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swath grazing

I'm coming to the conclusion that you guys in Canada & I live 2 different worlds. We basically just get 1 cutting hay. Usually start end june-1st july, and then you better go 24/7 or hay will burn up. Not enough 2nd cutting to ever make a windrow, except along swales. This year we never got a frost till Oct. We put up 3000-5000 bales/yr, and with kids leaving home and with hired help problems and cost of putting hay up, I'm looking for options. Our place is exceptionaly good hay place for around here. On a good year hay will run 2T/acre, but only 1 cutting. If I were to wait and plant in july, I'm not sure if it would even come up. per-if my alf looked anything like yours, i would be hopeful.
gf is probably right, snow is the least of my problems. Think maybe bale grazing is my only option, unless some other crop would work. How do you use the soap. I graze alf and bloat can be a real problem. Vigortone bloat gaurd seems to work good, but is pretty expensive, and EVERY critter needs to get their dose every day. As far as the cows, I have been full feeding them, because the swaths are completly covered with cement-like snow and even before they got that bad, I pretty much had to feed them most of the hay they needed.
 
I know a guy who had 3 or 4 kids when those were grown up and started moving on he and his wife had 3 more. He's a real funny guy and said he needed the help and they were his cheapest option. Maybe a guy should adopt some 4 year old kids that way they'd be house broke and a guy could get to training them.
 
Loneranger said:
I'm coming to the conclusion that you guys in Canada & I live 2 different worlds. We basically just get 1 cutting hay. Usually start end june-1st july, and then you better go 24/7 or hay will burn up. Not enough 2nd cutting to ever make a windrow, except along swales. This year we never got a frost till Oct. We put up 3000-5000 bales/yr, and with kids leaving home and with hired help problems and cost of putting hay up, I'm looking for options. Our place is exceptionaly good hay place for around here. On a good year hay will run 2T/acre, but only 1 cutting. If I were to wait and plant in july, I'm not sure if it would even come up. per-if my alf looked anything like yours, i would be hopeful.
gf is probably right, snow is the least of my problems. Think maybe bale grazing is my only option, unless some other crop would work. How do you use the soap. I graze alf and bloat can be a real problem. Vigortone bloat gaurd seems to work good, but is pretty expensive, and EVERY critter needs to get their dose every day. As far as the cows, I have been full feeding them, because the swaths are completly covered with cement-like snow and even before they got that bad, I pretty much had to feed them most of the hay they needed.
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My place would be more like yours then per's, Grassfarmer's or Denny's.
We only get one cutting and usually not as good as you get. I think cereal crops probably work the best for swath grazing as they can be cut later then hay in our climate. Bale grazing might be the better option. I have mostly native grass so I don't run as many cows/acre as most but I save some for winter grazing. I know that doesn't work so well with alfalfa.
 
I met a guy up by Grande Prairie who bale grazes but doesn't tie the bales or even stop when dumping and then uses an electric fence to hold the cows back. He runs a line and moves every ? several days. A soft core might be ideal for this. Not sure if killing the grass where it sits all summer is a concern but there would be plenty of seed and nutrients to regenerate and rejuvenate. There has to be some solution that would be a revolution. You could sell out and move up here. If you get close enough to the city you could be sell manure by the bag and Halal killed meats in the back alleys and grass finished to the health conscience and custom grazing to those who found out how much work an acreage is. :? :???: On second thought, stay where you are, life would be much simpler trying to find low cost solutions to look after several hundred bovines. :wink: :-)
 
I'm chuckling at Denny's post to LR. I'll say one thing for sure,
knowing the family, LR does a fine job of raising kids. I don't know
any kids who are more better behaved than his. And they go on
to be productive adults. The youngest one is just an amazing kid.
So serious, pays attention, knows what's going on and can take
care of just about anything. It's a delight to be around that family.

So there ya go, Lonerancher. Adopt some kids? Is your wife
ready for that...?????? :???: :???: :P :wink:
 
I'm maybe talking out of turn again because I don't know your area or conditions but I wonder if you could do something better with the alfalfa? If you can grow it well in your area and you are set up to hay on a big scale how about selling some alfalfa hay and buying back cheaper grass hay? You might be able to feed the combination cheaper and still come out ahead - use the protein from the alfalfa and the energy from the grass hay.
I don't have experience of alfalfa but suspect that you will be losing so much quality by leaving it lying from July through to winter. I think any system that relies on cutting in July and winter grazing the swaths would incur a lot of wastage. The leaves on alfalfa just seem to soak up rain and I wonder how many fall off even once it's in the windrow?
I don't swath graze cereals either but that is a system that works well up here generally because the crop is ready to swath in September and we don't get much rain after then to spoil the crop.
Maybe in your country with the weather you would be more apt to get it frozen under in winter anyway?
If you have native grasses on your place can you bank that to graze in winter even if supplemented with some good alfalfa hay?
 
I enjoy all the feedback. The swath grazing so far is kind of a bust. I usually always have lots of stockpiled native grass for winter grazing, but this year, tried something different. We summer on all this tame pasture and cows don't seem to cycle very good since we switched to may calving and turn the bulls out the 1st of aug. So this year I made a rotation thru our native, starting in last of july. Thought cows would breed better on native range with new pasture every week or so. Thought I could then use the swaths for late fall/early winter. Would still have worked good if we hadn't had this hard winter and so much snow. I figured the alf swaths would be at least as good as standing native grass in the winter. There was a lot of green stuff on the bottom of the windrows, at least where it was heavier. Would have hit a home run if I would have baled it and baled grazed it, as I wouldn't have got to graze any native anyway because it is really snowed under. Everyone that winter grazes here is really crying. Oh well, at least I learned something.
 
Loneranger said:
I enjoy all the feedback. The swath grazing so far is kind of a bust. I usually always have lots of stockpiled native grass for winter grazing, but this year, tried something different. We summer on all this tame pasture and cows don't seem to cycle very good since we switched to may calving and turn the bulls out the 1st of aug. So this year I made a rotation thru our native, starting in last of july. Thought cows would breed better on native range with new pasture every week or so. Thought I could then use the swaths for late fall/early winter. Would still have worked good if we hadn't had this hard winter and so much snow. I figured the alf swaths would be at least as good as standing native grass in the winter. There was a lot of green stuff on the bottom of the windrows, at least where it was heavier. Would have hit a home run if I would have baled it and baled grazed it, as I wouldn't have got to graze any native anyway because it is really snowed under. Everyone that winter grazes here is really crying. Oh well, at least I learned something.
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It's not a total loss if you learned from your experience. Old mother nature can sure throw us some curve balls. :D
 
Loneranger,

Sometimes it is great to think outside the box. On the other hand, we still do live in a box called our environment. Spoken from the point of sitting around the table talking after realizing that it didn't work so well for us.

The big difference between CA and us is the length of their growing season. Ours is so much longer that our hay will either erode down to nothing from summer, or rot from any fall rains.

If you don't have the luxury of running 60 acres to the cow, you are pretty much stuck feeding her in SE MT. I guess the choice to be made is when to calve and how big the cows are so that you might minimize hay feeding.

Badlands
 
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Back home again with a fixed truck and a light wallet lol. Here's what I mean about horses leaving hay to pick through remains of last bale grazing site.
 

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