@Cropper, #1... put your location in your profile, so we know where you're operating. Always helpful when giving advice.
It all depends... Yup... the normal answer. I assume you're considering the same thing as "swath grazing"... or as
@GoWyo stated "windrow grazing". It's commonly practiced where weather won't be an issue... arid regions (
@GoWyo's comment), or areas of Canada where it will be cold enough to preserve the quality of the swathed forages. If you deal with much for over-the-winter rains, or melting snow, it'll not keep well through those times. So in your case, where you're considering
unrolling bales to do the same, you'd just have to "time" your unrolling according to anticipated weather events... maintaining adaptability.
That's what I've done here in SE MN too. I used to regularly unroll up to a week, even a week-and-a-half's worth (10 days or so), if the weather was going to hold. And sometimes I'd unroll before a short duration snowstorm, so I wouldn't have to go out there while it was bad. However, I didn't use polywire to limit graze them across the swaths... I was just letting them have at them for that amount of time. I'd just use my unrolling schedule to control how they function relative to the hay being fed. That's because I "learned" how to maintain that control that way... and I was quite pleased with that system, compared to "bale grazing", which is what I had been doing prior to this. Pic taken in January of '21.
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Since then however, I've pretty well "migrated" to every day unrolling though, for the most part. I'm not entirely opposed to unrolling several days worth at a time, if I will have to be going somewhere... but I PREFER to unroll daily.
Probably the first reason for that is to properly address whatever resource concerns I have... By unrolling daily, I react to what they have done the previous day... there's a spot over there that needs some residue laid down on it... there's a cowpath that I want to get covered up... there's a small ditch over there that I want to get some residue on before the spring melt... there's going to be a strong wind and I want them to be able to be behind that grove over there for protection... there's NOT going to be a strong wind, so I'll feed where there's NO protection, that fence over there might get buried in snow later... I'd better feed there now while I still can without the cattle going out over that fence, and then I'll just keep them away from that area once the snow buries it, etc. You can't "adapt" or be as "responsive" to things coming your way, if you don't have as much "flexibility" to do that built into your system... so "daily" vs. "weekly" can make alot of difference here.
My second reason for preferring to unroll daily is (again) that I can "adapt" to how the cattle are eating what I'm putting out there. Cold weather... they may need more. Warm days, they might prefer to be grazing the remaining stockpile and so they won't eat the hay as much... I might have to cut DOWN on how much I'm giving them or skip a day... or I might change the type of hay that I'm choosing (like 1st crop vs. 2nd crop, etc.). Again, it's flexibility to adapt to observed changes.
Third would be waste of feed value, but this is probably my least concerning point. I don't view residue left out there as waste... but I DO want to minimize it... or maybe it'd be better to say I want to "limit it" to what I view as an appropriate level. And that then also depends... on weather conditions, the quality of the feed you're giving them, the number of animals and density that you've stocked them at, and even WHERE you're feeding them at the time... if it's windy, and you feed them "behind the grove"... they're going to stack up in the least windy areas, and over-apply their manure there... So it still comes down to the ability to always be able to adapt to changing conditions. They wasted "too much"... I have to adapt how I'm feeding them accordingly.
I can't imagine ever preferring to go back to bale grazing instead of unrolling. If you don't need a whole bale, you don't have to unroll a whole bale... just pick it up and go home... go back out again later when they need more, and finish unrolling. You can do this with a 3 pt. unroller, or one on the front end loader like I have, or with a Hustler/Tubeline, or a bale processor (I kind of listed those in ascending order according to overhead cost... I very much like that I have mine out in front of me, on my front end loader... I can see where I'm going, can always be looking forward, and it gives me more flexibility to get into places I maybe otherwise couldn't, like unrolling into some fairly difficult "ditches" to "repair them", etc. Lately I've been feeding some poor quality 1st crop that they don't like so much... so I take one of those, and then one 2nd crop bale out at the same time (2nd bale carried on my 3 pt.). I unroll the 1st crop in as long a swath as I can, then turn around and unroll the 2nd crop bale over the top of it... they blend the two together as they eat throughout the day, and they end up cleaning up the 1st crop better that way. I "adapt". Because I have it mounted out in front of me... and on my loader... I'm able to just barely touch that 2nd crop bale down enough so that it'll unroll... so I can control how fast it unrolls that way... it's actually spinning SLOWER than my ground speed a bit... If I need to unroll even slower, I can pick it up and set it down as needed... kind of in a "dotted line" pattern... works out really nicely. Being behind the bale, up high in the tractor cab, looking forward OVER THE TOP OF THE BALE (I also used this unroller on my tracked skid loader... but you're down so low that you can't see over the bale), I can see what I want to accomplish and get that done "just right". I couldn't do that
as easily if the unroller were mounted on the 3 pt.................they don't give you quite as many benefits in function..., but those can work too.... and for the money, they're pretty hard to beat. You could have it mounted just the opposite way from what I have then too... extra bale carried on the loader out front, with the unroller on the back. One advantage maybe that way would be that you'd always have your bale spear on the loader for bale work... I have to take my unroller off and put the spear on (it has a skid loader QT, so that's not at all difficult... just a couple of hoses and pull the latches).
