This year looks to be better from a forage supply standpoint than last year. Conditions were good for first and second cuttings of hay and there's been some decent third cuttings out there. Still, the late season dryness on top of last year's season-long drought may cause some shortages.
Last year Purdue Extension Agronomist Keith Johnson and Beef Specialist Ron Lemenager put together a paper, "Beef Management Practices When Forages are in Short Supply." It's fairly lengthy and detailed and those of you who raise other livestock or graze horses can adapt it for your species. Here's the link:
2012 Forage Supply Publication
I'm not going to go through this point-by-point but want to stress a couple of things I feel are particularly important, effective, and relatively simple to implement for most livestock producers. At least these are the ones I would have found simplest back when I raised cattle. I'm not going to talk about some of the more obvious ones such as taking a forage inventory, finding other forage sources such as grazing harvested corn fields, or reducing livestock numbers.
Do not leave livestock on pasture beyond the normal date when you would remove them. Point number 2 in the publication touches on the reasons for this. You may be desperately short of forage; even so, one of the worst management practices you can engage in is grazing animals through the fall and taking off all of the forage then. The reason is based on the life cycle of forages in pasture. One of the main reasons we take livestock off forage for the last couple of months of the growing season is to allow growing foliage to recharge or restore the root system of the pasture. If livestock are allowed to graze during this period the root system will be significantly weakened resulting in poorer pasture next year, and in subsequent years. If you absolutely feel you need to get a couple of extra months on pasture in order to make your forage supplies last, pull your animals off it in the fall, wait for it to go dormant(usually late November to early December) and then put animals back on. This still isn't good but at least the root system has had a chance to restore itself and it won't be damaged by trying to grow additional forage. If you do this you should also be careful to pull animals from it if it's wet to minimize physical damage. Keep in mind that this is far from a recommended practice and will likely require some additional management in following years - it's just less bad than leaving livestock on pasture through the fall. If possible, only leave animals on until they graze it down to about 4" in height. And obviously,
don't even think about doing this if you have sorghum or sudangrass due to the Prussic Acid/cyanide poisoning risk.
Restrict access to forage. Point number 11 in the linked publication discusses this in more detail. Basically, cattle get all the forage they need to maintain themselves by having access to hay or silage for 6-8 hours in a day, particularly once they become accustomed to the schedule. Most of the rest of the time they spend trampling it into the ground or just chewing on it/playing with it because they're bored. Restricting access can reduce forage use by up to 20%.
Early weaning of calves. When we look at calf growth, it is less efficient for a cow to convert feed to milk and the calf to then convert milk to growth/gain, than for calves to directly convert feed to growth. If forage supplies are short, weaning calves early can save as much as 30% on forage supplies. Point number 4 in the publication discusses this in much more detail. The same principle applies to creep feeding calves, discussed in point 3. If cows did not breed back, this also gives you the chance to cull open cows earlier.
