Foxtail Millet for Fast, Budget-Friendly Forage
Keith Berns and Dale Strickler walk you through foxtail millet varieties—German millet and White Wonder—and when to use them. Learn why these millets are heat and drought tolerant, grow fast (60 days shown here), and cost less per acre than most forage options. We cover yield expectations, harvest timing, and the one drawback that matters.
View Transcript
0:00 If you're on a really tight budget and don't have a lot of time to grow the maximum amount of forage, these millets are pretty good choice. These are what we call the foxtail.
0:11 Millet family. Where Dale is standing is a German millet and where I'm standing is white wonder millet, which is kind of an improved selection out of this.
0:21 They're very similar so we're going to talk about them together here. But like all millets they're very heat and drought tolerant, they grow very fast. What you're looking at here is 60 days.
0:31 Of growth and you know we certainly could have harvested a hay crop off this a couple weeks ago already.
0:38 So Dale, tell us a little bit about German millet, the white wonder millet.
0:42 And how and where you would use these.
0:44 Well, you hit the nail on the head. Cheap, I mean as far as cost per acre, these German.
0:52 Or these foxtail millets I should say are probably the number one on my list if someone says I've got six weeks I need a hay crop and I need and I don't want to spend any
1:05 Money. Here's your option right here. Now one of the drawbacks of them is well, they do you don't get any more yield in three.
1:24 Cut wonder. But as far as water use efficiency, drought tolerance, yield in six weeks.
1:34 and cost per acre they're tough to beat for that. They're not a top end yielder and one other drawback is you know once these heads get developed.
1:45 These little awns here on the heads get kind of hard and bristly and they can cause some mouth irritation in animals. You definitely do want to put them up for.
1:56 Hay before these seed heads get developed, so probably six weeks or so you should be putting hay up. Yeah, I'd be looking at putting this up about six weeks after planting. They're a great double crop after a small grain harvest, even in northern areas you can make this work.