Cattle on Pasture and Harvest in Full Swing

Our cattle have returned to pasture a few weeks ago and are loving it! We use intensive rotational grazing where our cattle are moved each day to a new section of pasture…imagine their daily delight of being moved to new pasture!

Our diverse pastures with intensive rotational grazing keep our cattle healthy and well-fed and improve our soil health. Since we limit our herd size to what we can produce from our own pastures, our cattle per acre density is very low; this allows sequestration of cattle emissions to be absorbed locally…right here in our fields.

Yes, our cattle do frolic and are allowed to be silly!

In addition to intensive rotation grazing, we also harvest and store feed for our cattle during the winter months when the pastures stop producing.

Here’s our mower (below) that cuts our forage and collects the cut forage into windrows (fancy word for rows). Our mower cuts a path that is 10 feet wide which is much wider than your conventional lawn mower.

Our baler (below) picks up the cut forage from windrows and collects the forage in the round chamber which spins like a clothes dryer. Our baler is a special haylage baler that is designed to pick up wet forage (50-60% moisture content). When the baler is full, a round bale is formed in the chamber and then is wrapped with a net and ejected from the back of the baler.

Finally, we have a bale wrapper (below) that picks up the round bales from the field to transport and wrap them. By wrapping each bale, the fermentation process begins preserving the nutritional value of the forage right away. In our wet climate, we are able to harvest and preserve young forage which is higher in nutritional value.

We store our wrapped bales for feeding out the cattle during winter months.

Please feel free to reach out with questions about our practices, and I promise to post more frequently!

Rich