09/17/2026
Captured for the first time: a family group of shaggy bales, featuring both full grown parents and their three smaller offspring. Bales are quite common in Saskatchewan, but seeing a whole family group is unusual. Bales live in open fields where their lives are governed by the movement of the sun. They are nearly invisible until the Summer Solstice in mid-June when they suddenly start to pop up in green fields. There are three main subspecies: the grass bale (which lives in grass fields), the alfalfa bale (which lives in alfalfa fields), and the slippery, hard to handle green oat bales (which live in, you guessed it, oat fields). There is also a hybrid species called the grass alfalfa (or alfalfa grass) which is becoming quite common. All the bales normally have sleek green coats when they first appear, but after a few weeks and as the weather cools, they develop shaggy coats which can be brownish or even black, depending on the weather. Around the time of the autumnal equinox, the bales gather into large groups called stacks. It is believed that being close together helps them keep warm as winter approaches. Predation reduces the size of the stacks over winter until there are sometimes none left at all by the time of the spring equinox, yet, miraculously, a few always survive to keep the population growing. I hope you enjoyed learning about the facts about these interesting creatures.
