UGA Expert Offers Winter Grazing Advice Amid Georgia Drought Conditions
As drought conditions continue across much of Georgia, producers are facing tough decisions about planting winter grazing. We spoke with Dr. Lisa Baxter, Extension Forage Specialist with the University of Georgia, to get her insight on managing planting strategies during this unusually dry fall.
“The what-ifs of planting when we are this dry across a good portion of Georgia. And while we hope that changes in the upcoming days as the Atlantic starts to wake up, there’s no guarantee of that.”
Dr. Baxter emphasizes caution, especially when soil moisture is limited and forecasts remain uncertain.
“And so, I will always encourage producers to keep that seed in the bag as long as possible. We can always plant it next year. When that seed goes out, it’s between you and Mother Nature at that point, and there’s just too many things that can go wrong once that seed goes in the ground.”
Despite the challenges, she notes that there’s still time to make informed decisions.
“Now, we’re certainly still not out of the window for planting this year. I mean, in some parts of Georgia, we’ve got another six weeks or so of good planting weather.”
However, late-season plantings often come with reduced yield potential, which must be weighed against input costs and labor.
“But we do want to make sure that producers know that if you plant outside of our typical window, we will get lower seasonal production.
And so, we’ve got to weigh the pros and cons of that, of how much forage are we actually going to get from that material versus how much did we actually spend on seed fertilizer? How many hours of labor are we going to put into getting that in the ground?”
“Unfortunately, we do hit a point each late fall, early winter, that the yield that we achieve in those late plantings is just not a good return on your investment. So, there is a lot of risk going forward. But if you are questioning it, let’s keep that seed in that bag for the foreseeable future.”
Audio Reporting by Dale Sandlin for Southeast AgNet.