Grazing Winter Canola in the Southern Great Plains

1
Grazing Winter Canola in the Southern Great
Plains Things to Consider.
William F. Heer1, Charlie Rife3, Vic Martin1,
Dave Mengel1, Mike Stamm2. 1KSU Department of
Agronomy, 2KSU and OSU, 3Blue Sun
Non-Grazed VS Grazed
Discussion Canola (rapeseed) has been used
as a high quality annual forage in Europe for
centuries. It has been grazed, ensiled, and
baled for hay. It is suggested that canola
forage be treated more as a concentrate than a
forage crop. This a result of its nutritive
values and dry matter content when compared to
other crops (Tables 1,2,and 3). Canola
should make up no more than 75 of the ration
with the other 25 made up of a high fiber hay to
avoid some of the animal health problems
associated with grazing the crop. Some of
the animal health concerns are, nitrate
poisoning, bloat, blindness, photosensitization
(becoming sensitive to sunlight), goiter, pulpy
kidney, along with other digestive and
respiratory problems. Poisoning by Brassicas
is more serous under drought conditions and where
stock were introduced with little or no gut fill.
Most deaths occur in the second or third day
after introduction. The potential for
nitrate poisoning increases with high soil N,
stunted plants with purple discoloration, cloudy
rainy weather, and feeding soon after a frost.
It is wise to have some form of bloat guard
available to avoid bloat problems. Canola
that is grazed needs to be closely monitored so
that the animals do not graze it too closely and
damage the crown. Animals should be removed
early enough to allow the plant to recover prior
to bolting in the spring. Figure 1 shows the
effects of over grazing.
Fig. 2. Forage plots harvested with Carter
Harvester, KSU SCEF, Dec. 2003.
Fig. 1. Grazed and Non Grazed canola in SC
Kansas, April 2005

Introduction One of the potential benefits of
winter canola in the southern Great Plains is
that of a forage. It has the same growth cycle
as winter wheat, it is planted in the fall, over
winters as a rosette and begins its reproductive
growth in the late winter early spring. If
sufficient foliage is produced the producer
should be able to realize some gain through using
winter canola as a source for grazing during part
of its vegetative growth cycle. This Poster
presents some of the preliminary data and what
producers should be aware of as they look to
grazing winter canola in the southern Great
Plains.