Brassica crops for grazing are valuable and used for many reasons, from a development tool to a rotation option for filling a feed gap at key times of the year. Choosing the right brassica crop for your farm is important to achieve a profitable outcome.

Brassica crop options range from bulb turnips, leafy turnips, rape, kale and swedes. Each crop has its own characteristics to use on your farm to match your feed and stock requirements.

Bulb and leafy turnips provide a fast growing source of feed that can be grazed early. Bulb turnips provide a leaf and bulb making it better as a bank of feed. The leafy turnips provide only a leaf, making it better for a multi-graze situation. Both turnips don’t have the requirement to mature before grazing, whereas this is important for rape which needs to have the distinctive change in leaf colour before stock can safely graze. Rape is a multi-graze leafy option which has good cold tolerance and a slower maturity than the turnips, making it an option for filling autumn feed gaps when the season has been difficult through late summer or when winter feed crops are looking like they will fall short.

The final two types of brassica are kale and swede. These two are the more cold tolerant crops. Kale is commonly used in the South Island as a winter feed crop as it is a source of high quality feed to carry stock through those colder months.

Swedes are mostly grown in cooler areas with higher rainfall that helps them thrive as a great source of winter feed, which is provided mostly by the bulb, and are  usually only grazed once. Because both kale and swede are good winter feed options, they are often used together in rotations. Remember that kale is more tolerant to the soil disease club root.

They can follow the swedes in a rotation, but the more sensitive swedes cannotfollow kale without a higher risk of yield penalties and is not advised.

To get advice on any aspect of pasture establishment, contact your local PGG Wrightson Technical Field Representative.