Tree Hay: A forgotten fodder (full version)
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- čas přidán 20. 06. 2016
- In this video (shown at the 3rd European Agroforestry Conference 2016) Ted Green, founder member of the Ancient Tree Forum, talks about pollarding for tree hay. The video is divided into three sections: a short history, managing pollards and feeding tree hay to livestock. See www.agricology.co.uk for more information.
What joy to listen to this gentleman. Thanks for posting
we in the south of Morocco we feed sheep in winter dry olive tree leaves it is a very healthy fodder .
Thanks for the share. We feed our goats on green leaves when they're in the pen, but out in the pasture we see them feed on dry leaves too.
Excellent video - it goes back for thousands of years - thanks - much appreciated!
Fantastic home learning subject for my kids. We spent the morning gathering leftover balsam poplar for our sheep from the firewood we cut. They crave it. It sure helps a lot. Thanks for taking the time to make this!! Homesteading family in Nova Scotia 🇨🇦
Wonderful and informative video, thank you! I hope more people see this! Just learning about these techniques now in 2023 as a new regenerative farmer but it makes a lot of sense.
The shade of the trees alone would help the grasses grow well. Its time there were rows of these kinds of trees amongst grains.... It would benefit everyone.
Working Trees! Every tree had to work for it's living! Those words have Life in them!!! Working Trees!!!
Interesting how the cows go for the leaves and even more for the dried ones (see the end of video). Cows got tired of the hay. That is important, if animals find their fodder interesting and palatable they wll LIKE to eat it and eat more than they need. I guess cows in the stable eat out of boredom. But on pasture if they find grass they like (seed experts know those) they will have second helpings ;). Greg Judy calls that "candy" - that means even grass fed cattle puts on weight nicely and if they are used for dairy they have a lot of milk, plus they also produce a lot of manure.
I think that with mechanization, grass hays became dominant and tree hay fell to the waste bin as labor became a factor. Industrialization carried over to agriculture has made this method obsolete because of the labor problem and economies of scale. But, I plan to incorporate this into my farming.
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Beautiful ancient trees.
Takota Coen (permaculture farm in Canada) has a little pond with duckweed nearby his central feeding station (and cattail, which the pigs dig up, if he gives them access). He harvests the duckweed (that is easy) and brings it to them. His pigs get some (and also 30 % hay among other good things, like skimmed milk and grains). I assume poultry could also eat it, not sure if he feeds it to the cows. Chickens like grass and young nettles.
Duckweed has higher productivity than soy (per production area) and is richer in fat and protein, plus does not have the substances that cause problems (estrogens).
His pork looks like beef (dark red and marbled and has unusually high omega 3 content, like seafood).
Goats can use some foliage, but I think the water plants should get another good look, plants that can grow on / in / nearby water are highly productive.
- oh, and the pigs LIKE the duckweed (and the snail and frog eggs and critters in it when Takota fishes it out).
that is also important, there are plants (on pasture) that are nutritious but if cows do not find them palatable they will not eat (a lot) and not gain in weight or eat a lot and then can give a lot of milk.
If the fodder does not taste good, they will eat what they need for survival and then stop.
When they find things they like they will have second helpings ;)
Greg Judy calls it "candy".
Azolla is actually better than duckweed. It is more nutrient dense and grows faster. It is now being grown for animal fodder in many asian countries. Another tree that is really good is the moringa - every part of the moringa tree is edible (even for humans).
My chickens will happily eat the green leaves of water hyacinths if I bring them to them, which I just wade in and harvest. Free food with limitless growth since they are basically invasive (the hyacinths, not the chickens).
Thanks for putting this together. Great and original mind! We need more thinking like this!
I am watching this a second time! Thanks Ted for the great presentation. You need a TED-X talk!
I'm so delighted to learn about this, it's so fascinating
Very interesting video. We're going to incorporate pollarding into our place. Looking at Mulberry, Locust, and others
Fascinating. Nitrogen-fixing trees and shrubs normally have higher protein. Possibly broom species (Cytisus) and Albizia julibrizzin? In Mediterranean climates tree lucerne is commonly used (Cytisus proliferus/Chameacytisus palmensis), and in the tropics Leucaena leucocephala.
Not nitogen-fixing, but possibly poplar species?
Thanks for a great video.
Acacia for tropical reasons and its nitrogen fixing
this is AMAZING. thanyou so much for making it and demonstrating
Wonderful video. Thank you so much for posting! Shared.
My favorite saw is a little hand held one just like that
The name at 5:09 reminds me to the Spanish term fajos which is bundles of plants !
