Swath grazing

[3 M L & C]

I recently went to a few meetings at a conference and am going to try a few things this upcoming year. For those of you that swath graze do you crimp your crop at all to get it to dry down faster or not? Also every where says make a narrow tall windrow is this what works for all of you also? What I will be grazing will be probably 3 ton an acre crop so will be pretty substantial windrows.

 

[jodywy]

when I drive by the Deserrt they swath with a 16 foot swather and still rake 2 together to swath graze.

 

[honyak]

I guess I don't see the savings in putting it in a windrow but not a bale?

 

[3 M L & C]

Not using time fuel to bale, haul bales, then feed with tractor or pickup. Vs moving hot wire tape every day. My one major concern is keeping the windrow in good shape. But think if can plan it to swath right before the first frost we are dry enough through the winter should be ok. I'm going to try a patch anyway not betting the place on it incase of a failure.

 

[PureCountry]

We did it for a few years when still in Alberta. Worked good about 3 out of 5 years. We'd have a good winter with soft snow or not much of it, and the cows had easy access to the swaths. Then we'd get a nasty one with hard crusted drifted snow and even the horses couldn't paw through to open things up for the cows. Ours was cut with a 24' swather, although we never raked 2 together. Wished I had on the bad winters, although sometimes snow was so deep it wouldn't have mattered. The main rule I learnt from it, was never count on swath grazing being your entire winter's feed.