Building Resilience with Warm-Season Natives

By Gene Schriefer

This article first appeared in the October 2025 issue of Graze. We're sharing it here in full to give you a taste of the practical content we offer in each issue of the magazine. For the full meal, subscribe today!

We’ve owned our farm since the 80s. Located in southwest Wisconsin in the Dodgeville area, we’re in the Driftless Region, so our soils are mostly highly erodible silt loam.

In 1988, we rented the pasture for several years to a beef producer who was using managed grazing. My long-term goal was to run my own grazing operation, and seeing how well-managed pastures performed during the drought compared with every other pasture in the area only solidified my belief that managed grasslands were the best option for me.

I began a sheep enterprise in 1990 and my wife and I started a beef herd in 1992. I focused on cool-season grasses and legumes and occasionally used a warm-season annual if renovation was appropriate on hay fields. There was a fair amount of research and demonstrations on using warm-season perennial grasses, but at the time, I did not see the value they would add to our operation.

Mixing warm- and cool-season forages in the same paddocks was the “Holy Grail” for grazers and respected, more established, and more knowledgeable graziers than me attempted this without great success. On paper it looks ideal, but in practice it’s a far different story.

We have always contracted our hay production. Historically, southwest Wisconsin’s wettest months are June, July, and August. We normally would get an inch or more of rain every week, which is great for grazing but not so much when making hay.

I specifically remember two years: one where hay was cut on time in early June only to have it rain every other day for two weeks. As I recall, I raked fields three times before actually being able to bale it. Not sure I could really call it hay at that point.

Another year it rained most of June and we ended up with Independence Hay, cut on the Fourth of July. Then my hay guy bought a wrapper, which changed everything in terms of getting a quality forage product cut and stored.

Major droughts occur roughly every 22 years in our area. Witnessing the impact on farms, I was determined to learn from other people’s misfortune and how to manage around a drought and be ready for the next one.

I discovered an addiction to the Climate Prediction Center Drought Monitor and long-term weather forecasts. I was watching rainfall, how quickly grass was regrowing, and how much grass was ahead of me and adjusting when and where to add in hay acres into the grazing rotation.

Seeing potential

Along the way, things were changing. I observed that rather than a reliable inch a week of rain, we were experiencing three, four, or even five weeks without rain. A flash drought, then a deluge all at once. Pastures would start to slow down. Cut hay fields wouldn’t recover as quickly if it didn’t rain for three or more weeks.

I found myself feeding hay in July to protect the residual forage from overgrazing. Somehow it seemed like failed management to make hay, only to turn around and feed it in July or August. Feeding hay was clearly the correct decision, but how could I manage around this?

In the drought of 2012 alfalfa and red clover were growing OK but were slow in recovery, and our grass mix was even slower. In a normal year we have half a dozen days over 90 degrees, but now we were routinely experiencing 100 degrees or higher.

Out of curiosity, I started measuring 2-4 inch soil temperatures in different pastures. Foot-tall orchardgrass/red clover in full sun had 75-degree temps pre-grazing and leaving a 3-4 inch residual would increase it to 80 degrees.

As I measured over-grazed pastures around the county, I frequently found 90-95 degree soil temps.

One severely overgrazed paddock with a southwest aspect was 100 degrees. I began wondering what the terminal temperature was for cool-season grass. Some of those paddocks had dead plants the next spring, so some areas reached those terminal temperatures.

I was invited to attend a 2012 bio-energy conference at Michigan State University in late July held at the Kellogg Biological Research Station. This was my first up close and personal encounter with warm-season native perennials including big bluestem.

Kellogg is at our latitude and had a similar rainfall pattern as Wisconsin with lighter textured soils, and yet here were grasses that were still lush and yielding 3-4 tons of grass under drought conditions.

Interesting, but bioenergy grasses are not the same as higher quality cool-season forage grasses. However, a seed had been planted.

In 2013, the same conference was held in Illinois and once again there were warm season grass plots but this year they were not under drought conditions. One of the presenters, Rob Mitchell, a warm season grass breeder with USDA-ARS in Nebraska, spoke about the bioenergy potential of different native grasses.

As an afterthought, he mentioned some rate of gain trials he had completed with switchgrass, indiangrass and big bluestem and measured 1, 2, and 2.8 lbs. per head gain respectively. This grabbed my full attention.

He added that while switchgrass produced the highest yield per acre, big bluestem produced the most gain per acre. I had a flashback to the Dutch grass breeders that were attending early grazing conferences and their notion that they didn’t care about mechanical yield, only which forages had the highest intake.

After a few calls and emails with Rob Mitchell, I decided to see how big bluestem might fit into our forage system and planted a 10-acre field.

My reasoning was as follows. If there is a drought, this forage will continue to grow longer than cool-season forages due to its significantly deeper root system and preference for hotter temperatures than cool-season forage.

