We’ve talked previously about the importance of moving cattle frequently to fresh pasture, of practicing what we call rotational grazing. But what does one do in the winter if there is no more pasture left to graze? We still move the cattle every day, but while feeding them hay rather than having them graze standing pasture. This we call rotational bale grazing, referring to the bales of hay.
For those who don’t know, hay is just dried grass. So yes, this is very much 100% grass-fed beef, just some of the grass is dried and stored so that the cattle have grass to eat in the winter. This past July we cut about 25 acres of pasture, let that cut grass dry in the hot summer sun for about 24 hours and then baled it up into roughly 900 pound round bales.
There are still a few weeks worth of pasture left for us to graze, but we need to fix up some fencing there before we bring the cattle over. So in the meantime we have the cattle back home on hay. This worked out well nicely for us to be able to go visit family in North Carolina during Christmas, making it easy for a friend to take care of the daily chores.
As late as March 2019 the field next to our house was home to a thin stand of softwood trees. The trees were cleared to return the field to pasture. All the heavy equipment created quite the disturbance to the soil, so this became the perfect spot to bale graze the cattle, as the combination of hay and manure is great for the soil. The cattle end up spreading a fair amount of the hay onto the ground. This “wasted” hay becomes food for the soil microorganisms, as does the manure the cattle put out. The soil bacteria, fungi, arthropods, etc. feed on the hay and manure. These organisms are essential for providing plant roots access to nutrients the plant can use to grow.
The key is to not feed too much hay or keep the cattle too long in any one place. We want to spread out the hay and manure, or rather, have the cattle spread out the hay and their manure as evenly as they can so that no one section becomes over fertilized or another spot misses out. You can see in the photo below the good job the cattle have done!
