Sheep, beef and dairy graziers Laura and Justin Davie showcased their bale-grazing system on their 230ha farm Longview in Fairfax, southeast of Otautau.
Longview was the third and final stop on the Lower Aparima Catchment Group "whitebait and wintering" tour earlier this month.
The wintering system features hay bales spaced across a paddock and stock grazing breaks of hay and pasture through winter.
Cattle were given access to a new break of six hay bales every three days.
Mr Davie said the beauty of the system was the bales could be set across a paddock before winter and it took about 10 minutes every three days to remove bale netting and shift a water trough.
The Davies were in their fourth winter using a bale-grazing system on Longview.
The system had allowed them to remove winter cropping from their farm operation.
However, bale grazing requires twice as much area as winter cropping to feed the same number of cattle.
A bale-grazing system, including producing all the high-quality hay themselves, was cheaper than getting a crop direct-drilled, Mr Davie said.
"This system costs us less than $1 a day per heifer. It works financially for us and it works for our system."
Paddocks used in a bale-grazing system had livestock excluded from the end of February.
A "blueprint" formula to calculate what was required for a bale-grazing system to suit any farm consists of 100 cows needing 15 bales and half a hectare every three days.
However, if adverse weather hits, the cattle could be moved to a new break every second day to give them more room.
A limitation of a bale-grazing system in Southland was the ability to make hay.
"If you have some dry weather, why not make some hay? This dry fibre for cattle is really helpful in winter."
Baleage, compared to hay, was a cold, damp feed.
The Davies’ bale-grazing system required 600 bales of hay, which could be a "daunting" prospect in Southland.
There was always a window of favourable weather to make hay in Southland but you needed to be on the ball.
"You have to be prepared to pull the trigger."
A motivation for using a bale-grazing system was every part of their farm was available to livestock in spring.
When a paddock was in a winter crop, it was being cultivated in the spring and was unavailable for grazing.
The hay in a bale-grazing system was on the ground, rather than in a ring feeder.
Mrs Davie said some farmers argued a ring feeder reduced feed wastage, but she countered cattle in a bale-grazing system ate less because they were warmer, as they used the hay as bedding.
Also cattle surrounding a ring feeder had the potential to produce more mud than when hay was on the ground.
Any residual hay broke down in paddocks by December — the material increasing the worm population in the soil, Mrs Davie said.
"For us that little bit of wastage is a benefit to us because our cows are happier and our soil is getting healthier."
Bale-grazing learnings from the three past winters include the best place to store hay: on their rounds at the northern side of a hedge, in a single stack.
"If you start stacking them up, they collect water."
Mr Davie said some farmers they knew did calving in a bale-grazing system.
"It is a nice, dry area for calves to sit on the hay bales."
