A new two-year grant recently awarded to the Manitoba Forage Council by the Greencover Canada Program: Technical Assistance Component, will help producers access new Best Management Practices (BMP’s) to optimize the use of oats for swath-grazing to extend the grazing season. This practice will reduce the confinement feeding of cattle, which in turn will reduce winter feeding costs and manure concentration in feedlot pens. This project will be carried out in collaboration with Dr. Shannon Scott at the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Research Centre in Brandon.

Manitoba producers often late-seed annual cereals for swath-grazing to extend the grazing season. However, due to the timing of seeding and seasonal plant growth, late-seeded oats for swath-grazing are highly susceptible to a number of leaf diseases, causing tissue damage and loss of both quality and palatability. Therefore, an important component of the project will be a two-year replicated grazing trial conducted at the Brandon Research Centre which will examine the effect of cultivar and fungicide treatment on the yield, nutritive value and palatability of late-seeded oats.

The oats grazing trial will measure the importance of cultivar selection, impacts of expected plant injury, and the effect of fungicide (Tilt®) on oats yield and quality. Two cultivars of oats (Avena sativa) which vary in their resistance to leaf diseases will be compared. The cultivar “HiFi” (Seed Depot Seeds, Pilot Mound, MB) is resistant to crown rust and shows some resistance to stem rust and the cultivar “CDC Baler” (FarmPure Seeds, Regina, SK) is susceptible to all rust types. The hypothesis is that use of a rust-resistant oats cultivar for swath-grazing will be advantageous over use of a more susceptible variety due to improvements in yield, nutritive value and utilization by cattle. In addition, use of a foliar-applied fungicide to control rust will confer an economic advantage due to increased yield, nutritive value and utilization by cattle, especially with a rust-susceptible cultivar.

An economic evaluation of all treatments will be compiled. The results of this grazing trial will be used to formulate BMP’s for forage quality management of swath-grazing oats. The second component of the project will include a variety of technology transfer activities (e.g., fact sheets, producer seminars, and field days) which will promote comprehension and adoption of these BMP’s.