Silage bale grazing

[woodland]

Going to run out of tough second cut bales in a couple of days and are going to start on good first cut alfalfa grass silage bales and I'm thinking I'd like to try bale grazing with them. This would be with pairs and thinking of putting out 5-7 days worth at a time.

We've done this with dry hay before but I'm curious if anyone has tried something like this.

TIA

[DaneG]

I have bale grazed silage bales along with dry bales 50/50 3-4 days at a time the cows ate all the silage before touching the dry bales, virtually 0 waste on the silage bales licked clean.

[smcgrath76]

I have bale grazed silage bales along with dry bales 50/50 3-4 days at a time the cows ate all the silage before touching the dry bales, virtually 0 waste on the silage bales licked clean.

How did you handle the plastic?

[woodland]

Thanks Dane G

I was planning on removing the plastic and net wrap while setting out the bales. Is this how you did it?

[DaneG]

They were tubed I hauled them every 3 or 4 days and removed the net wrap at that time.

[woodland]

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Day 1


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Day 3


Quite impressed with how it's going so far. They're mostly leaving behind the weeds since their stalks are really coarse and that's fine with me. Takes two people about six hours to feed for three days and that's with moving the bales 12 miles. For 500 pairs and 450 yearlings I think that's quite ok.

[DaneG]

That seems reasonable, bonus will be the increase of grass growth down the road I figure on covering about 1/3ac per cow over the winter.