Canola and calves

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to compare grazing management strategies that optimize stocker calf production and the agronomic performance of canola. This experiment evaluated four treatments including: Canola-early graze (CEG), canola-late graze (CLG), canola-no graze (CNG), and winter wheat (WW). Angus steers (343 d ± 3.3d) grazed CEG, CLG and WW treatments. Response variables included normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), near infrared reflectance (NIR), leaf area index (LAI), red reflectance (RED), rising plate meter (RPM) estimated herbage mass, average daily gain (ADG) and forage quality, biomass yield, seed yield, oil percentage,. Animal performance was evaluated by assessing average daily gain; steers were weighed at the beginning and end of grazing which listed 48-d across all treatments. Grazing treatment did affect (P < 0.05) LAI, ADG, biomass yield, and seed yield but did not affect (P = 0.15) seed oil content. Seed yield was not different (P = 0.03) between CEG and CNG; however seed yield was different (P = 0.03) between CEG and CLG.