Small scale hay baling

[boerboy]

Any of you in small acreage harvest grass and use it in winter? We are on a five acre farm with less than 10 goats. Cost is just one factor. We can grow several things more leaves/legumes.
I wish we can harvest and bale our growth for winter.

[Clovers_Clan]

I'm not sure of your particular climate. But if there are any cold weather crops grown in your area you may be able to at least supplement. I'm in the south so I have an easier time of it but I've been successful with buck plot forages such as brassicas and clovers in a garden area. Cereal rye also does well. I haven't found a way to eliminate the need for hay completely but it helps. My pasture is about 4 acres with 5 goats through the winter. I'm sure if I didn't have 2 horses cropping the pasture to the ground during the lean months I'd be able to manage it better!

[boerboy]

We are in Oregon, near portland
Never thought of winter crops... Will look into that, thanks

[Shrek]

If you have just a few goats and want to grass hay feed them you could do as I did when I had four meat goats and 4 acres of wind sown grass hay from the cattle ranch around my place and more time than money.

I let the grass acreage grow to about 3 to 4 feet and then took my battery powered weed wacker and started wacking it down from the outside in concentrating on wacking an 1/8 of an acre per weed wack section.

I then raked it up onto my flat utility wagon to bring up to my 40 x 40 garden shed to lay on chichen wire to further dry and then shock bundle with some braided grass twine to dry stack in the shed.

Between feeding grain feed , the shocked hay and staking the goats around my property on stake chains I was able to fatten the original three and increase the number to six over the next two and a half years while using them as landscape tools also.

When we slaughtered them for barbecuing the meat was so lean and tender.

A few years later when I bought 4 more I just grain fed them and used them for lawn care tools to grass feed them for one season before slaughtering.

Shock bundling and loft piling hay was the practice before modern baling.

[mzgarden]

We also live on small scale property and have a small herd. We let the pasture grow and before the weeds could seed, we cut it, raked it into windrows to dry. Turned it and then loaded it into a wagon loose and put it in the barn on pallets to stay dry. The goats do well on it in the winter, and we supplemnt with a neighbor's alfalfa and a bit of grain.

[marusempai]

We're on four acres with three goats, had a neighbor cut and bale our extra. We have a good bit cross fencing though - three permanent pastures, the goats would eat one, the other two would get cut, then we'd put the goats on the next pasture and took the other two for a second cutting. Worked well enough, we had more hay than they could possibly eat and even had some to sell.

[wmk0002]

I have 2.5 acres of mostly bermuda grass with some fescue and clover which I bale. I do not fertilize and do two cuttings a year, each producing about 70 medium sized bales. That is more than plenty for my 12 boer crosses in our mild southern winters. I borrow the hay equipment from my dad and do it myself but if you don't have access to that you can typically get a local farmer cut, rake, and bale on the agreement he keeps a percentage of the hay. That way you have no cost and someone with experience and good equipment does the tricky part of the work. If you don't have a place to store it, the same farmer may hold your bales at his hay barn too for a larger percentage of the bales off of your pasture.