Tall Fescue
Deep Roots. Steady Feed. Built for Resilience.
Fescues are durable, deep-rooted perennial grasses prized for their persistence, drought tolerance, and year-round feed value. Their extensive root system draws moisture and nutrients from deeper soil layers, helping maintain green growth when ryegrasses may struggle. This can make them ideal for dryland or free-draining soils, as well as farms seeking a low-input, long-life pasture base that still supports strong animal performance.
Vernado offers fescues delivering dense tillering, high palatability, and consistent digestibility. Tall fescue provides bulk and resilience, performing where ryegrass can sometimes struggle, while tall fescues offer softer texture and higher leaf quality for grazing. Both contribute to soil stability and persistence, making them a sound investment in sustainable feed systems.
Varieties of Fescues
VNS Tall Forage Fescue
VNS Tall Forage Fescue is a hardy perennial ideal for long-term pastures and a reliable year-round feed supply. It exhibits excellent drought and heat tolerance, thriving even under the most challenging conditions. With its dense, leafy growth and strong persistence, VNS provides a consistent, high-quality pasture that remains highly palatable and digestible for livestock.
Tower Tall Forage Fescue
Tower is a palatable, summer-active tall fescue that delivers high animal performance and reliable feed quality. It adapts well to a wide range of soils, including wet or poorly drained areas, making it a versatile choice for mixed pasture systems. Compared to phalaris and cocksfoot, Tower offers superior frost tolerance and maintains high-quality growth late into spring and summer, ensuring consistent feed supply during critical months.
Fescues are hardy, reliable pasture grasses built to perform in tough New Zealand conditions. Known for their deep root systems and strong persistence, they deliver dependable growth through heat, dry spells, and challenging soils where other grasses tap out. Fescues provide dense, leafy feed with high palatability, supporting consistent animal performance across the seasons. Their ability to handle heavy grazing, stand up to stress, and maintain quality makes them an ideal backbone for long-term pastures. Whether for dairy, sheep, or beef systems, fescues offer stability, resilience, and sustained productivity—helping your paddocks stay green and working harder for you.
Nouga Tall Forage Fescue
Whether it’s searing heat or pesky pests, water-logged or saline soils, tall fescue thrives where ryegrass falters.
With outstanding softness of leaves for ease of grazing management and high digestibility, it’s the tall fescue that thinks its a ryegrass. This combined with all the usual positive benefits of tall fescue make RGT Nouga a pasture option that’s hard to beat.
Hummer Tall Forage Fescue
Hummer is a soft leaved and fine tillered early heading cultivar with seed head emergence starting in late September. Hummer has maintained the productivity and persistence of the early heading types while improving the palatability and grazing management. Not only is Hummer a fine tillered cultivar but it is a sod forming which create dense crowns over time: an important trait of a persistent tall fescue.
Haven Tall Forage Fescue
Haven is one of the highest-producing tall fescues Agricom has tested. While maintaining its high early spring growth similar to the previous generation material, Haven has captured more summer, autumn, and winter growth leading to an impressive annual yield potential for a Haven pasture.
Primefest Meadow Fescue / Italian
Primefest is a unique hybrid combining Italian Ryegrass and Meadow Fescue, giving it strong winter activity and annual yield from the Italian side, and enhanced persistence from Meadow Fescue (often lasting 2–3 years or more). Meadow Fescue’s deeper root system and high feed quality boost Primefest’s resilience and overall forage value. It’s a versatile option for finishing systems, either sown pure or in mixes with clovers and herbs.
What Our Customers Say
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Dairy Farmer Waikato
