Winter grazing stockpiled native warm-season grasses in the Southeastern United States

In the Southeastern United States, native warm-season grasses (NWSG) are not harvested during autumn to rebuild root reserves, resulting in de facto stockpiled winter forage. Senesced NWSG forage is considered nutritionally inadequate by temperate livestock managers, but comparable forage is regularly utilized in rangeland systems. This experiment compared the forage characteristics of two NWSG pastures: switchgrass [Panicum virgatum L. (SG)] and a two species mixture of big bluestem/indiangrass [Andropogon gerardii Vitman/Sorghastrum nutans L. (BBIG)] to tall fescue [Festuca arundinacea Schreb. (TF)]. During two winter periods (January-April), monthly samples were collected and measured for dry-matter herbage mass (HM), crude protein (CP), in-vitro true dry-matter digestibility (48 hr; IVTDMD), neutral detergent fibre (NDF), NDF digestibility (dNDF) and lignin. Across sampling dates, TF provided adequate forage for low-input animal maintenance (90.3 CP g/kg; 488 g IVTDMD/kg; 4,040 kg DM/ha), while SG had lowest nutritive values and greatest DM (21.0 g CP/kg; 366 g IVTDMD/kg; 7,670 kg DM/ha). Samples of BBIG had results intermediate to SG and TF (32.1 g CP/kg; 410 g IVTDMD/kg; 5,160 kg DM/ha). Leaf sub-samples of NWSG indicated greater forage nutritive value compared to whole plant samples (e.g., SG: 65 vs 27 g CP/kg respectively). This indicates that selective grazing could allow superior outcomes to those expected from whole plant NWSG nutritive values. Although consistently nutritionally inferior to TF, further research could reveal strategies to make stockpiled NWSG economically useful to livestock managers.