Cover crops are usually touted for their contributions to soil health. But for no-tillers with livestock, covers can provide an immediate benefit to the bottom line by also serving as forage.

The key to dual-purposing cover crops for both soil-building benefits and forage is to strike a balance between the objectives of both uses, says Penn State soil management specialist Sjoerd Duiker.

“I think we have a great opportunity to restore that marriage between the livestock and crops,” Duiker told attendees at the 2013 National No-Tillage Conference.

New Opportunity

Perhaps the most important factor in using cover crops as forage is evaluating the crops that no-tillers produce for profit. No-tillers raising corn have three windows for cover-crop establishment, Duiker says: after early corn-grain harvest, after corn silage or after another crop prior to planting corn.

Duiker warns that seeding cover crops prior to early-planted corn can be a challenge because the covers may not develop enough biomass before being terminated. But a farmer could let that cover crop grow longer in the spring, harvest it as forage and plant corn into the stubble, creating a double-cropping system of sorts.

Duiker says covers can be seeded before or after soybeans. The benefit of raising covers before soybeans is that soybeans are typically planted later than corn so the cover crop can develop more.

Covers can also be seeded after harvesting small grains or prior to planting sorghum, Sudangrass, millet, alfalfa or grass hay.

While Duiker acknowledges the popularity of corn in…