By Lynette Simango
Perrenial Rye grass is one of the best pastures to consider at your farm. This pasture only needs good management practices e.g grazing shouldn’t take place too frequently as this kills the plant. The grass should be grazed at a 3 leaf- stage. The reason is that when rye grass is grazed, the roots stop growing, and plant reserves stored into the stubble and roots goes to the new emerging leaf. This allows the plant to have more tiller per plant, more roots per plant and improved plant survival over summer.
Inorder to implement controlled grazing not only on Perennial rye grass but on other pastures as well, you should focus more on the following- grazing interval, intensity, and duration. An average grazing interval of 28 days can result in the grass to reach 4th year. A grazing duration of 2 days is ideal. The perfect replacement for Perennial Rye grass is Teff grass.