Cattle producers are wondering what might become of their pastures after recent cold weather across the state. We caught up with Dr. Lisa Baxter with the University of Georgia to learn more.
Baxter said, “The big question that I’m getting right now with this not unseemly cold weather, but man it has been prolonged to say the least, is are my grasses going to be okay? And unfortunately we don’t know for sure yet.
“Step one is don’t panic. There’s nothing we can do now to fix the problem if there was a problem. So step one, just take a step back, breathe, don’t panic. Next step is going to be dependent on the type of forage that we have. So if we had winter annuals, it’s going to depend on what stage of growth it was going into the cold. Only time’s going to tell if it’s going to regrow out of that, any damage that you are seeing,” said Baxter.
Baxter said, “On the tall fescue side, tall fescue is actually built to handle that cold. We may doubt it at times, but it has a waxy layer on it that keeps all those cell contents intact. And so it’s going to be just fine.As soon as we get some rain, it’ll come right through it. Most of our warm season forages should be dormant, but if they were not for any reason, then they may have some struggles leading to an erratic spring green up. Most of our winter annuals won’t start growing until we are consistently in that 60 to 80 degree range. And so for a lot of us, we have not been consistently there yet.”
Audio Reporting by Dale Sandlin for Southeast AgNet.