Kansas cattleman Steve Shields is bucking the trend toward big round bales. For the past three seasons he has been chopping his prairie hay and storing it in a trench silo.

Shields and his hired men like not having to handle big bales. "We eliminated about three jobs and it's about two or three times faster than making baled hay," he told FARM SHOW.

Getting rid of the baling job is one of the reasons for storing chopped hay. The other reasons are that it's easy to mix with rations and easy to feed with high moisture grain.

Haying by this method is simple. Shields swaths the hay and puts it through his field chopper -- the biggest one available -- then hauls it in chopper wagons and dumps it into the trench.

He advises that the hay must really be dry when you cut it. "When you think the hay's about ready to bale, wait another day before you pick it up with the field cutter," he says. Freshly chopped hay is dumped over the side into a trench silo, then leveled off with a tractor.

Last year Shields ran out of space and decided to dump chopped hay right on the ground. "It formed a crust over the top and we had very little spoilage when the last of it was fed six months after ensiling."

The ensiled dry chopped native prairie hay makes up about one fourth of the roughage ration for "backgrounding" steers and heifers. They're purchased at about 600 lbs. and sold 120 to 160 days later, depending on the market, explains Shields.