Could this sustain the herd or flock through the drought and extend the rest period for the cool-season paddocks?

If cool-season paddocks were producing well and there was no drought, could the big bluestem be harvested for dry cow hay? Since I’m charged on a per-acre basis for hay mowing and raking, instead of three or four cuttings of alfalfa/grass per year, a single cutting of big bluestem would reduce harvesting costs.

Once dormant in fall, what is fall and/or winter grazing potential? Under heavy snow, our cool-season forages tend to lay flat, but native warm season grasses hold up under snow pressure.

Managing big bluestem

There’s not enough space here to go into details on establishment. Like other long-lived perennials, you get this forage the first year or the third.

It was quickly apparent mine would be a third-year stand. Subsequent seedings have gone much better: just part of the knowledge learning curve.

I haven’t perfected the establishment methods the Agricultural Research Service recommends, in which it is fully established the first season.

What has emerged as my preferred seeding method is no-tilling with a native seed planter at 10 lbs. pure live seed in May into winter rye established the prior fall.

The rye is mechanically harvested and followed up with an application of imazapyr herbicide and a late summer mowing to help keep light competition to a minimum.

Here are some unexpected observations I’ve made so far: big bluestem (and other warm summer annuals) like burning, especially if we can do this in late spring as the grass starts to grow.

Burning has positive effects on the grass and also improves palatability. Late spring burning is also very beneficial in helping keep brome and quackgrass pressure low.

Now that the bluestem is well established, I’m moving towards a three-year burn rotation reflective of a patch burn grazing system. There needs to be adequate fuel to carry an effective fire.

While this is the “plan,” it gets interrupted by things like burn bans from wind/drought such as we had in 2022 when we could not burn at all. It also was thrown off schedule when we tried using a discbine to harvest the forage and cut the forage too short.

Burning is typically in the third season and once there is evidence of shoots on the grass (mid-May). Burning in Wisconsin requires a DNR permit and may be restricted in windy or dry conditions.

In fall, prior to a planned burn, I mow a fire break path around the field to help contain the fire.

We have a fair amount of CRP around the farm and need to be very conscious about wind direction and speed and be patient for ideal conditions. Burning 10 acres may take about two hours, but we tend to be slow and deliberate in setting the burn.

This big bluestem stand is pictured in the second week of July. It provides quality forage when cool-season grasses slow down.

Surprising benefits

Standing bluestem captures a lot of snow, so much snow that one of our line fences on a township road no longer drifts in. If we get December snow, the ground under the bluestem doesn’t freeze because it is so well insulated.

We have years where we lost snow cover in January, February, and/or March. Melting water flows into the field from alfalfa contours but so far, nothing ever flows out. We’re getting soil and groundwater recharging in the middle of winter. This is a really cool thing!

As the forage gets above a foot tall in late spring, pheasants migrate from CRP into the forage stand. It is somewhat heart stopping when a covey explodes from the grass a few feet from where you are.

For monoculture stands, we have some effective herbicide options for establishment of this forage.

I did not apply any fertilizer during the 3-year establishment phase, then began applying 50 units of nitrogen annually, which increased yield. Warm-season annuals are responsive to nitrogen, with one pound of N producing 30 lbs. forage.

In one of these flash drought summers — hot, low rain — the bluestem did NOT yield as I expected. I had to ponder this for a while. From cool-season grass research, we know that heavy N fertilizing increases root mass closer to the soil surface rather than deeper in the soil profile, and the point of the big bluestem was a deeper root mass, not shallow.

For this reason, I stopped N fertilizing. Since then when flash droughts occur, the big bluestem grows very well.

Annual production averages 3.5-4 tons and can push this over 5 tons with an N application. In a cool, wet year yields were around 3 tons, but other forage yields were higher. The goal is to optimize the farm under varying environmental conditions, NOT necessarily maximizing yield on every acre.

Cool, wet years lead to lower productivity, but with cool-season forages keeping up through the summer slump, I don’t see this as a major problem. This is an insurance and risk-management tool.

Cutting it for hay is something of a challenge. First, an 8-inch residual is recommended, as this plant stores its carbohydrate reserves in the lower stem.

Discbines do not work well at this height. The older style haybine with the shoes down might get to 7 inches and has been the best option so far. We did try a discbine one year and the plant did not recover well after harvest, resulting in excessive cool-season grass encroachment in fall and higher levels of encroachment the following spring.

This single harvest with the discbine set the field back a year. Another challenge with haymaking is the amount of forage laid out in a swath is nearly impossible to get dry because it’s so thick. I’m not willing to accept the weather risk of leaving the swath out for a week or more to get it dry. As such, wrapped baleage is still necessary.

