If you're like most folks, you could use more pasture and winter feed. If it rains, what can you plant for quick feed?

If you're planning on growing fall forage crops, your two best choices are turnips for grazing and oats for either hay or grazing, recommends Bruce Anderson, University of Nebraska-Lincoln forage specialist.

Winter small grains like cereal rye, wheat, and triticale won't produce much fall growth although they will provide early grazing next spring.

Try Oats, Turnips if You Want Fall Forage Crops

Oats can produce a couple tons of hay in the fall when seeded by mid-August if it receives good moisture and fertility, he says. We usually drill about three bushels per acre in a prepared seedbed, but drilling directly into weed-free stubble of corn, beans, wheat, or other crops already harvested or hailed out works well when soil remains moist for several days in a row after seeding.

For turnips, it's best to plant just two or three pounds per acre and barely cover the tiny seeds. Add 30 to 50 pounds of oats for an even better grazing mix, Anderson suggests.  Broadcasting onto bare, tilled soil often works well as does shallow drilling into weed-free crop stubble.

Oats can be ready to graze in six to eight weeks, moisture permitting, but don't start grazing turnips until late October or November. Ease animals slowly into grazing either one to minimize respiratory or digestive problems. Oats will die following a real hard freeze, but turnips continue to grow slowly until temperature drops below 20 degrees.  Even into the dead of winter, the root of the turnip remains a very desirable, and grazable, feed, ,he says.

"You need to look ahead to fall and winter," Anderson says. "If late summer rains appear, be ready to capitalize using oats and turnips."