WINTER ANNUAL SMALL-GRAIN FORAGE POTENTIAL - I - DRY-MATTER YIELD IN RELATION TO MORPHOLOGICAL-CHARACTERISTICS OF 4 SMALL-GRAIN SPECIES AT 6 GROWTH-STAGES

Small grains offer a potential animal feed at a time when moisture is usually available in the Southeast. The four major winter annual small grains, barley, oats, rye, and wheat, have not been compared as poten tial feed sources in the same study in the past. These four small grai ns were harvested at six stages of growth: vegetative, boot, heading, milk, soft dough, and hard dough. Harvest dates, dry matter (DM) yield , DM yield of regrowth following initial harvest, DM concentration, an d the proportions of leaf, stem and inflorescence were measured and us ed to evaluate the four species for silage production and grazing pote ntial. Rye and barley reached boot prior to the suggested planting dat e for corn in the Piedmont of North Carolina and dry matter yields ran ged from 4.72 to 6.71 Mg ha(-1) and were harvested. Barley reached mil k, soft dough, and hard dough earlier than the other species and was e qual to or higher than the other species in proportion of DM in leaf D M yield and total DM yield in 1982 and 1983. Wheat DM yield was second to barley from heading to hard dough in 1982 and 1983. Barley DM yiel d was 69 to 80% of wheat from boot through soft dough in 1984. Copyrig ht (C) 1998 by Marcel Dekker, Inc.