Saskatchewan Forage Council Forage ADOPT Project *COMPLETED*                

This project was undertaken in 2015 at four regional locations (Swift Current, Scott, Melfort and Yorkton, SK) to demonstrate the yield and forage value of pea/cereal mixtures in comparison to monocultures of oats, barley and peas. Thirteen treatments at each site included pea, barley and oat monocultures as well as pea/barley and pea/oat mixtures at two different seeding rates. The highest overall yielding mixture was Haymaker oats at 30% of full seeding rate and CDC Horizon pea at 100% of full seeding rate. In contrast the lowest yielding forage treatment was CDC Horizon pea seeded without a cereal crop. Regional differences in yield were noted. Soil zone, growing conditions, protein requirements of livestock and cost should all be considered when selecting forages for greenfeed production.

Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture Forage Specialists partnered on this project to oversee the demonstration sites.  The SFC would like to thank Denis Lueke of One Oak Farms (Humboldt, SK) and Scott and Shawn Fraser (Pambrun, SK) for donating seed for the project. Thank you to the research farms for their excellent work at the demonstration sites:Wheatland Conservation Area (Swift Current, Northeast Agriculture Research Foundation (Melfort, SK), East Central Research Foundation (Yorkton, SK), and Western Applied Research Corporation (Scott, SK).

 This project was supported by the Agricultural Demonstration of Practices and Technologies (ADOPT) initiative under the Canada-Saskatchewan Growing Forward bi-lateral agreement.

To read the full report, click here to downloas the pdf version or visit our Projects page.

Image: Maverick barley (50% seeding rate) and Horizon Peas (50% seeding rate) in mixture at Melfort in August 2015.

Image Credit: Brett Mollison, AAFC/Northeast Agriculture Research Foundation

Posted April 28, 2016

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