Monday, June 24, 2013

Assorted Questions

I have had several questions recently that I keep meaning to answer and then don't get to so I thought I'd just try to post them all here.


Rebecca2 wanted to know more about hay and  baleage....Baleage is hay that is round-baled shortly after it is cut while it is still very green and has a high moisture content (as opposed to dry hay which does indeed have to be dry or it will spoil).  The bale is then very tightly wrapped in very heavy, opaque white shrink wrap.  The wrapping has to be completely air tight or the bale will spoil.  The hay undergoes a fermentation process inside the wrap which preserves the hay as well as releasing more of the sugars inside the grass.  This is a very high quality feed suitable for dairy cattle and growing animals.  Horses can eat baleage and I have fed it to my own in the past, however, it is generally too high in sugar and protein and too low in roughage to be a good choice for anything other then heavily pregnant or lactating mares.  I would not feed this to donkeys other then to perhaps supplement a pure straw diet.  Even then, the sugar content is still way too high for donkeys.  The giant white 'marshmallows' in the background are balage. 

The truly great thing about making balage is that it is not so weather dependant.  There have been a couple of nasty times when our baleage was cut, baled and wrapped in pouring rain.  This is definitely not ideal, but desperate times call for desperate measures and when it comes to balage, it's better too wet then too dry.  They keep fine if the moisture content is high enough for proper fermentation, but if they are too dry, they will mold and be unusable.  The only problem we have had with too much moisture is that they freeze solid in extremely cold weather, which is just one of the reasons for making several types of hay.

Several people wanted to know what kind of hay we make and how much land there is....The hay is all native mixed grass.  Primarily orchard, timothy and brome grass (this farm is separate from my place where I own 20 acres, it's about about 3 miles away).  There are sixty acres total; a 20 acre hay field, roughly 25 acres of pasture and about 10 acres that are in a wildlife reserve area.  We cut hay on this, but not until after July 1st so that the ground nesting birds can raise their babies.  I counted nearly 20 pairs of bobolinks up there last year and there are more every year.  This hay is coarser, generally lower in sugar content and higher in roughage because it is past its peak maturity.  This is what I feed my horses and donkeys.

None of these fields have been reseeded or chemically fertilized, but Farm Buddy does intensive rotational grazing and uses organic practices.  The cattle are grazed on all of the land after all of the hay is cut.  Forage samples from this farm have won first place every year they have been entered in the county fair.

MtWaggin wanted to know if I have more skeeters since I had my pond re-dug.  Actually, I have a lot less this year.  There has always been a pond there, but it was shallow and a bit stagnant.   Now that it is deeper and there are roughly 12 billion hungry tadpoles and salamanders in there, I have noticed a dramatic drop in the number of skeeters. 

Irmgard wanted to know if the sheep always line up so neatly.....sometimes....fairly often.  They don't always manage to get themselves lined up quite so well, but they do frequently move and graze as a solid unit, very much like a school of fish.

There were also a couple of questions about the barley straw in the pond...When barley straw degrades in water it releases oxygen which helps prevent the growth of anaerobic bacteria and algae, thus helping to keep the water clean.  That's the way I understand it anyway.

It seems like I am forgetting some questions and I am too tired to go check.  If I missed any, please let me know.  Now I am off to bed.

11 comments:

  1. We call Baleage Haylage in Ireland & the UK. It's a safer crop than hay in a climate prone to wet summers!

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    1. Good to know. . .I always wondered what haylage was!

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    2. I had wondered about that and meant to ask. Maybe that is what I forgot, my own question! Baleage/haylage truly is a Godsend in wet climates.

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  2. This post is great. Also answered a question I didn't ask since I'm fairly ignorant of all the possible farming methods there are. I did watch this, posted by a Basque blogger I follow. It's about sustainable farming and really woke me up. http://vimeo.com/18161854 . It's a little long, so you may want to wait until haymaking is over, but it's a good story.

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  3. Thanks! You answered mine about the barley straw. I'm glad you had a good hay day!

    Nancy in Iowa

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  4. Wow a lot of great information there. I personally had no idea about any of that.

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  5. This one post alone has taught me a number of new (to me) things, like "skeeters" (ha! should have been able to guess that!); haying is a science; and sheep enjoy choreographed grazing. Oh, and cows like to eat giant marshmallows. ;) Thanks, Kris! And congrats on the "blue ribbon" forage!!

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  6. Great info, really enjoyed learning about the pond!!

    One thing that might be useful is that well made baleage / haylage should be lower in sugar than hay... I know it seems odd but although the product you bale is often higher in sugar the bacteria that ferment and 'pickle' the grass actually use the sugar to grow and live so if it's done right it can be less than 3% sugar which is much lower than most hay. This is a useful link http://rockleyfarm.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/all-about-hay-and-haylage.html

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    1. That is interesting and very different from the info we get around here. I was told that since the grass does not loose any sugar, as it does for the curing process for dry hay, that baleage is still higher in sugar even though it goes through fermentation. I have to admit that that doesn't seem very logical to me though. I may have to just get everything analyzed this year so I know what is really going on, there is so much conflicting information. Although, it is not practical for me to feed baleage to my tiny herd anyway as it does not keep long enough for them to eat a whole bale and it is very difficult to move.

      Do you feed baleage/haylage to the donkeys? How do they do on it?

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  7. I never even heard of haylage until a few years ago. Now it's everywhere.

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  8. Thanks for tuning me in! By the way, you header shot is outstanding!

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