|
Positioning Bale GrazingBy Wayne Burleson On a recent trip to the Peace River Country of Alberta, Canada presenting several workshops, my wife and I were fortunate enough to tour some very innovative livestock farms. Now being a yank from the warmer States, this was all new to me. Several livestock producers appeared very successful at reducing their livestock wintering costs. What makes this so different for us, is that these Canadian folks would not hop out of bed early in the morning, dawn on all their heavy winter clothes, start that cold diesel tractor and let it warm up, and then go feed the cows. (That’s the way lots of us do it here in Montana.) Instead, around mid morning after tea and tarts (that something else we don’t have in the States - tarts) they would fire-up the snowmobile and zoom down the electric fence alley ways to check the cows and calves to see if they had cleaned up yesterday’s meals or not. Often just returning, and saying; "Things look OK for today." These Canadians were doing something called "Bale Grazing." This is not some new idea, as it dates way back when. However, with the coming of modern moveable electric fences - that electric tape or polywire fence that looks like a ribbon with very small wires in it - they fence narrow strips in the frozen ground where the hay bales had been previously placed. Thus the term "Positioning Bale Grazing." Neater yet, other producers like Neil Boyd, just south of Fairview, Alberta, would simply stick the electric fence post, with an extension rod welded on the end of the portable posts, right into the bale of alfalfa or straw hay. His labor when feeding would amount to - just pulling the fence post out of the round bale and moving the polywire back a ways and open up the next set of bales. WOW! What a simple, fast, money saving way to feed your animals over the next several days - no equipment to run on those very cold days when feeding next to the house. The cold weather also dictates how many bales they would feed for the next several days. What about the strings you ask, isn’t that a problem with frozen bales? These Canadian folks use a hemp fiber called: "Sisal" which is a natural fiber. They say it just disappears in the soils. For some reason when we hear of new ideas our doubts hold us back for the longest time before we even think about changing. What about the wasted forage problem, you ask? Another fellow, Peter Lundgard North of Fairview, Alberta, pointed out to us that his cows cleaned up the alfalfa so much, that he said he was getting 110 percent use. When we looked, sure enough the cows had eaten all the hay and even the forage that was growing right under the round bale when it was placed in the field, yielding the 110 percent. Peter also said he was feeding his land by buying the hay bales (cheaper than haying) and then positioning the bales in his fields, instead of haying his own land. He felt that he was taking less production energy from his own land and was adding the neighbor’s energy back into his soils in the form of animal dung. In the summer he grazed these fields periodically and then stockpiled the forage for winter feeding instead of haying it. By the way, we watched all these animals eating snow as their only water source. Another thing that we don’t understand and question here in the States. When I mention this to our local boys, they just look me in the eye and say, if we did that here in Montana, our cows would have a big time forage compaction problem. New ideas scare us and changes come slow. It seems so hard for people to change from their old ways of doing things. The Canadians have experienced none of these problems. In fact, they said that their cows do better eating snow than drinking large amounts of cold water. The story goes, one of Peter’s neighbors was using swath grazing, a form of strip grazing wind-rowed grain, had to remove his cows from the swaths, because they were putting on too much weight for safe calving. New words are hard for us to believe, especially on hearing them for the first time. I see that "Bale Grazing" has great potential to help certain producers reduce the cost of a winter feeding program. This method is really a strip grazing technique, just used in the wintertime. Whether it’s stockpiled mixed pasture/hay field, straw and hay bales fed with grain, swath grazing or bale grazing, you learn how to lay out whatever forage you have available for winter feed, strip graze it and monitor the livestock. I will post more of these winter feeding ideas on our educational web site as this may help, if people can see more photos of producers successfully reducing their winter feeding costs. Please give me a call if you have more stories on how to reduce these expenses.
Producer Peter Lundgard from Fairview, Alberta, Canada says No Problems - No compaction - No getting too cold
- No ice to chop
|
