I like to put together for a pretty general forage mix, spring forage mix. You know, there's

0:41 Certainly different custom mixes we can do depending on your situation but this is a general mix and I like to put together. I would start, if you want, you can get on our smart mix calculator at smartmix.greencoverseat.com. I actually utilize this daily because it's a really great quote tool for me to put together quotes, just even as a sales rep.

1:04 Yeah I have an account already but it'll ask you to start an account and then you want to go into to start a mix and from here we'll name our mix. For this one we'll call it Grandpa's East 40 for kind of a fun day and we'll call it 40 acres worth.

1:24 We're gonna have no irrigation. This is my hometown zip code. You can put whatever zip code is your hometown, and from there it'll kind of calculate average rainfall for all states and give you a better idea of what species may work better in your area.

1:40 We'll go to bagging option for this. We'll put in a tote bag. We are not certified organic, but if you are you can certainly click yes. You have three different options for seating: drilled, broadcast, and broadcast with incorporation. Incorporation could mean tillage, maybe you're spreading it for cattle to trample in, but for this example we're going to do a drilled cover and I think probably the

2:06 Next cash crop would be wheat generally. That's what most guys are going to be getting to after spring forage mix. There's just not enough time to get a spring cash crop in generally behind one of these mixes, especially if you're grazing it.

2:19 So we'll leave it at seating today and just be out there for about two months. There's three different goals you can select. You're only required to select one, and that's what we'll do for now and we'll just call it supplemental. A lot of these species will take care of a lot of goals just by even focusing on one goal.

2:41 From there you'll have the smart mix auto adjust button if this.

2:45 If it's your first time, I would leave that on. I leave it on until I get my species selected and then I shut it off and kind of adjust my pounds from there.

2:54 From there you're going to want to add your species. You've got an excellent, good, marginal, and risky categories. Most generally if you're probably staying in the excellent to good, that's probably where you need to be.

3:07 As we're looking at legumes, my two favorite legumes for a grazing mix is going to be spring forage peas because they're a great protein, highly mycorrhizal, very good for the soil, really brings those mycorrhizal colonies together. And then crimson clover, nice crimson clover that will put on.

3:26 Pretty big leaves and a lot of tons out there for you. When I look at grasses I look at probably your most common spring grass and that's going to be spring oats. Again highly palatable, good tonnage, high quality feed, and then to kind of fill in, I like to find some annual rye grass. Small seed but very leafy, very leafy texture again, high quality forage can really bring some tons into that mix.

3:56 And then when I'm selecting brassicas my go-to is going to be kale and collards, and that's just mainly for their leaf texture, very palatable leaf, big leaf, a lot of forage there for those cattle and probably the two.

4:12 Broad leaves that you could select would be flax or facilia. Flax cattle aren't really going to touch, which is okay. It leaves some residue out there for that next cash crop, again another product. Nice puts on a nice blue flower that can contract beneficial pollinators. The facilia will do that as well. If this is going to be a haying option I would not select flax, I would go with facilia. Flax you may have some issues with in that product, but with this being a grazing product we're going to select flax.

4:48 So yeah, with auto mix adjust button on it, it just auto adjusts and divides these out evenly to get close to 125.

5:44 Better what we're doing and I try to stick around a million, million and a half seeds per acre and I think that puts you around somewhere around 20, 25 seeds per square foot. And this would be your mix density of the mix.

6:01 And it can walk you through the full rate of legumes, grasses, brassicas, the weight and the percentage of the seeds. So if I'm going to really customize this mix, this is generally a mix that I put together: two pounds of clover, about eight pounds of spring forged peas, I'll do two pounds of rye grass and probably anywhere from 30 to 35 pounds of Hayden oats, you know, just depending on where you're at and your rainfall environment.

6:28 When it comes to Nebraska's I like a pound and a half of total brassicas so I do about a pound of collards and a half pound of kale by flax since it's not much of a grazer just more of a soil soil beneficiary I put it about three pounds.

6:45 And as you can see that puts us at about a million and a half seeds per acre so probably in a more rain-fed environment irrigated situation this is where I'd be. I may knock some of these down a little bit just to get that seeding rate down a little bit in a drier area but that's Nathan that's generally the mix I like to put together any thoughts or comments yeah I think that's really good like you said what guys need to.

7:11 Consider on those seeding rates, you know, their fertility, their soils, the moisture situation. I think that million to million and a half's kind of that sweet spot. You know, the more seeds you put out there, likely the more tonnage you're gonna get, but also the more of the seed mix is going to cost, so there's going to be a trade-off there.

7:32 You know, a couple other species I think a lot of guys could or should consider this time of year: you know, spring barley, spring triticale, those other cereal options. But I think this is good—this is an opportunity to build some soil, you know, improve organic matter, you know, provide.

7:49 That protection. But also like you said we're providing forage. Guys should consider, you know, potential hay mixes. You know, hay inventories are at some record lows in a lot of states. So we're coming out of this drought of last year. We have some moisture now. You know, guys should look at opportunities to take advantage of some of that moisture and maybe beef up some hay inventories. So yeah, I think that's really good and hopefully that's helpful to our customers out there.

8:14 So thanks for walking us through that. All right, thanks Nathan. Yeah, we'll see you later. Thanks everyone. Bye.