Y'all are startin to sound like a bunch of ol farmers. Ya those are prolly leaf cutter bee huts there jd. Some farmers choose to let their alfalfa go to seed and get these little bee huts placed on their land during the spring-fall. The bees are removed for winter and stored in a large constant heat building. Honey bees do not due that great of a job pollinating alfalfa, has a flower that causes problems for the honey bee so many farmers go to leaf cutters for pollination. It is actaully a pretty big business in my area and even bigger to the north of me up around Nipawin, Carrot River. I had one person from regina think they were ice fishing huts one time. oh boy......

I like to first see if there is any crop left out that never got harvested. Oats, wheat etc the critters will have the swaths dug up and picked up come spring. Close second would be fall rye, winter wheat. We have grown fall rye several times b4 and it has seemed to winter well even with all of the critters on it. Ski-doos will kill a heck of a lot more than the animals. They also like to nibble on red clover if a guy can find any of that around. I have some pretty god spots in my area but no time to get there.

Like skeeter says bales can vary but either they are feed or straw. Straw will be lighter color almost a yellow most of the time with oats, wheat and barley being the biggies but some also bale flax straw.Occasionally you will get some green feed bales, crop that is baledwithout being harvested while it is still green for cattle, usually this is oats.Feed haywill be darker and may be clover, alfalfa, timothy, slough grass etc. From my travels in alberta especially in the south there seems to be a big shift to the big square bales only reason i can think of is nicer to haul and stack. Most of the colonies down around lethbridge, cardston, taber etc do not use the round bales anymore. If the deer or elk find a stand of second cut alfalfa bales look out baby. Many guys here have put up elk fences around their hay to keep the buggers out. We applied to get one of these fences from the government but we would have had to drive an hour to take down this one that wasn't being used, bring that material back to the farm and set it up so the papi said pee on it. More enjoyable to scare them out with the truck. Thing is about elk is they will not just eat one bale. They will nibble on as many as they can, roll them around, bust and push twines off the edge making it a beach of a mess. We had 10 or so hangin around the farm while i was at home but never did too much damage. The big herds are the killers.We are feeding the deer in the yard oats and lil square second cut bales everyday but i guess that isn't good enough. They are eating at this one round bale also which has another bale stacked ontop of it.They have that bottom bale ripped apart pretty good now and prolly a few more days i think dad might walk outside to find fresh meat layin under that top bale lol. Naw he will move it off within the next few days. Curious, nibbling like buggers.[8D]