Stockpiled fescue is the cheapest winter feed you have. Fertilize it this week.

Across the fescue belt, from Missouri and Kansas through Kentucky to the Carolinas, the cheapest feed a cow will eat this winter is grass that is standing in the field in December. Stockpiling is not complicated. It is mostly a matter of doing it on time, and the window is closing.

Why fescue

Tall fescue has a waxy cuticle on the leaf that resists frost damage, so it holds its quality standing in the field far better than orchardgrass, brome, or bluegrass. Stockpiled fescue tested in December and January typically runs 12 to 15 percent crude protein and 60 to 65 percent TDN, which is better than most hay you will buy this year and roughly a dry cow's full requirement. It also loses some of its endophyte toxicity after frost, which is why cattle graze it well in winter.

The recipe

1. Clip or graze it down to 3 to 4 inches in late August or early September. You want the stockpile to be new growth, not the mature stems from summer. This step is where most people go wrong; they fertilize over a field of old growth and get a pile of stemmy junk.
2. Apply 40 to 60 pounds of actual nitrogen per acre right after. Ammonium nitrate or urea with a stabilizer; urea without one will lose a lot of it in a warm, dry September. Research from Missouri, Ohio, and Georgia all lands in the same range; going above 60 or 80 pounds rarely pays.
3. Stay off it. Sixty to ninety days of growth. In most of the belt that means no grazing until early to mid December.
4. Strip graze it. A single polywire moved every day or three, giving cattle only what they will clean up. Continuous access to the whole field wastes a third of it to trampling and selective grazing. Strip grazing is the difference between 60 days of feed and 100.

What it yields

With adequate fall moisture, expect 1,500 to 3,000 pounds of dry matter per acre. At 1.3 tons per acre, an acre feeds a 1,300-pound cow for roughly 40 to 50 days. Compare the cost:

• Nitrogen at $0.60 per pound of N times 50 pounds: $30 an acre, plus application.
• The hay that acre replaces: about a ton, at $180 to $200, plus the cost of feeding it and the waste.

Even at this fall's nitrogen prices, it is not close.

The drought caveat

Stockpiling needs rain after the fertilizer goes on. If your ground is in the D2 or worse part of the map and there is nothing in the forecast, fertilizing dormant fescue is a gamble. The reasonable play is to fertilize the fields that have caught any rain, hold the nitrogen on the rest, and watch the two-week outlook. Nitrogen spread on a field that greens up in October still makes some feed; nitrogen spread on dust makes none.

After the stockpile

Cattle on stockpiled fescue still need mineral, and in fescue country that means a mineral with elevated copper and a plan for magnesium in late winter. Water access on a strip-grazed field needs thought before the ground freezes. And once the stockpile is gone, usually February, you are back on hay, so the stockpile does not replace the hay stack; it shortens the time you are feeding out of it.