house was pasture.” Debby, who also has a degree in English, was the one who stayed at home and took care of the cattle and the couple’s children. “For Debby’s sake, we had to pay a lot of attention to birth weight and conformation so heifers could calve without assistance, which affected the kind of cattle we could raise to some extent,” said Toby, who retired from teaching three years ago. These days, Dogwood Farm consists of about 600 acres, of which 100 are rented. About 300 acres are planted in forage crops.
Lifetime of experimentation “I am no agronomist, nor am I an animal scientist, but I do know from long and extensive experimentation, observation, and boots-on-the-ground experience a great deal about what works well here and what does not,” Debby said. If you plan to spend a morning with Debby, as I did, you can easily believe her boots-on-the-ground experience. Along with Toby, we did the equivalent of a pasture half marathon that was filled with observations, anecdotes, and critical forage analysis. “We value forage diversity,” Toby said. “Debby reads about various forage alternatives and then we give them a try. It’s the only way to know if it works for your operation. However, we let the universities test the really risky stuff first,” he chuckled. Like many Kentucky grazing farms, much of the Dulworth acreage was originally infested with toxic tall fescue. “We’ve made a conscious decision to minimize the effects of fescue,” Toby said. “It’s taken a lot of years to make that a reality.” Early on, the Dulworths planted some endophyte-free tall fescue, but it didn’t persist. Since then, they’ve seeded several different novel-endophyte varieties and have had much better success. “We try to use fescue when it’s at its best — during the winter and early spring,” Debby noted. “We seed improved crabgrasses into the fescue stands to try to dilute it. Cattle much prefer crabgrass over fescue during the summer,” she added. Dulworths also have some perennial ryegrass paddocks that their cattle graze each spring. They’ve had the best
luck with the Remington variety. Once ages that grow best here in the summer the ryegrass plays out, those paddocks are johnsongrass and crabgrass, and the are seeded to crabgrass for summer cows like both of them,” he added. production. The ryegrass stands gener“In the future, we’ll need more ally persist for two to three years before C4 grasses in the Southeast as our they need to be reseeded. climate changes,” Debby prophesied. The cool-season pastures, which were “We encourage johnsongrass in our once dominated by tall fescue, are now fescue . . . it’s a gift from God that mostly orchardgrass but also include helps dilute the fescue.” some timothy and lots of red clover. Debby really gets excited when she White clover and a little alfalfa are walks their weed-free field of perennial also present in the diversified mixture eastern gamagrass, a warm-season of pasture species. Dulworths haven’t grass that is starting to receive more found the need to apply any commercial fertilizer to their pastures, relying heavily on mixed legumes and manure from management-intensive grazing. In the fall, some pastures are left to grow and be stockpiled. This allows for grazing to occur as late as January. In a typical year, they will feed hay for 60 to 90 days during the winter. Round bales, Debby and Toby Dulworth are not afraid to try new forage species on their farm. “We value diversity,” Toby said. which they make themselves from excess spring pasture or designated notoriety in the mid-South. “We seeded hay fields, are fed in bale rings that are this field over 20 years ago,” Debby moved around to help distribute manure said. “This year (2018), the cattle nutrients. Little to no grain supplemengrazed and heavily manured it for a tation is done, though soybean hulls are couple of days in early May. Toby took used to keep condition on bulls during a hay cutting on July 7. The gamagrass the winter. was waist-high, just beginning to head “We tried baleage one year but really out. It yielded over 5 tons per acre, and had a problem with raccoons tearing up we will get another cutting before fall.” the plastic,” Toby noted. Though she admits that annual forages have their place and utility, Debby See a future for C4s prefers perennials as the farm’s forage foundation. “It takes some patience to get The Dulworths are big believers in the gamagrass fully established, but once value of warm-season, or C4, grasses. it is, the production and need for little “We can cut or graze Quick-N-Big maintenance are hard to beat,” she said. crabgrass a couple of times each year Though perennials are Dulworths’ and then let it go to seed in late sum“go to” forage source, this past summer mer,” Toby said. “Crabgrass just keeps they collaborated with Chris Teutsch, on giving. Over the years, we’ve tried University of Kentucky Extension forage about everything — from grazing corn specialist, to establish large field plots of to sudangrass to teffgrass. On fields that produced only corn, wheat, and soybeans for the past four to six decades, the forcontinued on following page >>> March 2019 | hayandforage.com | 25
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