I had the opportunity last week to visit a couple of farmers who are doing bale grazing on their farms. One on the Scottish borders near Hawick and one near Alnwick in Northumberland. It was really fascinating to see it used as a method to outwinter on a large scale in challenging areas.
Stuart Mitchel and his Father Robert from Whittriggs farm, "Whitt" meaning wet and "Riggs" meaning potato ridges showed us round their farm. They keep around 120 suckler cows, keeping their own replacements and selling the rest as store as yearlings. They also keep 300 red deer hinds which the sell as venison to Dovecote park in Yorkshire. They have been farming regeneratively and grazing tall covers of grass and herbal leys for 4 years now, and have noticed big changes in that time.
They farm 1100 acres ranging from 500-1200ft in altitude. They were just in the process of weaning their calves as we were there using quietwean nose paddles. They have been bale grazing for a few weeks and weren't using a back fence. The ground looks worse in the pictures than in real life, and the grass they were grazing was short as it was a field they cut the hay off and that was what it had recovered too. Stuart plans to cut off this field again next year with no worries.
They have a hill where they have been mainly concentrating the bale grazing on in the last 3 years. Their plan was to put the cows up here after weaning. This hill was much more extensive with a big change in elevation and a more permanent grass sward. It looked good and dry and suitable. They used a strategy of long narrow paddocks with 1 well made hay bale rolled out to feed a batch of 70 odd cows.
The second visit was to an AHDB moniter farm led by Harry Sordy. The AHDB, innovative farmers and the PFLA are running a farm based field trial all over Scotland and England of bale grazing. There are 7 farms in the group and the Sordys have recently joined that group.
This was a very large upland farm, although good quality upland hill ground. Very much a conventional farm who are trying things to try and reduce costs and become more resilient. With roughly 200 suckler cows and a couple thousand ewes this was a big farm with a number of family members and staff working on farm.
This is their 3rd year trying bale grazing with varying degrees of strategy. We were able to see a group of replacement heifers bale grazing. They were quite big cattle, a mix of AA, Luing and Simmental. They had a similar approach to grazing as the Mitchels with long narrow paddocks, almost strip grazing, with a bale rolled out and no back fence. A couple of the other farmers doing this had suggested doing squares and a back fence as another strategy to avoid walking over the grazed ground.
If anyone would like to know more or see some more pictures just let me know. All in all a very worthwhile trip and it has given me the confidence to try a bigger area here next winter.