Millet for feed

Anyone have any experience with millet for feed planted this late in northern Iowa. Salesmen said we could get 2-3 cuttings of hay off it this summer. Will be fed in a mixture for fat cattle. I know it takes extra time to dry down to bale. Any thoughts?? Need feed this winter!! Thanks.

I have never tried Millet but have grown Triticale/peas late. It made a few cuttings. I chopped it as it was pretty wet when mowed. It would have taken 4-5 days to dry down to bale it.

My buddy raised some, and I raise sorguhm sudan which is similar. If planted in early june you can get 2 cuttings off it. Everyone I know either grazes it, chops it, or bales and wrappes it. I dont know that you can get it dry enough for dry hay, at least not in PA. Cattle like the stuff, so thats not an issue..

Doesn't it depend on the kind of millet? I have a neighbor that raises 3 pivots of millet for feed. They planted last week, and will harvest around the end of August. 1 cutting, then they go back in with Rye. Another neighbor has 4 pivots of TEFF? Makes really good cow, horse and deer feed. You have to fertilize it a bit more though.
We are in north central Nebraska. Not near the moisture, but probably close to the same length of growing season as you.

Used to chop it in the fall cuz of the big stems. It took a week or more to dry down otherwise during the short days, never got more than one cut up north here. Had too many get moldy cuz they wren't dry enough when we baled. This was 20 years ago. The seed varieties may be different now.

You aren"t mistaking millet for Milo are you? Millet is a very small seed, less than half the size of Milo seed, which, BTW is red and millet seed is yellow. Milo, (depending on variety) grows up to 2-3 ft tall and resebles corn when coming up, but millet is only about 8-10 inches tall and looks like grass. Here in Virginia we mix millet and soybeans for hay crop. Milo also used for hay, but it is very fast growing and will out compete everything else in field (except maybe Johnson grass).

The Pearl Millet I planted one time got a lot taller than 8-10"s. Some varieties of Milo has yellow seeds

I've grown millet for years. Pearl on my better soils and Japanese Millet on my heavier soils. I've made large round bale hay with no mold, here in the Mohawk Valley region of New York State. You need two things. One, a very well adjusted mower-conditioner.. emphasis on the conditioner and two, at least three days of very good (low humidity) drying weather. I cut it a bit high, leaving at least 3" of stubble. My cattle love the stuff.

I just burned out on Pearl. Yield and germination doing all the right things totally sucks for me! I posted this Thursday or Friday, but my volunteer Johnson grass was taller than the cab on my tractor and a beautiful Kelly green. The PM was about 2' looked the color of a tomato worm and germination rate was like 30%. Had to wait for 65 F average soil temp which put me to planting April 27 which is about a month later than anything else planted around here for hay. Two years in a row and that's it.

On digestibility and fondness of cattle, yes mine loved it.....what there was that I was able to harvest.

The recommended cutting height is 6"...............scuse me? How do you manage a haying operation with stubble like that and how do you cut it? Only thing I know is a MOCO jacked up in the road transport height. Reason is, as the instructions say, is to get plenty of sugars in the stems to get the regrowth going. So now, what time of day do I cut? Morning to get sugar in the stem or afternoon to get it in the hay? My cutter is a drum and only cuts 3". By the time the plant is bent over in cutting it's more like 4". I'm waiting on this years regrowth as I type.

The plant has no stem system other than the seed pod. That makes for nice digestibility. But the seed pod is about the size of a nickel, is quite a bit taller than the leaves, and requires crimping if you don't want your crop to lie in the sun for a week....BTDT.

So you hold off bailing waiting for the advertised growth that you are supposed to get with it and get zapped on that.

Good luck but I'd find something else.

Mark

I'm going to try 25 acres of Pearl on some ground that was supposed to be corn. If we have to, we'll chop and bag it. I think about the first week in August we'll seed some oats and barley and maybe cut it for hay. Who knows, maybe the ground will still be too wet to plant. Let you know what happens.