Northern Rancher
Well-known member
Your cows must crap or pee more than mine-here's a tip feed them than stay away for three days. With me and my cows abscence makes the heart grow fonder.
Northern Rancher said:Your cows must crap or pee more than mine-here's a tip feed them than stay away for three days. With me and my cows abscence makes the heart grow fonder.
DiamondSCattleCo said:My girls stay in the paddock, but they bed down on some of it, and once its covered in manure and urine, they won't eat it.
Just out of curiosity this year, I tried an experiment on a pen of 50 late pairs. For the first month of the year, I fed out 5 bales on the ground, spread over a small area. The girls would clean up all 5 in 2 days flat, bedding down on some of it. I then moved my hay save feeder out into the pasture, and fed 5 bales. I'm down to feeding every 3 days, and there is usually enough left in the feeder to do them at least another 1/4 day. I've switched back and forth a couple times, just to make up for weather, and my results are consistent. So that tells me that they're wasting 1 to 1.5 bales every 5 bales. I haven't recalculated how much it costs me per bale since I switched to the hard core baler, but as of 2 years ago, I was sitting at $7 per softcore bale. Just guesstimating this year, I think I'm sitting at $12 per hardcore bale. Thats $6 - $9 waste every day. I can easily run my loader on those kind of dollars, especially since I need to bed every couple days anyway.
I wish I could get away with it. It suits my lazy bone to a "T", and I agree with NR's idea of getting away with minimal equipment, however I just can't make it pencil
Rod