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Teff May Be a Summer Forage Option
By
Laura Skillman
 PRINCETON, Ky., (Aug. 15, 2007) – The heat of summer often
leaves pastures and hayfields floundering and farmers looking
for other options for livestock forages. Teff, an African grass,
could hold some promise.
Teff is a warm season grass utilized as a grain crop in Africa.
It can grow more than four feet tall and produce more than six
tons per acre per year. It is a very small, seeded grass
relatively easy to establish. Teff also is known as summer love
grass or annual love grass.
Tim Phillips, a fescue breeder for the University of Kentucky
College of Agriculture first used it in rotations to suppress
weeds where he’d later be planting fescue in the fall. He has
also been conducting some research on this grass to determine
its worthiness for Kentucky farmers and highlighted some of his
findings during a recent UK field day.
“The seeds are really, really small – about 1.3 million per
pound. It makes timothy and white clover look big,” he said.
“About 100 years ago it began being used as a forage crop in
South Africa, so it’s not new as a forage, but it is a somewhat
new summer annual forage grass option for us in Kentucky.”
A major threat to the grass is frost, he said. Frost will
completely kill it. Seeds must be planted in spring after the
risk of frost has passed. It is recommended that about six
pounds of seed per acre be planted into a firm seedbed at a
depth of one-eighth to one-quarter of an inch. Sixty pounds of
nitrogen should be applied at seeding. The grass does not reseed
itself.
With good rainfall, seed distribution, and if it’s not seeded
too deep, farmers can expect a good stand. However, if the seed
sits there waiting to germinate for too long, weeds may begin to
grow reducing the quality of the stand. A good stand will
suppress weed growth.
The grass needs to be cut to a three- to four-inch stubble
height before it develops seed heads for the best quality. It
has good regrowth and typically, it can be cut again within five
to seven weeks. Tests have shown the leaf to contain 20 percent
protein and have a 107 relative feed value. The other nutrients
elements are similar to timothy, Phillips said.
“You can get multiple cuttings if you don’t wait too long and
let it head out. It’s much better than what you see in typical
summer annual grasses such as sorghum and sudan, which
are much taller, coarser and thick stemmed,” he said. “A lot of
them are much bigger and take longer to dry. Plus they take more
nitrogen and the forage quality is not as good.”
Typically, a farmer can expect to get two and a half to three
tons per acre per cutting if they get three inches of rain per
month, fertilize it and keep the weeds under control. That could
mean five to seven tons of hay per acre from the annual grass.
So far, there have been few disease or insect problems. There
are several seed varieties available.
Last summer, they grazed some of it after first cutting it for
hay. Phillips said it is important to have a firm seedbed
otherwise the cattle can pull it out of the ground. On this
trial, heifers grazed it down to stems before moving to a fescue
plot, he said.
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Contact: Tim Phillips, 859-257-5020, ext. 80769
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