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By October, winter is just a few pages away on the calendar. With the change in season and forages entering dormancy comes the need to pay closer attention to your supplementation strategy to ensure cows do not lose body condition.

A few of the benefits of sod-seeding small grain winter pasture include providing high quality forage during the winter months, providing additional forage production during the warm-season grass's dormant season and potentially reducing the need for winter supplementation.

There are several "classes" of reserve forages that are available for grazing livestock beginning in September and going forward through winter. It is critical to take inventory of forage reserves now to determine what is on hand and what is expected to be produced.

Many producers haven't restocked to pre-drought cow numbers, and the welcomed rains have resulted in excess forage. When frost arrives this fall, there will be abundant standing forage in many areas, but the quality will be more extreme than we typically encounter.

Three main types of nutritional supplementation are often discussed in regard to stocker cattle grazing wheat pasture.