Winter grazing as an alternative to mulching or mowing grass clover swards

Summary

Management factors like the type of defoliation and seed mixture influence yield and forage quality of grass clover mixtures. In comparison to harvesting, grazing is less cost intensive. For economical reasons a maximum duration of grazing period is required. Grazing over winter can cause pasture damages. This problem is of minor relevance for grass clover grown on arable land in the last production year, which is ploughed in the following spring. This study compares different grass clover mixtures concerning yield, forage quality and suitability for winter grazing.With this background, tall fescue exerted more significant effect on the dry matter yield than perennial ryegrass. White clover showed significant superiority over all the other tested species, with regard to protein and energy contents. Otherwise, swards with red clover and alfalfa had a significantly higher legume contents and produced higher dry matter and N yields than the other swards. Plots grazed in different periods over winter showed a clear significant loss of grazable matter. The highest loss of dry matter which also was accompanied by a decrease in crude protein and energy content was observed in mixtures with Lucerne. Under mulching systems and early grazing high nitrate losses were measured. After ploughing, the early grazing systems resulted in lower spring wheat yields than grazing in January or cutting systems.