Hay Experiment On The Farm | Feeding Cattle With Hay Rings VS Unrolling Hay
We have always fed our cows hay in the winter time in hay rings. The rings help contain the hay while allowing the cows to eat it. Another practice several people like to do is unroll the hay for the cows. There are pros and cons of doing it both ways. In this video we put out 2 hay bales in hay rings as well as roll out 2 hay bales. In our next video, we will take a look at what the cows ate and what they did not eat.
#feedingcows #hayring #unrollinghay
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Great video! Get a Greg Judy hay unroller! U can pull it with your gator!! Rolling it out is always best!!!!!! Yes they do waste some but that stuff they wasted is feeding your worms and improving your soil health! I never feed in hay rings if I set hay out it’s in a ditch that needs filled in! Greg Judy says when u unroll hay you are putting 30-50 dollars worth of fertility on your ground. By unrolling hay on certain ground you can actually get rid of broom siege. Plus if your calving and feeding in hay rings u will notice you will have more scour problems in your cows verses unrolling!
Thanks for the feedback! We'll have to check out the hay unroller. We usually try and put our hay rings in a rough part of the pasture to help add some organic mater back to that area and to smooth it out. We rotate them around throughout the hay season but haven't ever really rolled out the hay. Luckily we have an abundance of fertilizer from the chicken houses but won't hurt to roll a few bales out and add that much more back to the ground.
Love yalls videos. We need more of them. TBFarms
Thank you! We are trying to get back in a routine of a video a week. Thanks for watching!
Absolutely beautifully filming captured .. lovely content vloggs documentary countryside lifestyle over there, appreciate your hard work and effort for sharing and showing around about lifestyle and your beautiful adventures .. keep up a great work .. gorgeous capturing filming editing sharp and clear .. well done Sir .. TQSM from Mtl Cdn ..
Who knew? Good video
Thank you!
My cows definitely waste a lot more hay when unrolled what I do is put baleage in the racks and unroll dry hay they will sort through it and use the rest for bedding but the bulk of our hay is put up as baleage
Sounds pretty similar to us. We haven’t rolled out much hay in the past but may start rolling out some of our dry hay this fall.
Rain comes in and out and tornadoes
Most people are going to miss it, but I knew exactly what you were talking it being a bad day about when I saw the Georgia Bulldogs coffee mug😳, I'll see if I can't find Y'all some AU coffee mugs😂😂, at least your coffee will taste better, No promises of on the field performance though🤪 Interested to see which both (cows and operators) prefer😉
😂😂😂 since we live in Alabama people always ask Auburn or Alabama? They are always confused when we say neither. Georgia! We all grew up in Georgia though. We’ll be posting a follow up video next week!
@@FarmerHunt Just hacking on Y'all😂, Georgia has got a solid program, and I tell you it is hard to be an AU fan lately, looking forward to the next one😉
Trust me... As Georgia fans we can definitely relate! We could get close but could never go all the way until 2 years ago.
Wow
Quick question related poultry house. What size battery respirator did he buy? They sale a medium and a large in that style but don’t offer a sizing chart to describe the different sizes on Amazon. And was gonna purchase one for my poultry houses and didn’t know which one to get
We always buy the 6900. It's the large and fits great. Here is a link to it in our amazon store amzn.to/3WRUMXD The medium is the 6800
Tyler said Ben was cheating! He is suppose to get off the tractor and push it down the hill :)
😂😂 Tell Tyler to come show me how it’s done
We feed a bale a day to limit waste - unroller makes the job easier too if you decide you like the option. Can you send that gator up to us for a while?? 😂
That’s a good idea. We have a couple pastures 5-10 miles away so we try to stock them up a couple bales at a time. Around our house we feed them more often to try to cut down on waste. I’ll tell Eric to run it up there to y’all for a bit. 😂😂 It sure is handy around the farm.
