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NE Colorado | If you don't plant the oats too thick, around 30 lbs to the acre, they work fine for getting alfalfa established in the spring. Especially if your ground is relatively clean and you don't have all kinds of weeds sprouting at the same time.
I have tried direct seeding and I have tried spraying the oats out and all I get is less forage production and not a better or longer lived stand. Moreover, demand for oat hay is really good where I am, dairy farmers like it for their dry cows.
Broadleaf herbicides such as Pursuit or Raptor are way overrated for what they do and what they cost, though grass herbicides like Select do well.
I have also found out that fall seeding is way overrated. Soil as well as daytime temperatures are still often very high and I have gotten skips due to damping off or pythium rot of newly emerged seedlings. Moreover, unless one moldboard plows quite deep following a grain crop, there often is a lot of volunteer grain to deal with.
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alfalfa and oats
