Chip Poland

I'm Chip Poland, Livestock Specialist at the Dickinson Research and Extension Center. One of the efforts that we are working on here is what we term a Lay Farming Concept, or Lay Farming Study. It is mimicked after wheat production systems that are used in some other countries. Australia may have been one of the earlier adopters of this type of management system. It's a system where by we introduce a legume, whether that be a medic (which is used in Australia and some other places) or as we are trying here alfalfa and birdsfoot trefoil or some other type of legume, into a wheat production system., The legume is then used in a pasture system for cattle grazing. Subsequent to grazing, we rotate the legume out and seed wheat for harvest as grain crop. In this study, we compare that system back against a wheat-pea rotation for grain production. Ultimately we are trying to look at what impacts legume incorporation and cattle grazing have on subsequent crop production, weed pressures, fertilizer requirements, and those kinds of things, as well as, how the economics of a grazing system might compare against more traditional crop production.