Fodder cereals for grazing and silage

Cereal crops like oats and triticale are gaining popularity on New Zealand farms for winter and spring feed. Originally used in the dairy industry, these high-yielding crops are now being recognised as useful supplements on lifestyle blocks too.

Flexible Feeding Options

Fodder cereals provide a reliable source of energy and fibre, depending on when they are grazed or harvested. In autumn and winter, they offer high-energy grazing. In spring, they serve as a valuable fibre source to balance lush pasture.

Trials in Canterbury have shown that single-graze cereal crops sown in early autumn can produce up to 5.5 tonnes of herbage dry matter per hectare, with excellent nutritional value—around 17.5 percent protein and 11.3 MJ/kg of metabolisable energy (ME).

One-Off Grazing or Silage

Triticale and oats are good options for one-off grazing from March sowing, with strong production by early July. In some trials, triticale also delivered an additional 13.5 tonnes per hectare as a silage crop, with high sugar levels and ME of 9.3 MJ/kg.

Multiple-graze varieties allow even more flexibility. They provide early winter feed and a silage cut in late spring, making them well suited to small farms that need to maximise land use.