How To Implement Successful Bale Grazing This Winter
As farmers aim to lower input costs, reduce their carbon footprint, and boost profits, out-wintering livestock can provide significant advantages when managed effectively. Bale grazing, increasingly popular among livestock farmers, offers an efficient way to manage winter feeding while improving soil health and pasture quality.
In this guide, we’ll cover the essentials of bale grazing: what it is, why it works, and how to implement it successfully. Plus, we recommend essential equipment like bale unrollers and electric fencing to help you save time and work more efficiently.
Electric Fencing is used to subdivide the field between the bale breaks.
What is Bale grazing?
Bale grazing is a method where hay or silage bales are placed in a field for livestock to graze on during the winter. The bales are strategically positioned across the field in autumn, typically in September, before the ground becomes too wet for tractor access. Livestock graze them over the winter months, either in situ or unrolled across the field. This grazing technique reduces the need for expensive bedding and machinery use, while also distributing nutrients evenly across the pasture.
Why Bale Grazing instead of Housing or Feeding Forage Crops?
The Environmental benefits include:
Nutrient Cycling and Distribution: Manure and unutilised forage return organic matter and nutrients to the soil, enhancing fertility and increasing soil organic carbon (SOC).
Improved Soil Structure: When managed well livestock trampling helps incorporate organic matter, improving soil structure and long-term water-holding capacity.
Increased Biodiversity: Over time, the increased organic matter can support a more diverse microbial community in the soil. Research has indicated that bale grazing can lead to a more diverse and active soil microbial community. This is particularly important for the long-term sustainability of pasture systems.
Preventing Run-Off: Compared to forage crops, bale grazing on differed pasture (Pasture rested for an extended period of time) results in less risk of soil damage, grass post grazing can re-grow providing some buffer against nutrient leaching. As a long-term strategy this practise can be repeated year on year with minimal to no soil disturbance therefore enabling SOC levels to be increased, improving water holding capacity whilst reducing risk of soil erosion.
The Economic benefits can include:
Labour, Machinery & Feed cost savings: Compared with housing on straw, bale grazing offers a saving on labour, machinery and feed cost (when feed from differed pasture is included). For 40 yearlings this equates to potential saving of around £100 per hd.).
Costs of Forage Crops vs Bale Grazing: Forage crops like kale and swedes, planted in May/June, can provide low-cost winter feed, but their net output per hectare is reduced due to the opportunity cost of bare ground during establishment and post-grazing. They also carry risks of establishment failure and soil damage. Their use is more justifiable as a break crop between grass leys in a planned re-seeding policy, though the risks still exist.
How to Choose the Right Field
The Kiwitech Drag Trough can water up to 100 adult cattle or 400 ewes. Easy to move on foot or behind ATV.
Field selection is crucial for successful bale grazing:
Pasture Type: Permanent pasture is recommended due to generally improved soil structure and sward density improving animal holding ability.
Soil Type: Well-drained soils are ideal to minimise the risk of soil compaction.
Topography: A field with gentle slopes will reduce runoff and erosion risks. If slopes are steeper, plan grazing to work towards the water course and leave a 5m buffer.
Access: Ensure the field has good access for setting up bales and managing livestock, even during adverse weather conditions.
Water Availability: Ensure that a mobile water trough can be connected to move with the animals to enable back fencing. A moving back fence means you need a movable trough. The Kiwitech mobile troughs are ideal for this! Troughs for all livestock classes and they are tough and easy to move with your mob across the fields, find out more here. These can be connected to an existing field trough via a length of MDPE pipe.
(As a guide a dry 650kg cow grazing differed grass and bales would have a peak requirement of around 30l per day. If the farm experiences frost then access to a permanent trough or frost proof supply is recommend.)
Ring feeders for feeding in situ: These are not necessary for bale grazing, but they can help reduce wastage, especially if hay/silage quality is variable. However, they can also create areas of soil compaction if not moved regularly.
Hay or Silage?
With wrap costs at £6-10 a bale there is an economic advantage as well as an environmental reason to make hay whereby the additional tedding costs may only amount to £2-4 per bale. Hay can be used with all stock classes; however, it is important to note the requirements of the animals with regards to energy and protein. With dry suckler cows or ewes in mid pregnancy, hay and differed grass alone provide a balanced ration. For growing cattle or ewes in late pregnancy good silage might need to be offered to increase the total energy and protein.
Placing the bale on side or end? Hay bales must be placed on their side to ensure they shed the rain, they can be fed on their side with net cut off, though on slopes they should be rolled on their end to avoid cows pushing them. Silage bales are often placed on their end for ease of wrap and net removal.
Bale Unrollers or Feeding in Situ?