Ideally, whether grazing or haying, I target starting around 18-20 inches of height, which is typically sometime after the first week in July, and continue grazing until around the third week in August, at which point I want to provide a six- to eight-week rest period before fall dormancy sets in. I am still learning how far this can pushed. As the stand ages, it appears to become more aggressive and thicker over time.

Stem and seed heads emerge in late July and ripen in late August.

A first graze before August can make for a second graze in August, and a first graze in August is one and done. We’re also managing cool season paddocks and getting them set for fall growth.

Our cattle graze this well in vegetative and reproductive stages and naturally leave 10 or more inches residual. Sheep prefer the vegetative stage and will leave the stems once stem elongation begins.

I have taken a few forage samples. In the vegetative stage, the big bluestem comes in around 12% crude protein and 68% TDN.

Once the seedhead is fully emerged, crude protein drops to 8% and TDN down to 52%. I have not yet forage sampled in fall.

In the vegetative state, this is ideal feed for growing cattle. The reproductive state is better suited for mature cows.

I routinely graze this in fall and I have not yet tried winter grazing with this forage. Once dormant, fall grazing hasn’t affected the following year’s growth.

Warm-season natives are not frost tolerant and are considered dormant after the first frost, compared to cool-season forages that can take light frosts and continue growing into fall.

My best guess big bluestem is mostly dormant once daytime temperatures are in the 50s and overnight temperatures are in the 30s.

The only caveat is maintaining enough material to sustain a burn when planned for the following spring.

The more material left, the hotter the fire, and the better the cool-season grass control. While it will burn with 16 inches, leaving more than this is preferred if possible.

Lessons learned

The initial goals for this project were 1) Can I grow it? 2) Can I manage it and not kill it? 3) Where does this fit on the farm? What’s attractive about this forage?

If you can learn to manage it, the plants can live up to 50 years. Alfalfa doesn’t have that capability. Big bluestem also does not feed heavily on potash like alfalfa. Once established it’s highly competitive.

This is not a panacea grass, and you do not need the whole farm planted to this. It’s not growing at all in April, May and early June and livestock need something to graze then. And like alfalfa, it requires a fall rest period prior to dormancy. If I were a seasonal livestock enterprise I could justify more acres, but for now we still have livestock 12 months of the year.

Graziers are well aware it’s not how much rain you get, it’s how much rain you keep that matters. Call me greedy, I want it all, including snow. I like that runoff is non-existent from the big bluestem swards.

I’m not making as much hay off this forage as I originally thought. I prefer to graze it and make hay from cool-season fields.

What’s next with this? After the initial seeding, we’ve put in 20 more acres of big bluestem, bringing the total to 30 acres.

Currently about 21% of the farm acres are in warm-season natives. I could probably make the case for 25-30%.

In the upper Midwest, cool-season forages in the near term will be the centerpiece of any grazing system in my opinion. These are available before and after the warm seasons start and finish their season. Where these warm-season forages may fit well in a seasonal system is to reduce the amount of forage from the spring flush of cool season and extend grazing into a summer flush of warm-season natives such as big bluestem while maintaining high rates of gain.

There are lowland and upland ecotypes of big bluestem. The variety I’ve been using is Bonzana — this is a selection that was bred from four different populations of Pawnee big bluestem and then selected for best digestibility.

In 2020 I seeded a diverse 12-way mix of warm-season natives which includes big bluestem.

Monocultures are easy to manage compared with a polyculture, and I have more tools to utilize now. My interest in considering a polyculture extended from growing confidence in my ability to manage big bluestem and having first-hand experience in how it can add the improved resilience I was seeking for the farm.

The ability of soil to improve water infiltration and storage is connected with pore space and soil organic matter.

I was also influenced by research coming from Michigan State suggesting that polycultures had greater variation in soil pore space size compared with monocultures of native warm-season plants and were more efficient at capturing and storing soil carbon. Establishing a warm-season polyculture should move the farm towards this goal.

This is the original recipe that I would make a few changes to if I repeated this.

30.0% big bluestem “Bonanza”

10.0% indiangrass “Scout”

30.0% eastern gamagrass

15.0% Virginia wildrye Elymus virginicus

4.0% Illinois bundleflower Desmanthus illinoensis

2.5% prairie clover – purple Dalea purpurea

0.5% prairie clover – white

1.0% tick trefoil

1.5% cupplant

2.5% perennial sunflower – awnless bush sunflower

2.5% pale coneflower

The other personal lesson for me is that we need to re-evaluate our assumptions from time to time. Are the conditions still the same when we first made our initial assumption? What has changed?

For southwest Wisconsin, weather has definitely changed in my lifetime, and adding a warm-season native has increased the resilience of our farm to manage this change.

Gene Schriefer grazes near Dodgeville, Wisconsin.

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