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Feeding green hay?

E

ecofarmer

Well-known member
Joined
May 8, 2009
Messages
70
Location
central VA
I'm a rotational grazer and sell as grass fed natural beef. I ended up with sick claves last year and decided to keep them thought the winter and to sell this year as replacements. It was nothing major but used to many antibiotics to sell to my normal buyer. I found a buyer and am renting him pasture for 60 days so he can vaccinate and AI them all before he takes them off my land it's day 27 now.

But I'm having weather problems. I'm running 200 more head then normal now and with I have not gotten the pasture growth I needed. His cows are on a normal pasture rotation. This leaves me short on the pasture land that I'm running my cows on. I am supplanting my cows with a few bails of hay in every pasture to get extra time out of the pastures. My hay stock pile is down to a 3 month supply but all of it is 4+ years old it will be nice to have some fresh hay stockpiled this year. I keep looking at my hay field that is nice and lush.

Moving cattle to hay field is out of the question but was thinking about bringing the hay field to them. If I could get 4 day with out rain I could get a chunk of it cut and bailed with a high moisture percentage. Is there any information out there to help me out on how long I would be able to hold the bales before feeding?
 
It will start to silage right away. There is a product from an outfit in Winnipeg called Hay saver. It is made out of Lactic Acid and Acidophilus that would allow you to bale at 30% on down. I am not sure it is Certified Organic but most likely is as that is what they do, create products for that type of market. Other than that I am not sure how long it is good to keep too wet hay. Bio Agronics is the company.

Welcome to Rancher's.
 
Were not organic, were natural. That would work if I could hit low 30%.

I can find one bale wrapper and the guy wants me to put a few hundred into fixing it. It has not run for years but says it ran great up to the time it broke. I called someone in the next town over to see if he could locate one for me. I do need to do some reading on silage before I get to far into this.

I keep my hay out side under some tarps for a few weeks before I let it get near one of the 2 hay barns. I have had 4 bail fires so far and they were all on top of large stumps I wanted to get ride of but they had some help come to the blaze. :)
 
ecofarmer said:
I'm a rotational grazer and sell as grass fed natural beef. I ended up with sick claves last year and decided to keep them thought the winter and to sell this year as replacements. It was nothing major but used to many antibiotics to sell to my normal buyer. I found a buyer and am renting him pasture for 60 days so he can vaccinate and AI them all before he takes them off my land it's day 27 now.

But I'm having weather problems. I'm running 200 more head then normal now and with I have not gotten the pasture growth I needed. His cows are on a normal pasture rotation. This leaves me short on the pasture land that I'm running my cows on. I am supplanting my cows with a few bails of hay in every pasture to get extra time out of the pastures. My hay stock pile is down to a 3 month supply but all of it is 4+ years old it will be nice to have some fresh hay stockpiled this year. I keep looking at my hay field that is nice and lush.

Moving cattle to hay field is out of the question but was thinking about bringing the hay field to them. If I could get 4 day with out rain I could get a chunk of it cut and bailed with a high moisture percentage. Is there any information out there to help me out on how long I would be able to hold the bales before feeding?
Click to expand...

I've never seen a hayfield yet that I couldn't move cows to, lol. Sometimes it takes water hauling, sometimes electric fencing but I reckon if it can grow grass it can be grazed!
If you do wish to mechanically harvest the feed and move it to the cattle why bother drying or ensiling it first?- just bale as much as they will eat in a day and haul it to them. It's called zero grazing and is used many places for many reasons. You avoid most of the substantial feed value losses incurred by ensiling/drying the grass. I prefer zero mechanical harvesting over zero grazing myself.
 
Some years when I have run out of hay before it was time to put them out to grass, I have baled some green, freshcut "hay" and seen it got HOT by the second day. Hard on the baler belts too.

Even when it gets down to the 30% range, it will get hot pretty quick and you likely lose quite a bit of feed value. If you can't put the cows to the field it might be best to do as Grassfarmer said and make it one day at a time. Lotsa work but maybe the best return.

Oh yeah, and don't stand behind them . . . . . . :wink: :lol:
 
To buy stuff to put up a temp fence, obtain a water trailer and storage tanks, and moving the cattle puts the cost to high to move them for what could be 2 or 3 weeks. The field has been sprayed with dairy waist for years and not having my heifers or calves up to date on stuff like black leg makes me wonder if it would be a bad idea. It was last sprayed in August.