The quintessential broom or hokidachi in bonsai practice!!!
Excellent, thank you
Can you write the names of the trees which types of trees whose leaves can be used to feed animals?
We’re using mulberry, willow, sugar maple and balsam poplar if that helps.
There is an old patch like this on Dartmoor right beside a ruined castle - outside of Okehampton, Dartmoor.
Thanks so much for this. This is invaluable knowledge for sure! I can wait to start pollards
Will this work for other coppice species? Rowan, Hazel, Willow, Alder, Sycamore etc? Fascinating to watch. I went searching for tree-hay after hearing it mentioned in the television series Tudor Monastery Farm but had no luck in my search. Thankfully this video has come up since. Great work and thank you.
Not sure about Sycamore and Alders can be touch and go but all the others generally will coppice or pollard well (but coppice same-root trees only).
The way to preserve the leafy branches is through layering it with silage(fermentation of grasses for feed). Compact layers of shreded grass and leafy branches that are inoculated and covered in silage tarps to ferment and then feed to cattle over the winter.
Yes. And for large cattle, pig, etc. operations, silage will give far more harvest then anything else. AND it requires less labor than this tree hay which is labor intensive.
Thank you
Ces arbres de Normandie (et Bretagne) sont utilisés pour produire des fagots de branches qui servaient de combustible.
On appelle ces arbres taillés verticalement des "ragosses" et on appelle les pollard-trees des "têtards" ou "trognes".
On appelle chez nous "arbre recépé" les "coppiced trees"
Oh that was so interesting, i am in Caithness and there r not vey many trees up here to windy! but i am very interested because it would be nice to feed my horse , goats, and hens a verity of fodder . thank you.
What ratios of the canopy are cut in june july? 10%? 30%?
Hello from greece!! What is tree hay, and how can i use to greece to feed my own fattening male cattle?? What kind of tree can i use?? How and what place of the tree??
Does one harvest young branches from a tree every year, or in rotation? Surely, the tree suffers by being cut during the summer months when the sap is up?
Hi Josh, sorry for delay responding. We went back to Ted for his response which was this: "Today we consider a tree ‘A unique dynamic individual support system for Fungi, Bacteria and other micro-organisms’ Therefore when cutting a tree of whatever species the tree’s response will be dependent on it’s community. Obviously the trees we cut today and the ancient trees that remain at the present time were the trees that can cope with what -ever cutting regime they are subjected too. Presumably many of these survivors from cutting and natural browsing have evolved to cope and all early man before farming too watched his animals and just mimicked their activities'
Spp with a more open grain and poor C O D I T characteristics won't survive this longterm Josh. Coppiced spp. are well known and ranked on their tenacity for the job. The science is there, Ted is right when he says better to cut small bore or young. If the branch or trunk is cut too late or at a large diameter, even strong coppice spp. have a hard time sealing and mitigating rot in good time. As soon as coppice is started it must be maintained consistently to reduce the likelihood of catastrophic failure. The reactionary wood and resultant foliage generated by this management technique is fast and heavy by design. It is unbalanced which leads to big problems in the event of neglect.
Coppicing is normally a set rotation for easy management purposes, large woods are split and each part is worked on different years. This is easier and also better for biodiversiy. There is nothing stopping harvest every year with some spp. The trees food is from the sun, not the earth though. If we remove all the foliage every year the tree will eventually weaken (in vigor and immunity to pests). Information on proven successful rotations can be found online or better still. Go to a wood owner and find out :)
Is there any concern about cyanide in prunus or acer species??
Are there any evergreen trees that you could prune in winter and animals could eat as soon as the branches fall
We spoke to Dr Lindsay Whistance at the ORC who says "The classic evergreen winter browse is holly and whilst I don’t know much about them, Scots pine and Juniper rank equally high as holly in the palatability list created in the woodland grazing toolbox"
Anyone else out there tried it out or have some suggestions for @JayUppercase?
For something like spruce which doesn't pollard/coppice well you can use a similar technique used by some Christmas tree farmers where you cut the tree off at one point but leave some branches on the tree so that it can still photosynthesize. Look up "Stump Culture".
I don't know if they will eat them though ...
I'm just starting my small holding and want to include feeding tree hay in mid late summer when we have no green grass (Northern Spain). We get a lot (A LOT) of sycamore sprouting up, amongst other types, and I was wondering if I could use this as tree hay since it's already there and I want to keep it low so as not to compete with the chestnut and oak. The locals don't seem to touch it and get rid as soon as it appears on their land.
