Bale grazing can reduce labor requirements during winter

EFFINGHAM, Ill. — Bale grazing is a flexible system that can be utilized for various sizes of cattle herds.

“I like to call it rotational grazing with round bales,” said Greg Halich, forage systems economist at the University of Kentucky.

“I have been doing this for about 15 years now on my personal farms and I have been working with farms in Kentucky for about 10 of those years,” he said during a presentation at the Heart of America Grazing Conference hosted by the Illinois Grazing Lands Coalition, the Illinois Forage and Grassland Council, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Resources Conservation Service and University of Illinois Extension.

“Bale grazing is like anything else — if you are not doing it thoughtfully, you can screw it up,” he said.

For the system, round bales are set out in a checkerboard fashion in a pasture when the weather is good.

“You use temporary fencing to keep the cattle where you want them,” Halich said.

“You start where the water source is, set up temporary fencing and slowly work across the pasture,” he said. “It might take one week, one month or a couple of months. It all varies.”

Most of the farms that Halich works with use hay rings for the bales. However, he also knows farms that do bale grazing without rings.

“You will have more hay waste without hay rings,” he said. “But you will have less infrastructure and you won’t have to roll the rings so it will be quicker to do without the rings.”

Halich recommends cattlemen start out by feeding lower densities of hay at 2 tons per acre.

“In Kentucky, the ground is rarely frozen, so if you feed at high densities and it is wet, you will have a severe plugging problem,” Halich said.

“Start off at lower densities and get a feel for it and then gradually increase the density,” he said. “It depends a lot on your soils. You can get away with more on well-drained soils.”

Cattlemen should think about the hay as potential nutrients.

“At 2 tons per acre, if we assume 75% of what is in the hay gets recycled, we’re still getting over 50 units of nitrogen, almost 20 units of phosphorus and 80 units of potassium,” Halich said. “It’s good fertilizer.”

The impact zones come back pretty quickly, the forage systems economist said, because of the great fertility.

“There is a little bit of hay waste, but it is the perfect seedbed,” he noted.

“To bring these spots back, I have found two things that some people call weeds — chicory and plantain,” he said. “They work so well because they have deep tap roots that can break through the compaction.”

Cattle like the improved varieties of chicory, Halich said.

“They will graze the chicory and plantain before they hit anything else, because they are pulling up the minerals that most pasture plants don’t do,” he said.

Anytime cattle are in a pasture during the winter, there will be some damage.

“The question is how bad is it relative to other options,” the forage systems economist said. “Don’t think so much about the short run, but how it will improve our pastures in the long run.”

Bale grazing has several benefits, Halich said, including reducing the tractor hours needed to feed a cattle herd.

“The first year you should be able to reduce your tractor hours by 50%, and after two or three years, the reduction should be two-thirds or better,” he explained.

“If you have not tried this, you are going to be afraid to set a lot of hay at one time,” he said. “Set out maybe one month or so the first year until you get comfortable with bale grazing.”

Some cattlemen are concerned about setting a lot of round bales out in the pasture during the fall because they think the hay will rot.

“There is so little loss of hay in February because moisture and warm temperatures are the two things that are needed for hay to rot,” Halich said. “But you will have some hay that gets wet.”

He no longer worries about feeding his cattle during winter storms.

“I don’t have to get the tractor started — all I have to do is get myself motivated to go out and move the fence,” he said.

On wetter soils, Halich said, cattlemen may choose to do a hybrid approach of bale grazing.

“Set your hay out, and if it is dry, bale graze,” he said. “But if it is wet, unroll the hay and there will be a little more hay waste, but this will avoid the plugging around the hay rings.”