Effect of clipping treatments on four winter grain

Tennessee farmers who regularly grow small grains as a part of their cropping system have long realized that these crops may provide extremely valuable winter and early spring grazing. Little data are available, however, to aid these farmers in choosing the most desirable pasturing practices to use in grazing such crops. Specifically, information is lacking on how intensively the small grains can be grazed without severe injury to the grain yield, the period in the growing season that each provides maximum pasturage, and the crop, or crops, furnishing the greatest amount of pasturage with the least reduction in grain yield.

Until data are available on these problems, definite grazing practices cannot be recommended. This investigation was conducted to obtain information that could be applied toward the solution of the problems mentioned above.

Briefly, the plan of the experiment was to simulate four intensities of grazing on adapted winter varieties of wheat, oats, rye, and barley. Since facilities were not available for conducting actual grazing trials, a lawn mower was used to remove the herbage.