Managing Overseeded Rye in the Spring

Horse farms around the Southeast look forward to this time of year. The cold winter days are  quickly getting behind us, and our pastures are starting to green up with rye as your horses are waiting to be let out each morning to go and graze. The downside of this time of year is that rye, for all the aesthetic beauty that it gives not to mention the additional grazing days it allows for this time of year is a very difficult forage to manage. Rye will go from barely growing the entire winter to growing so fast your horses will not be able to keep up with it in about a weeks time. No other forage reacts faster to longer day length and a few 60 degree days than rye.  Livestock owners always ask how they can manage this forage this time of year? There is a fine line between keeping it grazed or mowed down so it does not get too mature too quickly and not grazing it so low you kill it too early in the spring. Here are a few tips for trying to get a handle on managing rye pastures in early spring;

Graze on-Graze off

  Rye will give you 3-4 grazings as long as you can keep it between 2” to 6” this time of year. If you graze it all the way down to the soil the plant probably will not be able to recover in time to regrow enough to graze it again. On the other hand, if you let it get above 6 inches it will start to get tough and “stemmy” and horses will try to graze around it in favor of more tender forage. This little management tip is much easier said than done. You are way better off to graze across a paddock with several horses over a few days than 1-2 horses over a period of a couple of weeks. Of course most horse farms are not able to manage their paddocks this way. Another way to do this is to use temporary electric wire (polywire or polytape) and temporary posts and cut your paddocks up into much smaller grazing  sections. Moving the wire every 2-3 days forces them to graze more uniformly across the rye stand and allows you to schedule recovery time the grass receives between grazings.

When to accept the inevitable

  Annual Rye is in fact an annual, meaning that it will die at the end of spring. As big a service as it does for us in February-April, it quickly wears out its welcome. In mid to late April bermuda grass is struggling to come out of winter dormancy under the rye that is still standing. The longer the rye is allowed to stand and steal much needed sunlight from the infant bermuda the longer this transition will be stretched out.  By late April, the surviving rye has got to go. If you can still get your horses to graze it, then let them graze it as low as they can. If the rye has gotten too mature and has put on a seedhead, then mowing it with a bushhog as low to the ground as possible is the best way to deal with it.

Always remember there is no perfect schedule for managing rye in the spring. No two years are the same. Paying attention to your pastures and trying to be as proactive as possible are your best tools.

Written by Randy Wood