Productivity of White Clover-Grass Mixed Swards

Dairy farming is a major branch of agriculture in Latvia. Therefore, providing livestock with high quality grass forage over the whole grazing season is of great importance. However, the cost of obtaining high quality grass forage should not be too high. Perennial forage legume-grass stands meets the required demands best of all. Inclusion of white clover in legume-grass stands contributes to the production of high quality herbage swards (Frame and Newbould, 1986; Laidlaw et al., 1995; Orr et al., 1990; Van Bockstaele, 1985). The nutritive value of white clover depends on the favorable leaf: stem ratio in total herbage at flowering stages it is up to 65-70 and 15%, respectively (Taylor, 1985). White clover-grass swards are successfully utilized when replacing the summer grazing by feeding green cut forages to livestock. Being grown in mixtures with grasses different by height, leafage, regrowth ability and other biological traits, survival and persistence of white clover in a sward has become topical under many fold-cut treatments.