Witch bull sired those calves. They look good! GOD bless
We got him from a guy up in Calhoun, GA. His bloodline is SAV International. He’s been a really good bull for us.
Hello sir how are you, sir please tell me this grass name thanks
We mostly have Rye Grass hay in the spring and Fescue/crab grass in the summer with some Bermuda
I feel like mine waste too much when I unroll it. I built a trailer that will hold 5 rolls it’s seems to work somewhat better but they always going to waste it.
That’s kinda what we’ve always thought. I think either could work in different scenarios but we like using hay rings.
You cant have hay in rings and hay rolled out at same time....they will waste and lay in the unrolled hay.....try to unroll only...and only unroll what they eat each day.....its the only way unrolling will properly work
We've done it separately also. Just wanted to see how they did when they had both options at once. They actually cleaned up the unrolled hay much better than expected.
Are you going to calf in the spring
We do some spring calving and some fall calving. Since we’ve started selling freezer beef we are slowly getting away from calving twice a year and are now spreading it out throughout the year
I have thought about this a ton, research has proven that unrolling wastes about 13%, where hay rings waste 5%. So I think the question comes down to can you fertilizer for less than 8% of your feed cost? But you'll probably still need to fertilizer ontop of unrolling anyway. Just food for thought. I'm a hobby farmer so take it with a grain of salt.
Good points. We are also poultry farmers so fertilizer is a by product of the poultry farm. We do have some areas in our pastures though that need some organic matter added back to the ground. I kinda think feeding in hay rings is best for us but occasionally rolling out a bale of hay can be beneficial
So.....why not try using smaller bales in the feeders ??? What to expect if you dump a huge pile of hay in a small area ??? Cows cant hover to eat ! With smaller bale.....cows are in and out much quicker. And less waste !
That’s definitely an option. Smaller bales just leads to more baling, hauling, storage etc. We could cut down on some waste but it’ll add a good bit more time in the hay field and also putting out hay. For the most part our hay waste is minimal as long as we have good quality hay.
@@FarmerHunt I have used both. Hands down.......Ill take the 4x4 bales over anything else ! Easy to handle. Can carry two bales at a time. More baling ? A bale is a bale.....might take longer to put "twine " on.......but thats minimal ! More hauling....I use six flat bed hay racks 16 ft long. Thats 12 4x4 bales per load. I pull three rack at a time....meaning I haul 44 bale in one trip. Used balage hay for over 20 years now. I wrap everything wet or dry.......including bedding ( cornstalks ) . Therefore storage is no an issue. Its cheap......and no waste ! Cut.......rake....bale the same day. Much quicker grow back on hay....since theres less tire traffic ! Thus.......more crops of hay too !
Taste test is one thing, unroll vs. hay ring won't show real results till summer in my opinion.
What makes you think that? We used a bale of each for both the hay rings and unrolling. From our experience when summer rolls around you can put out hay but the cows aren’t interested.
@@FarmerHunt the biggest reasons that I've seen for unrolling hay is fertility of the soil. Instead of your cows pooping and peeing all in the same spot over and over and over and over again, it is spread out along where all the hay is unrolled. Also, if the pasture isn't great quality, there is the opportunity to reseed or replant the pasture in strips. Letting the cows eat what they will, but also shoving those stems into the ground. So it isn't a matter of actual hay for the summertime, but a matter of what they spreading out of the hay can do.
That all makes sense. We have an abundance of chicken litter so we are lucky to have fertilizer that just cost a little fuel and labor to get on the pastures. Won't hurt to roll out some hay bales from time to time though for added fertility. We are doing a follow up video as well as some other hay videos to show what we usually do. It is nice to hear from other people and learn from their experiences. Thanks for sharing!
@@FarmerHunt if only you could ship me some of that chicken litter! Sharing ideas is what this is always about. Thank you Ben and Eric for what you're doing!
Call me Ben and I will tell u what I think been unrolling 2 years
Will do!