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MB, Canada | When most people initially see bale grazing sites, they're first criticism is that there must be a huge amount of waste. In my area, I've seen sites that had 25% waste and sites that had no more than if the rancher had used skirted round bale feeders, so if you want good cleanup, it's really just a matter of pushing the cows a bit to clean it up.
My criticisms have always been that it concentrates a lot of nutrients in one spot in the pasture, which inevitably results in nitrogen leaching, and that if you're taking bales from your good hayfields to put on your bad pastures, you're really just robbing Peter to pay Paul rather than 'fixing' anything. Of course, many bale grazing advocates will counter the second point by pointing out that they buy their hay from their neighbours rather than growing it themselves, as "the true cost of production is at least $100/ton, and I can buy it from my dumb neighbour for $75/ton, so it's a no-brainer!", which is all fine and dandy as long as you're willing to admit that you're no better than Tyson or JBS, exploiting some vulnerable old rancher who never had a chance to get away to a Ranching for Profit school like you did. Any system built on exploiting others for undervalued labour or commodities is in my eyes inherently unsustainable, and not what we need in our dying rural communities. Anyway, enough of that. Clearly that's a sore spot for me.
It probably sounds like I'm against the idea of bale grazing, but in fact I'm moving toward a bale graze system for at least half of my winter feeding program. One of my winter feeding areas is about 100 acres, and I recently seeded it into a mix of hybrid bromegrass, tall fescue, and crested wheatgrass. My intent was to pick species that could make use of huge amounts of nitrogen and also take the abuse of being beat on in the winter or early spring. My plan is to make my bales as small as my baler will consistently kick out to help better spread the nutrient load around the field. Between the grass species and the smaller bales, this largely solves the first problem. The other thing I'm going to do is that after a spring graze, I'll simply bale these pieces and have the cows eat the bales wherever the baler spits them out. As this is pretty much pure nutrient cycling, this solves the second and third problems, and also means I really only need enough net on the bale to get it out the back and to stay solid until freeze-up, which should make removal a lot easier too.
Anyways, that's my plan, so I'll put out an update next year detailing whether I'm brilliant or if I just made a big old mess. | |
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Our start to bale grazing
