Input costs to sustain a farm business are on the rise (seed, fertilizer, land rent, equipment, labour, among many others).  The mindset of cattle and mixed farm growers shifts into making sure that every single farm acre is profitable.  As a way to take advantage of the land beyond the growing season, LARA board members have parsed if using cultural methods such as summer/winter cereal relay intercropping will increase their economic return. Ideally, the summer cereal will be harvested as silage near the end of the summer, and subsequent regrowth (mostly composed of winter cereals) will be livestock grazed in the fall. This idea is thus very attractive because (a) relay intercropping increases silage yield and (b) livestock grazing is extended into the fall and early winter, which reduces winter feed costs. In addition, this simple cultural practice abides soil quality principles such as keeping the ground covered, maintaining live roots in the soil, and integrating livestock. It is a reliable, practical strategy to take as much of the land as possible.

So, the questions are is under seeding a winter cereal into a summer cereal a viable option for fall grazing? If so, which winter cereal would be the best fit for our region (rye, triticale or wheat?) And what can we expect for yields in both winter and summer cereals?

The field trial will contain four treatments: barley as a sole crop, barley with winter rye, barley with winter triticale, and finally, barley with winter wheat. Each treatment will be sown as a strip, and strips will be randomized and replicated three times. Phil Amyotte; mixed farm grower and LARA board member from Mallaig, in collaboration with the LARA research team, will use his 50-feet Pillar disc/hoe drill to seed barley and then the three winter cereals. Burndown before seeding and in-crop maintenance will be performed using a 100-feet Apache sprayer.

Three quadrats will be placed along each strip. At the end of the season, above ground biomass will be removed and measured for silage. Quadrat location will be recorded with a GPS; this is so Phil can silage the whole area and not worry about overlooking the experimental setup. These GPS locations will be used to therefore locate where the quadrats were placed and conduct simulated grazing in September and October.