CATTLE DATA AND MEDIA REVIEWS

Eagle Seed Forage soybeans are “a pretty superior product” in terms of TDN and protein content, notes cattleman Bill Fuller. Mastering the harvest required some learning. Marcantel cut the Eagle Seed Big Fellow soybeans when they were about 5’ tall prior to pod development. He baled them at 40-45% moisture about 36 hours after cutting.

Bill Fuller recommends using a conditioner to make it easier to bale. Using a conditioner will also help crimp the stems of the large plant making it easier to handle. The conditioner will help prevent stems poking through the plastic wrap. Fuller said it also helps to net-wrap first.

Marcantel also ran his bales through a tub grinder. “They ate it like candy.” Bottom line for this grower: “The heifers grew a lot of frame and meat. I sold quite a few, and the ones I have left look just as good as the other cattle. I definitely plan to do it again.”

"Eagle Seed Company has new forage soybean varieties that can produce 9.8 tons of dry matter per acre with up to 28% whole plant protein proven by university testing. Compared with other forage and food-plot varieties, they grow taller with bigger leaves and have greater browsing tolerance. The varieties were grown at Southern Illinois University, LSU Ag center in Louisiana, and Oklahoma's Noble Foundation. "They're awesome," Dr. Atkinson (forage specialist at SIU) says. "They got up to almost 6 feet tall."

Dr. Rebecca Atkinson, nutritionist from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, found that cows would readily chow down on soybean plants both growing in the ground and served up dry. What's more, the plants provided pretty much the same the summer slump when forage quality starts to decrease due to the lack of rainfall," says Atkinson.

These aren't your grandfather's soybeans...Forage soybeans, developed specifically as deer and livestock feed, can reach 6 feet in height and sport leaves as big as a fist. Those huge leaves pack a powerful protein punch, and because the plants retain the legume family's ability to enrich soil, these beans still can fit into a standard crop rotation. Because grazing doesn't carry the costs harvesting does, farmers who already plant corn or beans could save some money by letting the cows have at it. "All you'd have to do is make sure the fences are good, supply a bloat block to be safe and ensure that they have some water, " Atkinson said. "They'll take care of the rest."

Still, the numbers got even better when Atkinson turned harvested plants into silage. Crude protein rose to 26%, while NDF and ADF percentages came to 32% and 36%. Overall, it scored 194 in relative feed value. "This tells me that it compares well to alfalfa silage in terms of nutrition,"Atkinson said.

“I wanted something to blend with corn as a protein supplement,” to make it a more complete feed for his beef cattle says Fuller, of Kinder, LA. He began to investigate alternative protein sources when forage soybeans caught his attention. For two years, Fuller has teamed up with Chip LeMieux and Bill Storer, animal scientists at McNeese State University, Lake Charles, LA, to grow, harvest and evaluate forage soybeans developed by Eagle Seed Co., Weiner, AR.

Last year they tested Big Fellow, a late-maturing Group VII Roundup Ready variety. A center-pivot-irrigated field was divided into sections for corn planted at a seeding rate of 28,000 and soybeans planted at 100,000 seeds per acre. Both were on 30” rows to match the harvester. The soybeans were planted in late March, one week ahead of the corn.

The corn reached dent stage in August and dropped to a lower moisture level than is typical for silage. That allowed the soybeans to gain more vegetative growth, reaching growth stage R5 and yielding 3.9-4.4 tons/acre of dry matter at harvest despite the inter-plant competition. A pull-type forage harvester chopped both crops at a combined dry matter of about 36%. To layer the crops, corn was chopped until the silage wagon was half full, then soybeans were chopped for the remainder of the load. The two forages were mixed as they were bagged. Fuller fed the silage free-choice to cows with calves. “I had to run the cows out,” he says. “They would eat and eat. If I let them, they’d eat over 50 lbs/day, and that is too much.” The soybeans averaged 18-19% protein, and adding them to corn in roughly a 50-50 mix resulted in silage protein levels of 13-14%.

Public researchers planted plots at the University of Nebraska. Analysis of Large Lad and Big Fellow's nutrient qualities about 10 weeks after planting at nearly three-foot heights tested better than alfalfa, with 23.5 percent to 27 percent crude protein in freshly clipped plants with fairly soluble protein. "NDF (neutral detergent fiber) was a little high for fresh forage, about 38 to 39 percent, similar to alfalfa in the late vegetative or early bloom stage," Atkinson says. "ADF (acid detergent fiber) was 28 percent, which is also similar to alfalfa." Atkinson's research process also investigated digestibility of each variety and found it to be in the range of 69 to 71 percent. Net energy content scored well at .65 for maintenance and .39 for gain but is less than alfalfa.

