Common Equine Pasture Forages: Tall Fescue

In Pennsylvania it is used primarily for conservation purposes, but it is well suited either alone or with ladino clover for hay, silage, or pasture for beef cattle and sheep, including stockpiled pasture or field-stored hay for winter feeding.

Characteristics

• Perennial bunch type forage grass that grows on a wide range of soils
• Spreads by underground rhizomes
• Leaf is rolled in the shoot
• Blades - course textured and thick with prominent veins, and sharp edges; upper surface is dull green underside is glossy
• Seed heads are a loose or compressed panicle

Attributes

• Grows well in poorly-drained soils
• Easily established
• Highly tolerant of low pH and limited fertility soils
• Tolerates frequent grazing
• Ideal grass for conservation plantings and areas of heavy livestock and machine use
• Stays green year round - can be stock piled (fertilized and rested) for fall feeding
• Provides growth into summer when cool season grasses have declined

Limitations

• Low palatability especially in summer
• Tall fescue (K31) contains an endophytic fungus which produces toxic alkaloids that cause reduced weight gain in young animals and retained placentas and aborted fetuses in mares that graze plants in the last trimester

Management

• When seeding a new pasture, use low endophyte and endophyte "friendly" varieties that have been developed for pasture use
• Seed at 12 lbs. per acre if seeded alone and 8 to 10 lbs. per acre if seeded with a legume
• Apply lime and fertilizer annually based on a soil test report
• If the pasture already contains endophyte infected tall fescue, remove pregnant mares from pasture 30 to 90 days before foaling and supplement grazing with hay and grain
• Over seeding with other forage species provides some alternative forage benefit, but tall fescue will again dominate if the plants and seeds are not eliminated prior to reseeding
• When reseeding, eliminate all vegetation in the pasture, and seed to another crop before replanting the field in pasture forages

Tall Fescue Stem Leaf System

Tall Fescue Leaf Close Up