Paul you bring up a good point - the toughness of the gmo corn stalks.

As a planter attachment guy, I will totally agree that corn stalks have become MUCH tougher over the past 20 years or so.

It's sort of a two edge sword - we want stalks to be tough and stand with huge ears in hurricane winds during the growing season and be immune to whatever borers or worms come along during the growing season, yet we want them to break down easily over the cold winter and have them deliciously (to a cow!) soft and paleteable in sileage... It ain't gona happen.

Those tough stalks are often still tough a year or two later in northern climates. These stalks have spawned whole new types of equipment incl "stalk pullers" in NE ridgetill country and Super Coulters etc. which exist largely to handle tough stalks.

In the case of grazing standing corn however, I want standability and disease/pest resistance more than I care about tough stalk pallateability.

The cattle eat the ears/cobs first, husks and leaves second, then the upper stalk and only get to eating the tough lower part of the stalk if you really restrict the area and they are real hungry. From what I have learned in my accidental experiment so far, I don't really want them eating the lower half of the stalk. That is where the nitrates are concentrated. In my strip till I'd just as son have those stalks still attached to the ground and even standing. My strips and next years rows of corn will be down the middles.

When cutting GMO corn for sileage on the other hand, you are cutting most of that stalk down to about 6" from the ground and forcing the cattle to have to consume that stalk which is designed to be strong and tough during maybe its toughest part of the plant life cycle. It's like your Mom making you eat asparagus stalks that aren't quite tender. I've tried them and its not something I would choose to eat if given a choice of just eating the tops, as in grazing ears and husks and the upper corn plant.

So I think that grazing stalks use of a gmo with tougher stalks is a very different situation than using these same stalks for sileage and forcing cows to eat them.

This is maybe another situation, like row unit shutoffs, rtk/mapping and planting at an angle where technologies come together to open whole new possibilities. Corn seed technologies with strip till and planter equipment that can handle this sort of residue seem to open up whole new worlds of winter cattle feeding possibilities.

I'll add a picture of what a grazed areas looked like after grazing last fall. The first field I grazed (not shown) where the corn was very green, high nitrate and high moisture, I restricted them to "clean up their plate". And almost killed a cow.  In the picture below I did not restrict them as long and is probably what most of the grazed areas will look like after the snow leaves. I think I can get through this in the spring with our latest version Pluribus units.

Regarding your green circles in oats - if you can see them in oats that fertility will be there in the next corn crop also. It may take a couple years of this to get the fertility evened out over the surface area but it is amazing what earthworms and other soil organisms can do if we feed them and leave them alone to do their work.

I've seen spring strip tilled fields right after stripping with enormous amounts of 200+ bu corn residue on the surface. only to come by 6 weeks later and wonder where it all went.

Here are the photos. I added the before photo so you can see what the plants look like when an area is first opened up to what I want it to look like when they are done grazing. Lots of stalks (and manure) left but not much else

Jim at Dawn

edit re VT3 standability: I have heard all sorts of things as you have that some "conventional cornstood better than the triples", etc. I am not a seed guy. All I can say is this one (Kaltenberg 4663VT3) was super. It stood 100% on this ridgetop when a lot of other corn in the area had a significant percentage down. I don't know if the other was stack or not. I am also looking at planting corn AGAIN into strips in this residue so I want all the belt and suspenders protection I can get. 

(Grazed Strip Tilled Standing High Moisture Corn 10-27-08_IMG_3102_1.jpg)

(Grazing Strip Tilled Standing High Moisture Corn_Cattle Entering New Front_10-27-08_IMG_3110_2.JPG)

Grazed Strip Tilled Standing High Moisture Corn 10-27-08_IMG_3102_1.jpg (106KB - 187 downloads)

Grazing Strip Tilled Standing High Moisture Corn_Cattle Entering New Front_10-27-08_IMG_3110_2.JPG (109KB - 198 downloads)