Animal Performance and Pasture Characteristics on Cool-Season Grass Mixtures in North Florida.

Mixtures of annual ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum Lam.) with small grains, such as cereal rye (Secale cereale L.), oat (Avena sativa L.), or triticale (X Triticosecale Wittmack), may increase grazing length in the subtropics. This experiment evaluated animal performance and pasture characteristics from 18 Dec 2013 to 10 April 2014 of: 1) annual ryegrass (cv “Prine”) + cereal rye (cv “FL 401”; Rye); 2) annual ryegrass + oats (cv “Horizon 201”; Oats); 3) annual ryegrass + triticale (cv “Trical 342”; Triticale). Treatments were allocated in a complete randomized block design with three replicates. Response variables included herbage mass, herbage allowance, herbage accumulation, botanical composition, average daily gain (ADG), grazing days, and weight gain per area. Treatment x evaluation interaction (P < 0.05) occurred for all response variables. Herbage mass and accumulation averaged 1180 kg DM ha^-1 and 35 kg DM ha^-1 d^-1, respectively, varying with sampling date. Average herbage allowance was 1.06 and did not differ in most periods, except for the last period when Triticale (0.77) was lower than Rye (1.15). Average daily gain was 0.9 kg head^-1, and varied during the trial. Greater ADG was achieved in the last 56 d. Cattle grazing on Rye pastures presented low ADG from 16 Jan to 13 Feb 2014. Small grains increased the number of grazing days, with Rye peaking prior to other small grains, but declining steeply thereafter. Average stocking rate during 112 d was 3 steers ha^-1 (avg. 345 kg live weight steer^-1). Average gain per area for 112 d was 333 kg ha^-1. Annual ryegrass contribution in the botanical composition ranged from 13.8% (initial) to 82.9% (final). Oats and Triticale presented less variation across the season compared to cereal rye, which may be due to the use of an early maturing rye cultivar in this experiment.