Fodder Rape

Sami23

Quick question for those of you with experience of rape. I've sowed a couple of acres of rape myself for nearly 10 years now I'd say. Now for the 1st time the its all covered in yellow flowers, never had it before. It was sown around June 1st and the flowers are present for the last month anyway.
Can't understand why there in it and more importantly are they any harm to my cattle. They seem to b coming from the rape stalks themselves and shooting out from the top.
I thought rape and kale shouldn't go to flower til next March or April ?

White Clover

Sami23 wrote: »

Quick question for those of you with experience of rape. I've sowed a couple of acres of rape myself for nearly 10 years now I'd say. Now for the 1st time the its all covered in yellow flowers, never had it before. It was sown around June 1st and the flowers are present for the last month anyway.
Can't understand why there in it and more importantly are they any harm to my cattle. They seem to b coming from the rape stalks themselves and shooting out from the top.
I thought rape and kale shouldn't go to flower til next March or April ?

Sorry, don't know much about fodder crops but is there any chance you got the wrong seed, i.e. oilseed rape?

blue5000

Rape etc. are bi-annual crops, year 1 is the vegetable stage and yr 2 is when they go to seed, yours is going to seed. It might have been 'tricked' into going to seed with the bad weather, normally this wouldn't happen until March.

If cattle are used to it, ie. on it all winter it isn't that toxic to them, but yours I dunno at this stage what you could do. What were you going to graze it with?

Sam Kade

Usually when it goes to seed in March cattle could graze it away if they were on it all winter. I've grazed kale gone to seed without any problems but they were grazing it all winter. Only reason your crop went to seed is that you could have sown it too early late July is when I'd start sowing rape. Kale can be sown from the end of April.

Sami23

White Clover wrote: »

Sami23 wrote: »

Quick question for those of you with experience of rape. I've sowed a couple of acres of rape myself for nearly 10 years now I'd say. Now for the 1st time the its all covered in yellow flowers, never had it before. It was sown around June 1st and the flowers are present for the last month anyway.
Can't understand why there in it and more importantly are they any harm to my cattle. They seem to b coming from the rape stalks themselves and shooting out from the top.
I thought rape and kale shouldn't go to flower til next March or April ?

Sorry, don't know much about fodder crops but is there any chance you got the wrong seed, i.e. oilseed rape?

No it was fodder rape alright

Sami23

Sam Kade wrote: »

Usually when it goes to seed in March cattle could graze it away if they were on it all winter. I've grazed kale gone to seed without any problems but they were grazing it all winter. Only reason your crop went to seed is that you could have sown it too early late July is when I'd start sowing rape. Kale can be sown from the end of April.

I always sow it around middle of June and start strip grazing it from middle September and never had this happen before so baffled by it

Sami23

blue5000 wrote: »

If cattle are used to it, ie. on it all winter it isn't that toxic to them, but yours I dunno at this stage what you could do. What were you going to graze it with?

I'm strip grazing it with approx 18 to 24 month old cattle which I'm planning on selling in November