Great question Mandy. Are you on instagram, facebook or twitter? We will throw the question out there and see what comes back from the @agricology community.
My facebook page is La Vida Verde facebook.com/livingthelifeinviris. Thank you for getting back so fast. If it is suitable I am going to plant some where the borders are thin to lay a hedge around my pig 'wood' . so excited about this method!
Agricology hello from greece!! What is tree hay, and how xan i use it to greece to feed my own fattening male cattle??
Check out Takota Coen and his little pond with duckweed. He has a vidoe of how he produced pork resp. how he takes care of his animals in 1 hour (I think in Spain that could be an canal sttyle pond that is long but not wide and you could plant beans or other climbers to protect it from evaporation. the climbers would grow on both sides and over the sidth so it would reduce evaporation.
Plus harvesting solar energy, carbon and if it is beans or other legumes even nitrogen.
Duckweed (and cattail) need some sun, but not as much as the glaring mediterranen sun provides.
Duckweed beats soy when it comes to fat and protein content (so one has to be careful to only ADD some. The pigs of Takota get a few shovels every day, I think he also gives it to chickens, not sure about the 2 dairy cows).
Duckweed also produced more per area than if you would plant soy (where it is a good fit !). He has the small pond nearby his central feeding station and it lays a little lower. The pigs are in a fenced off area (at least in the warmer season, he is in Canada). So a part of the nutrients from manure are rinsed into the pond by rain. Would not work with a larger farms, but works well for the smaller operation. (less then 10 pigs, 2 cows, some chickens, ....) The pond gets some nutrients w/o Takota doing anything, but is not overloaded.
Takota has it nearby so it is not much work to get them a few shovels every day, they get it fresh, I guess it is like vegetables for them.
And it grows like "weed".
There is of course the work you have to put in for the pond, but in Spain you have to stop, store, soak in and spread water anyway, more than in Central Europe. Whatever you can store when you get winter rains will be a blessing in summer (if not, there will be a lot of runoff, possibly erosion, and the runoff + nutrients will be lost for you, and will also not benefit downstream, the water will land in the ocean within days).
We are in for longer stable weather systems, draughts, followed by torrential rain (more rain in very short time, or lasting longer). See what happened in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands, France just recently (July 2021). Or the record level tornado in Czechia in June. There were occasionally tornados even in Europe, but they did not get that strong !!
So managing lots of water coming in short time (and it does no damage and you have it later) will become more and more important. Check out the project in Tamera in Portugal. Lots of earthwork.
And if space is is at a premium, highly productive water plants can be part of the solution.
I assume they can skip the effort to grow an extensive root system, it goes all into the other growth and that is why they beat land based plants. (which build soil and support soil life, so they are also incredibly important, but water plant are a niche little niche).
Does the tree hay need to be dried before cattle can eat it?
Nope. But it’s mainly dried and used in winter instead or along with grass hay.
@@spoolsandbobbins thanks for the answer. I’ve been trying it with maple and apple. Our heifer seems to like it. Just not as much as hay.
This is amazing!!
How do i find out what kind of trees i could use for quality tree hay?
I live in the northeast US, in Ohio! I dont know anything about types of trees. Will any tree with green work? Are there families of tree species that animals particular like?
We use white pine and other conifers, balsam poplar, white birch, maple, comfrey, among others…
We raised alpacas and llamas and they would ignore all other food in favor of tree leaves.
This is bizarre because I was suggesting to some local farmers why don't they plant trees in there barren industrial farmed fields and graze there cattle in meadows. The trees would be a natural shelter for cattle instead of barns .
Careful with industrial sites where pollution is more than likely. Trees planted here will take up the contaminants in the soil and concentrate them in the leaves, which then passes through and on to animals.
Industrial sites can still be improved by coppicing if the wife is used for fuel IF the burning tech has a filter and a safe way to collect and dispose of ashes left behind.
Good solution to the increased cost of hay due to these biofuel businesses buying it all up. Hay doubled in price per acre over the past few years. Might go higher. High labour costs with tree hay though. Is this mechanised yet? It still doesn't beat hay for cost, even with higher prices :( Not ideal mechanising it, but to promote this, it has to be lower cost, higher nutrition or have better storage properties :(
Thank you Peter, would anyone care to comment?
I see this was posted 4years ago!! My, have times changed with inflation and all. We’re going back to the good old days. Harder work but can’t rely on the system anymore. Making tree hay is where it’s at!
Damn shame the fraxinus species is so short for this world.