Hoping someone can help me out here. My horses ruined a 5 acre pasture by overgrazing. I was thinking about replanting it with oilseed radish or something to graze the cows on this fall and replant it back into pasture in the spring. Anyone ever did something similar? Is it worth it for grazing? What and when did you plant? (I'm in central MN)

Appreciate any help, none of the local guys seem to do this or I would ask them.

Temporary fence and rotatanal grazing is what the do here. Let the eat it down some and move them to next patch till it grows back

What kind of soils do you have ?
How overgrazed is the pasture ? Is it about like a golf green ? Any significant weed issues, Canada Thistle, etc ?
Do you have access to a no till drill ?

It's sandy, I can irrigate it with some additional work. Yes, golf green, just short and doesn't seem to grow tall anymore, I think we killed the good grasses. Sprayed the whole thing last year so weeds aren't to bad except the strip the sprayer ran out on...

I think a local place rents a no till drill

How's your moisture, soil moisture so far this season ?

These guys deal with this quite a bit and I’ve always had good good experiences with them.

https://alseed.com/

^^^^^^^
Very good outfit !!

Great early but were at almost 3 weeks of no rain now and everything is drying up. Even with good moisture this spring the pasture really didn't grow well.

Thank you. They look much more affordable than other places I've saw.

It is quite early yet. Seed in some straight sudan grass. They do quite well in heat and even dry conditions. Make hay or graze. It will be done about late August. Kill that and plant forage oats. Not the grain type and that you can graze in mid to late October. That will freeze and die with the heavy frost. You can then reseed next spring to the pasture types you prefer.

Bryce

Thank you. I no longer have hay equipment and we buy all of our hay or silage. We have enough pasture this year so I was hoping to just let the cows graze off what is left then plant something in July or August to try and cut down on the amount of hay we need in October or hopefully even November.

OK I guess I missed what your goal or aim was. Typically in our area mid-July is good for fall seeding, especially if you plant legumes in the mix you want them to get good enough growth to get deep enough roots with good crowns so they don't heave during the winter. Also if you plant a mix of grass-legume it makes chemical weed control almost impossible as you have broad leaf and grass in your mix. Hope you are not as dry as we are as anything you would plant in very dry conditions probably wont germinate quickly or evenly and that can cause winter issues.


Bryce

Do you fertilize in the spring ? Yes fertilizer your pasture. Folks do it around here . You just found out why most don’t have horses around here . Unless of course they own a horse farm . If you get a good chance of rain feed hay for while let the pasture grow. If it don’t rain you’ll be feeding hay anyway

Horses are getting dry lotted after this. I let the pasture rest all spring and it's still short and scrubby. I figure I'll just let the cows back on it and finish off what's left.

It's real dry here, thankfully I have extra pasture this year as I'm understocked. I just bought the farm from my parents and will be fertilizing the pastures with poultry manure but I haven't yet. This little pasture is right next to a pond so I can pump some water out of the pond onto it if I want to grow something on it or plant it.

I talked to a salesman from alseeds, he said "3 pounds of radish, 3 pounds of turnips and 1 bushel of oats per acre, seeded no till"

I think I'll try that.