Having the cattle spread out while feeding is maybe the greatest benefit of unrolling. My neighbor started out feeding in rings a few weeks ago, all the calves were left waiting for all the cows to be done, lately I have noticed the bales are being unrolled now. No competition for feed now. Thank you and have a wonderful day.

A few bites of green and some clean smelling pasture with the hay, and they are some happy cows. Unhappy cows that aren't liking their quality of life will start to protest and picket the manager. You do a good job of taking care of your employees, Greg, and those cows work well for you.

I picked up a Greg Judy hay unroller at his place this summer. Greg made it easy for me to pick up the unroller at his place. I am totally pleased with it. I have found that my cows will eat the unrolled hay better than that in hay rings. I have tested both ways on my cows with both new and old hay. I am unrolling some older hay and the cows are able to pick through the good parts of the hay better than if I put the roll in a hay ring. They don’t eat the bad parts of the old hay but they don’t even touch the same bales I have left in rings for them. They can’t get to the better parts of the hay in the center of the roll if it is in a ring. The new hay that I am unrolling gets eaten pretty thoroughly. I am a believer and will not be using the rings anymore. Thank you Greg.

I've been rolling bales out since I started thanks to your channel ! My hay supplier has round bales that are like 600lbs, I place them along fence lines in August when the hay is delivered. The bales are protected with a single poly-wire until I need them. It allows me to roll the bales out by hand during the wet periods of November and December without having to drive the tractor over the pasture.

@bridgetglass7372

Жыл бұрын

How do you do that? I have tried pushing them but can’t.

@nicholasmacinnis1486

Жыл бұрын

@@bridgetglass7372 well I think having round bales on the smaller side helps. I’ve seen 800-1000lb bales which I couldn’t budge. The smaller ones I’m able to flip onto their sides and roll no problem.

Beautiful. Love to work on that kind property. The natural life.

Mate here in Australia large round hay bales hit about $350US each during the drought 3 years ago. Excellent video, thank you !

@gregjudyregenerativerancher

Жыл бұрын

Wow that would be time to destock!!

Gonna be a lot of bauling cattle this winter after the drought we had. Glad I don't have 300+ head right now.

I'm a real fan of all of the well known men & women in regenerative agriculture that have an online presence. But, I'm especially interested in both Greg Judy of Green Pastures Farm in Missouri, & Will Harris of White Oak Pastures in Georgia. Both men have shown me conclusively that everything that a farmer/rancher can do to simplify their operation will generally be a principle by which to regenerate the soil using primarily ruminant animals to ultimately sequester carbon in the soil, retain precipitation in the upper strata of the soil, recharge the underground aquifer, and modify the microclimate of the property in a positive manner. What this ultimately means is that a farmer/rancher will have to spend more on salaries, health insurance, and taxes for labor, but be able to simultaneously reduce their input costs drastically. Those input costs are never going to be reduced a point that makes true economic sense. This is especially true when, not if, the federal Farm subsidies are eliminated, as they ultimately must be because they are unsustainable in the long run.

A little more challenging now after the drought but Greg uses regenerative common sense solutions without more depreciating metal inputs. Farmers used to think more this way.

Thanks for the video! I love how my grass grows where I unroll hay for better way of saying it. I put my hay out in areas with a fork or use 30 gallon garbage can to carry it to places I feed them since I don’t have many animals. I do place the bales out where I want to feed my animals behind the single poly braid so I don’t have to carry the hay as far. I used to keep bales in one place then carry it out where I want the most impacted on my property which carrying hay 300’-400’ is a lot of work in deep snow and in cold weather. I’m hoping next year I won’t have to feed as much hay because I hope to get rest of the fence up.

We are living on a farm yard and looking after the cattle just a little bit, in case emergencies happen. But I've seen the feeding in rings for a couple of years now and the mud that is created around the rings is TERRIBLE. ALL YEAR ROUND on those patches the grass will hardly come back and if there is grass coming in it it is not the best quality. I will share this video with our landlord, perhaps he will change his way of feeding because it surely benefits the quality of the pastures... Thanks Greg

I absolutely hate bale rings! Unfortunately part of my job is building them and we build quite a few. We build other things as well but, I very much do not like bale rings. I bought a Greg Judy bale roller and love it!

@gregjudyregenerativerancher

Жыл бұрын

I’m with you, unrolling hay grows more grass and does not destroy your sod.

Broomsedge is my nice grass so far haha, just started this year and it was covered in forbes and broomsedge alot of bare ground after grazing, but already looking better even in a severe drought year

That Missouri drought , our place did not get hit that hard ,but some farmers didn’t fertilize their hayfield’s

I agree with your farming practices Greg I don't farm but its a no Braner

Due to drought I had to buy a semi load of big squares for this winter. So far I’ve fed two and I like them a lot, but I haven’t hit mud season yet. Even with shipping the hay was significantly cheaper and better quality then the local 4x4 rounds I’m used to. They stack nice too.