TDN (total digestible nutrient) was similar to alfalfa at 61 percent. Whether there is more value in soybean or alfalfa forage depends on producer's geographic location. One benefit of soybeans is ability to rotate crops and not tie up a field five years. Forage soybeans would be planted every year." Depending on location, forage soybeans need between a 90-day and 120-day growing season. Beef producers using them for forage would have to balance soybean forage with pasture of other types of hay to prevent nitrates from reaching dangerous levels.

"Depending on soil nutrient level and rainfall amounts, nitrate levels could become high," Atkinson says. "They wouldn't be toxic, but it wouldn't be healthy for cattle." Since news of her research was released, Atkinson has heard from beef producers considering or planning to use soybeans as a forage or haylage crop. "One Indiana producer is considering a 10-acre test plot for grazing," Atkinson says. "If he goes ahead with that, it would be the end of June before he could put cows on it. An Ohio producer is considering using it for hay, and another Kansas producer is looking at 100 acres to make silage for feed yards." In testing forage soybeans for hay, researchers will consider how to rake and dry bean forage and how much moisture to retain to maintain nutritional value.

"You want to harvest the beans before the seed gets hard," she says. "We harvested test plots when pods were full and seeds were still soft, about an R5 stage. One of our challenges intercropping with corn will be the soybean's tendency to vine. I think you could get at least two cuttings of hay from these varieties, but I won't know for certain until testing is completed." "There are a lot of elements to consider and geographic location would be an economic factor," Atkinson says. "We know if you're using soybean forage for stocker cattle, you should be able to cut back on other protein sources and may not need another protein source. You'd have to really look at details, like seedbed prep, how much time is invested in planting, herbicide and insecticide costs.

Two new tall-growing forage soybean varieties look awesome to Dr. Rebecca Atkinson, Southern Illinois beef forage specialist. They perfomed well in an on-farm rotational grazing study in her second year of testing and one of the varieties yielded 6 tons/acre of hay when planted late after last summer's wheat harvest. Results from a silage test at Andrews University, Berrien Springs, MI, resulted in 10 tons/acre of soybean silage, testing 14% protein, 41% ADF and 51% NDF. He grew 10 acres of the soybeans, and if the silage performs satisfactorily, he'll plant 40 acres this year.

The Roundup Ready varieties — Large Lad and Big Fellow — were developed at Eagle Seed Co., Weiner, AR. They were tested as forage crops at three universities, and the results were reported in the Hay & Forage Grower (see our story, “They're Awesome”). The soybeans were evaluated at several additional locations last year. Although they're long-season, Group 7 varieties, they can be grown anywhere in the U.S., says Brad Doyle, Eagle Seed general manager. Doyle sees them as a promising alternative to alfalfa, especially for farmers who can't grow the perennial legume. Lab tests have shown the soybeans' leaves have up to 42% protein, he says. In Illinois, Atkinson is interested in them mostly as a pasture crop for cow-calf producers.

Yields were impressive in a 2008 simulated grazing study, with Big Fellow peaking at 9.6 tons of dry matter per acre and Large Lad at 8.9 tons/acre. So last year she convinced a producer to plant 2 acres of the soybeans in one of 12 paddocks in his rotational grazing system. “I instructed him to graze it down to 10” but not past that, and that's what he did,” she reports. The producer grazed the paddock twice, but didn't apply glyphosate, so weeds took over after the second grazing. If he had sprayed, he could have gotten at least one more grazing, she says. He usually rotates his cattle every three days, but soybean growth was so great that he left them in that paddock an extra day.

“He was so impressed with them that he's going to plant 4 acres next summer to graze his cattle on again,” says Atkinson. In the double-crop hay trial, the beans were planted in 15” rows June 29 and mowed into windrows when they were 3-4' tall.

The yield was exceptional, but field drying was problematic, says Atkinson. The soybean stems weren't conditioned severely enough, and it took several days to get the crop dry enough to bale. She plans further work to find out how much conditioning is needed. Wider windrows should speed drying, too, and narrower rows might result in smaller stems that dry faster, she says. In the Michigan silage trial, Birney planted half the 10 acres to each of the varieties and mowed the crop into windrows after last fall's first frost. The beans were about 5' tall, and since both varieties are indeterminate, plant tops had new growth while the bottoms were more mature. “We had everything from blooming and putting on new leaves down to pods,” says Birney. “It had monster leaves and the silage smells just like alfalfa silage,” he adds.