When feeding in situ bales are placed across the field at start of the season (before too wet for heavy machinery) and livestock eat directly from the bale, this is a simple, low labour method, which when managed well can be very effective. However can lead to uneven distribution of nutrients and plugging around the bales, damaging soil structure and increasing potential for, especially if preformed with a higher stocking density, the area to need re-seeding.
By using the BBU, you can avoid heavy machinery and equipment traveling over fields, reducing soil compaction, preserving the structure and integrity of the soil.
Using a Bale Unroller allows you to distribute the hay/silage more evenly across a larger area, particularly beneficial on heavier soils and during wetter winters. This also avoids concentrated feeding zones that can damage the soil and instead promotes the distribution of nutrients across the whole area, enhancing soil fertility and grass growth. It also offers more flexibility to adjust feeding according to conditions or changes in the animal numbers as can easily unroll part of a bale.
The Burge Bale Unroller (BBU) was designed by Tom Burge, having bale grazed in situ for 2 winters, which left the fields needing to be ploughed and re-seeded to recover, and preventing him from achieving goal of keeping cattle out until Christmas.
As an engineer, Tom decided to explore alternative solutions and ultimately designed his own bale unroller (prototype 1 of the BBU). The success of bale grazing with the unroller now allows him to keep his cattle out all winter with no need for housing, leading straight into April calving with plenty of grass ahead of them.
The BBU is specifically designed for use with your ATV/UTV. Built tough with a galvanized chassis and high-quality parts like a strong winch and T-Bar bale pins, it's designed for long-lasting performance and is adaptable with additional attachments such as a pipe winder and fence hopper. For more details, technical specification and prices click here.
How Much Area to Allocate
Before you can design the layout of your field you will need to calculate the feed allowance for your livestock first. This will guide you on how big of area each paddock needs to be and quantity of bales you need. We recommend using Precision Grazing’s guide to calculating feed allowance for bale grazing. Click Here.
Designing Your Field
The layout of bales is vital to manage grazing efficiently and to protect soil health, ideally daily allocation should be as square as possible not exceeding 4:1 ratio i.e. 100m wide, 25m deep. The bales for the grazing season should be laid out before it becomes too wet for heavy machinery.
Feeding in situ: Bales should be spaced at least 10m apart to allow enough space for animals to access from all sides without contacting an electric fence. This might require the field to be divided in half and grazed in “lanes” to increase depth of break offered.
Bale Unrolling: Ensure your planned paddock sizes do not exceed a 4:1 ratio, and place bales strategically across the field to be in position for each fresh break. If you want to maintain flexibility—especially in your first season—you can line the bales across the field, then easily pick them up with the bale unroller and move them to the next paddock as needed.
Depending on the dimensions of your paddock if you are using a bale unroller, the bales could be placed next to each other.
Electric Fencing
Use temporary electric fencing to control access to bales. This allows you to ration feed and prevent livestock from trampling or spoiling bales they aren't currently eating. Typically, 3 fences are used:
Back Fence – follows the animals to prevent returning to areas previously grazed and causing soil damage
Front Break – allocates the feed
Safety Break, set up on the next feed allocation, catches any animals if they push through the front break.
These three fences leapfrog each other down the field.
To achieve the required paddock depth and avoid poaching the ground, an effective approach—illustrated in the graphic—is to subdivide the field and graze in a ladder pattern. This method has the added benefit of allowing the three fences to draw power from the main subdivision fence, so the energiser can stay in one location. Additionally, it provides flexibility to adjust the size of the grazing breaks as conditions change.
Electric Fencing Kit
The front fence: Kiwitech 2 wire fence is used for this suckler herd, grazing in situ.
The Kiwitech Complete Temporary Fence Kits are a versatile, user-friendly solution for managing grazing rotations. These kits come with everything needed for a quick and easy setup, including end posts and intermediate tread posts, both offering excellent ground holding during the wetter months. The spools are pre-wound with high-quality polywire, making the system ready to go. Ideal for bale grazing, the flexibility of the system allows you to easily adjust fence lines and paddock sizes to meet your grazing needs.
For added efficiency, the portability of the setup is maximised when using Kiwitech's geared winders (PACS). Available in both the Carried Pac for fencing on foot and the Vehicle Pac for fencing from a quad, these winders allow you to move an entire fence line in a single pass, taking only minutes. By combining a well-thought-out design with purpose-made equipment, you can ensure your system continues to save time and labour, maintaining the benefits of out-wintering without adding unnecessary workload!
The Day-to-Day Management of Livestock
Managing livestock during bale grazing involves regular monitoring and adjustments:
Check Feed Availability: When weather conditions change ensure that you adjust your feeding, better to leave some behind and come back then keep stock tight in rough weather.
Monitor Livestock Health: Regularly check the condition of your animals both weight and body condition score, remove animals if necessary.
Have a Plan B: Plan for extreme wet or cold weather. For example, this might involve housing for a period of time or moving to shelter.