GDDs April 9, 2021
Erik Smith, Area Field Crop Specialist/Team Leader
Central New York Dairy and Field Crops
The sun is out and the trees are budding, and depending on when you seeded your winter annual forage crops last fall, you may be ready to harvest in only a few weeks. Springtime degree day accumulations may not be as precise at predicting harvest timing for these crops as others (especially in light of planting date last fall), but they can give you an idea of how fast your crops (or weeds…) may be progressing.
Winter annual small grain forage crops should be harvested at the flag stage (Feekes 9, when the last leaf has fully emerged) for optimum nutritive value. Triticale requires around 100 GDD per growth stage, while wheat requires up to 140. Here is this week's table, designed to include a wide range of latitudes and elevations around the CNY region. All values are base 32 degrees F from January 1:
Dairy
Livestock
Forages
Grains
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