Productive grass stands of pasture use for conditions of the Vologda region

Abstract

Scientific research was carried out on the experimental field of the North-Western Research Institute of Dairy and Grassland Farming, a separate division of the Voluntary Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, located in the village of Dityatevo, Vologda Region. The soil of the experimental plot is soddy-podzolic and moderately cultivated. Pasture is a cheap and accessible food source for herbivores; it solves the problems of survival in crisis ecological, economic, and atypical climatic conditions. Pasture farming has significant animal health benefits, allowing them to consume desirable grass species. In the Russian Federation, pastures occupy about 30% of the area of agricultural land, and in the Vologda region, they occupy 13.3% (145.3 thousand hectares). The article describes ten years of research on the creation of pastures based on traditional and rare perennial grasses. In the composition of pasture grass stands, we studied cereal grasses (meadow timothy grass Vologda local and Leningradskaya 204, meadow fescue Sverdlovskaya 37, festulolium Allegro, perennial ryegrass VIK-66, awnless brome SibNIISKhoz-189, meadow bluegrass Limagi and Dar) and legumes (eastern goat’s rue Krivich, Lyad crown horned Solnyshko, meadow clover Carmine and Dymkovsky, creeping clover Belogorsky and Lugovik). Cereal and legume-cereal grass stands on average for 2011–2015. provided yields from 1.3 to 5.3 t/ha, metabolic energy output – 12.6–52.5 GJ/ha, and crude protein content ranging from 10.3 to 15.6% per 1 kg of dry matter; in 2017–2021, these figures were 2.3–8.4 t/ha, 23.4–87.6 GJ/ha, 13.4–18.9%, respectively.