Might want to double check your bale ring prices. The cheap ones are 250-350. The heavy duty ones are 3x that.

@gregjudyregenerativerancher

Жыл бұрын

Oh my gosh, thanks for the updated hay ring prices!! Another good reason to unroll hay versus feeding in steel bale rings that rust and get destroyed by cows eating out of them.

Makes sense to me.

Greg do you think you get as much benefit from unrolling the hay in the winter as opposed to capturing the manure in a compost system and spreading in the spring as some people promote? Full disclosure I unroll all my hay too. I'm just curious what your thoughts are.

I’m still working on perimeter fence but during the snow/ winter I unroll junk hay 3yrs old , stuff that got wet , then I put out good hay on top . Our goats sheep stay by shelter . That shelter works better than an electric fence fer goats 🤣 I struggled to find hay this year. $85 delivered Thanksgiving day

Over the time you have grazed this farm. How many bales have you rolled out on each square foot? What i'm asking is after the cattle have taken their meal how much hay has been left behind over time?

Grazon seems to be the common practice in my area how would that work? Would it make it harder for me to revive my ruined fields?

Question: Do you feed hay to your sheep? And unroll the hay for them? 🇨🇦

When should you unroll hay, during a certain season?

Do you continue to rotate through the winter unrolling bales? Or do you end up going to one paddock and stay there for a longer period of time?

@gregjudyregenerativerancher

Жыл бұрын

Clive stick are being moved twice per day all year long. Keep them on clean ground is awful good for maximum animal performance

Sounds like Woody Harrelson.

I like the idea of unrolling bales to help with pasture health/growth. However, we only have 6 cows. I think we would have too much waste per bale with this method--they would trample and ruin it before sufficiently eating it. With rings, though, we get buildup around them and damage to the winter feeding area. We would love to find a winter feeding method that would alleviate this. Wet weather conditions and inconsistent ground freeze makes a mess of our paddocks. This is our second winter with cattle. Tips or suggestions?

@gregjudyregenerativerancher

Жыл бұрын

Get a bale unroller, only unroll what 6 cows can comfortably eat, take the rest of the bale back to your bale yard. We do this practice each year in late winter when spring grass is coming. We only give the 300 head mob 1/3rd of the bale, bring rest of bale back to house.

@petereldracher5660

Жыл бұрын

Yes! What Greg says! I'm only just discovering this... Yesterday. Unrolling whole bales is a huge waste with only a handful of cows. My dad was not impressed... So I unrolled the whole bale by hand and then used a polybraid to only give them what they'll eat in 12 hours. Bale rings leave a thick mat of hay and poop that won't grow grass until the end of summer. And yeah, our bale ring broke last week, so it's unrolling with polybraid for me! New bale rings are about $500 for lame one. Oh that's right, bale rings are lame.😅

@simplynatural100

Жыл бұрын

Greg, u are only giving 1-2 lbs hay a day to your herd? I recall your last year's numbers being 17 lbs, but 1/3rd of a 12-1500 bale to 300 is only 1-2 lbs hay per day

@gregjudyregenerativerancher

Жыл бұрын

They are mostly grazing our winter stockpiled forage. The hay is put out if they burn a little short on stockpiled forage.

How much are those handy, can't live without it Greg Judy Bale-Unrollers go for these days? What color selections are available? CaseIH red, John Deere Green? On the ten day before Christmas are they discounted 11%?

@swamp-yankee

Жыл бұрын

I built one for about 500 bucks

Does unrolling hay work for sheep?

Hey Greg! I live in MN and the ground freezes solid and it's not possible to step I posts during winter. Do you have any ideas for rotation grazing in a deep winter scenario? Maybe split the pasture into quarters b4 freeze and just roll out bales in different areas? Moving fences is just not a possibility here. Thanks so much!

@gregjudyregenerativerancher

Жыл бұрын

George Heller are friend north of the twin cites grazes with portable fencing in the winter when he has stockpile. Maybe he will chime in here to describe how he does it.

@samuelahrens1936

Жыл бұрын

If you could make something similar to a slide hammer you could quite easily punch holes for the posts.

@gregjudyregenerativerancher

Жыл бұрын

I used a cordless drill with a concrete bit here in Missouri when we hit 20 below zero. Worked great.

@georgeheller2281

Жыл бұрын

I continue using step ins until the ground freezes, after that I just unroll hay In a different spot each day, the cattle go to the bale consume it and drop there contributions. The next day I unroll another bale in another spot. I did that daily all winter until the ground thawed, then went back ro strip grazing the stockpile that was saved under the snow. I didn't unroll any hay over the stock pile, only where we had grazed it off first.

@littleneedlesfarm6387

Жыл бұрын

@@georgeheller2281 thank you so much! What area are you in? I'm up in Duluth