FORAGE CROP

ANNUAL FORAGE CROPS

Set sided and warm-requiring cereals

-          the most significant is maize, there 90 % of grown maize is used for silage in the Czech Republic. Maize is harvested by cutters like a green maize or at wax ripeness, the cutters are able to crush grains. Deficiently crushed grains are passed through the digestive tract of animals without the usage. There the separated harvest is used too (LKS, CCM), and there the conservation of wet grain is used in recent years. It is not used by green way practically. It presents energy feed with low nitrogenous matter content.

-          other warm-requiring cereals – sorghum, soudanese grass, millet – only little significant, additional

 Thick-sown cereals

-          wheat, barley, oats, rye, triticale are used

-          they are used by green way, for making hay or GPS (crushed whole plants) – they are harvested by cutters at mealy ripe stage, the cutters are able to crush the grains well

-          semi-proteinous feeds, saccharide at higher maturity

Legumes

-          horse bean, peas, vetch, marginally lupin and soybean too, are used

-          they are used by green way, GPS, for hot-flue mass production too little

-          proteinous feeds

The others – Brassicaceae, oil crops

-          advantages – short growing season, low temperature resistance

-          disadvantages – nitrogen fertilization exacting, risk of nitrate accumulation, anti-nutritional matters at forage, low dry matter – it is not possible to conserve them

-          rapeseed, mustard, kale, sunflower are used

Annual forage mixtures

-          winter crops – legume-cereal mixtures

-          spring crops - legume-cereal mixtures, maize with legume, they are sown early in spring or after winter inter-crops

-          summer crops – they are grown after early harvested crops

-          undersowing crops – they are mostly grounded on the cereal at damper areas with shorter growing period, there they compensate for forage mixtures