Bale Grazing is a winter feeding practice originally developed in the western Canadian provinces and portions of the northern US.  Done correctly, it can reduce equipment and labor (no tractor is required for feeding) and dramatically increase pasture fertility.  However, it had to be adapted to work well in the Upper South as our soils aren’t frozen over for months at a time during winter.  I started bale grazing on my personal farm 14 years ago to figure out how it can be adopted here.  It took a few years to develop a system that worked well and that I felt could be tried by other Kentucky cattle farmers.  Since that time, I have worked closely with nearly 35 farms in Kentucky and had over 140 other farm visits to get them started on bale grazing.  

In 2018 I obtained a small grant to start on-farm demonstrations related to bale grazing (SARE On-Farm Research Grant, $12K) and was able to leverage it with five demonstration farms in Kentucky, one in Missouri, and two in Virginia.  This seed grant led to an NRCS CIG grant with $2.3 million in funding that started in 2022.  There are five states that are participating, and it will last for six years.  I’m the PI and lead investigator on this overall project that has roughly 30 team members.  We are collecting soil, forage, and economics data comparing bale grazing to other winter-feeding practices, and document how bale grazing changes pastures over time.  We are also creating on-farm demonstration sites so that area farmers can see bale grazing in practice to evaluate it, and to have a chance to talk with the farmer about the practice.  

This research into bale grazing is important because NRCS and extension has been promoting engineered feeding structures as the solution to the winter-feeding problem with beef cattle.  NRCS is finally admitting they are not working as designed, and they are looking for alternatives to these costly structures.  Bale grazing is a low-cost solution to the problem.  North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and New York are all working on this project with Kentucky, and we have demonstration farms in all of these states.  

Through my on-farm research and collaboration with other states on the CIG grant, I have turned bale grazing into one of my signature extension programs.  In 2024-25, I had 34 farm consultations to help guide on-farm implementation, and 11 extension presentations on bale grazing.  Theses reached approximately 900 individuals directly, and another 127,100 indirectly through articles on bale grazing.

One of the clearest quantitative measure of program impact was from a bale grazing presentation I gave for the Kentucky Forage and Grassland Council annual grazing conference in October 2024.  My presentation had the highest evaluation ranking out of seven presentations.  These presentation were also posted to the UK Forages website.  As of 7/10/25 my video had 3.7K views and the next highest was 2.5K views by the nationally-known keynote speaker.  These are summarized below:

Bale grazing for biological fertility and healthier pastures-Greg Halich                        3.7K

Healing the land with grazing-Ray Archuleta                                                                     2.5K

Soil health: separating fact from fiction-Alan Franzluebbers                                          1.2K

Build it and they will come...managing for soil life-Chris Teutsch                                    .9K

Putting it all together...a call to action-Matt Poore, NCSU                                                .9K

Understanding the principles and patterns of agroecosystems-Ray Archuleta             .8K

My regenerative journey-Sam Kennedy                                                                                .3K

The conference evaluations combined with the after-the-conference viewing shows strong evidence of program impact.  

My work is increasingly being used outside the state and in particular there was a lot of interest in an article I published in Hay and Forage Grower on bale grazing.  In the last year the Northeastern Region National Grazing Lands Coalition and the Mountains-to-Bay Grazing Alliance (Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia) have used that article in their respective newsletters.  DTN Progressive Farmer had an article that included an interview with me and also how Georgia cattle farmers have adopted my method for bale grazing in the east. Purdue University is using another of my bale grazing articles in their grazing manual.

Bale grazing is a radical change to conventional wintering practices, and requires a different mindset to have the confidence it can work.  For some farmers an article, presentation, or You Tube video will be enough to give them the confidence to make the change.  However, for many other farmers the only way they will make the change is to see it working on an actual farm.  That is one of the main goals with NRCS CIG grant: to have farms scattered across multiple states to provide demonstration farms where farmers can see bale grazing in action and see the results over multiple years.  The next three years will provide an opportunity to expand the scope and impact of this signature program.