Comparison of Three Winter Grazing Mixtures in a Pecan Orchard of the Georgia Coastal Plain

HE cool-season dormancy of pecan trees makes it pracT t i c a l to inter-crop a pecan orchard during the winter season. Some major difficulties are the low hanging branches which interf ere with machinery operation and the surface roots which hinder plowing or deep cultivation. Most of these difficulties are avoided through the use of winter cereals for grazing purposes since these do not have to be cultivated or harvested with machinery. The purpose of this study was to evaluate by a grazing test three winter forage combinations in a pecan orchard. All combinations are used widely and give good results under open field conditions. The. yearly and mean animal performance for the 3 combinations (fertilized with 500 pounds of a 4-12-12 and 100 pounds of nitrogen as ammonium nitrate per acre) are given in table 1. The gains varied with the grazing mixture and were especially variable with years. With one excepfion, that of the mixture of oats, ryegrass, and crimson clover in 1954-55, the rye and vetch combination produced the greatest gains per acre during the 3-year period. Also the rye and vetch mixture afforded 27 to 36% greater carrying capacity on the average than the other combinations. Beef yields from the rye-vetch pasture were 64% and 45% greater than the next best mixture in 1952-53 and 1953-54, respectively. For the 3-year period the rye and vetch combination yielded 12% more beef than the next best combination of oats, ryegrass, and crimson clover. The carrying capacity of the rye-vetch combination was 63% greater than the next best mixture in 1953-54 and averaged 27% greater carrying capacity than the next best mixhire for the 3-year period. Generally, the rye and vetch carried 11/2 animals per acre, whereas the oat mixtures carried only 1 animal per acre. Both Southland oats and Abruzzi rye were outstanding in thleir early fall growth but were dissimilar in their distribution of herbage. Southland oats was more noticeably injuied by grazing than Abruzzi rye, with the oats producing less growth and slower recovery as the season progressed. This weakness of Southland oats was somewhat compensated for by the ryegrass and crimson clover componmt of the mixture or by the vetch, but the compensation by ietch was considerably later than ryegrass and crimson clover. On the other hand, vetch made very little contribution to the rye and vetch mixture due to the rapid and dominant growth of rye early in the grazing season. These studies suggest that vetch could have been omitted from this mixture without seriously affecting production. Belownormal rainfall in 1952 and 1953 may have been injurious to the legumes. The average daily gain per animal grazing each mixture duriing the 3-year period was better than 2 pounds, which indicates that all mixtures were high in nutritive value. Table 2-Average cost and returns from 3 winter grazin combinations in a pecan orchard dbring a +year periocf