I will be able to bail daily when the weather is good. I went thought all my bailing equipment and got the spare / old bailer and rake ready to run. It looks like there will be no rain for the next 2 or 3 days so this should help me out some.

I take the warning to stay away from the fertilizer end also means it might be worth putting out a few blocks?

How many bails would you go for on the first day with 400 heifers with calves about 80 to 120 days old? I will put out a few bails of hay and they will still have some grazing in the pasture.
 
I'm confused, you said you'll have these extra head for 33 more days, and you have a 3 month supply of hay... and that the hay is 4+ years old and it would be nice to have some new hay stockpiled... So can't you just feed that old hay till the buyer picks up his bred heifers and make hay as normally?

And if you're in VA, is that "hayfield" fescue? 4 rain free days could see it cured down to 20% moisture if properly tedded, I would think.

Just wondering if this is not quite the problem it seems, or if I'm reading it wrong (which is entirely likely :lol: )

Dan
 
If you can find any one who used to "green chop" - - - - some of the smaller farmers used to do it years ago but I haven't seen it in years - - - -basicly buy the biggest lawn mower with a bagger you can get and mow only what they will clean up in 12 to 18 hours and do it again rain or shine.

The people ( my uncle was one of them ) used to feed 2+ cow calf units per acre per year doing this but fuel and labor made it fall out of favor.
 
ecofarmer said:
Were not organic, were natural. That would work if I could hit low 30%.

I can find one bale wrapper and the guy wants me to put a few hundred into fixing it. It has not run for years but says it ran great up to the time it broke. I called someone in the next town over to see if he could locate one for me. I do need to do some reading on silage before I get to far into this.

I keep my hay out side under some tarps for a few weeks before I let it get near one of the 2 hay barns. I have had 4 bail fires so far and they were all on top of large stumps I wanted to get ride of but they had some help come to the blaze. :)
Click to expand...
I know from experience tarps are a bad idea for hay,especially alfalfa,once it's wet you got problems.Why put it outside if you have barn space :???:
 
George said:
If you can find any one who used to "green chop" - - - - some of the smaller farmers used to do it years ago but I haven't seen it in years - - - -basicly buy the biggest lawn mower with a bagger you can get and mow only what they will clean up in 12 to 18 hours and do it again rain or shine.

The people ( my uncle was one of them ) used to feed 2+ cow calf units per acre per year doing this but fuel and labor made it fall out of favor.
Click to expand...

I just re-read the post - if ecofarmer is cutting and hauling forage to 400 heifers with calves he really will need the biggest lawnmower he can get :shock: - and run it around the clock :lol: :lol: Whatever way you do it this will be a large and expensive operation. Good luck with it.
 
Grassfarmer said:
George said:
If you can find any one who used to "green chop" - - - - some of the smaller farmers used to do it years ago but I haven't seen it in years - - - -basicly buy the biggest lawn mower with a bagger you can get and mow only what they will clean up in 12 to 18 hours and do it again rain or shine.

The people ( my uncle was one of them ) used to feed 2+ cow calf units per acre per year doing this but fuel and labor made it fall out of favor.
Click to expand...

I just re-read the post - if ecofarmer is cutting and hauling forage to 400 heifers with calves he really will need the biggest lawnmower he can get :shock: - and run it around the clock :lol: :lol: Whatever way you do it this will be a large and expensive operation. Good luck with it.
Click to expand...

On that note. How much work and how expensive would a little electric fence that you can use somewhere else later be? It boils down to where you want to spend your resources and how much work you want to put in where.
 
Deepdan.
Your right I have about 30 days left with the extra head. But I would like to keep a few months of hay on hand. I might be old school but you should always have a few months of hay on hand to get you though when something happens.

Yep it's about 90% fescue. If you look back at the last few stretches with out rain the humidity did not drop below 30% and the temp did not get above 85*. I don't think it would get below 20 on wet ground. With the right weather right now I would bail all of it and put it up.

Blkbuckaroo.
Yep I tarp hay for a few weeks before I put it up for storage. I was tough to do this by my dad. You have to keep an eye on the weather and watch what you moisture content is in the hay as it sits. I have seen plenty of hay fires that took out there barns with it.

Per.
It has more to do with them not having there shots then it has to do with the fencing, water, and the trucking. I was trying to get the other farmer to let me move his cows over there but he dose not want them over there either.


….

I just cut about 8 acres. My kid is raking it right now and when she gets back I will head out to bail it. I have to go dig the 40' hay trailer out of the barn. Some how we forgot about needing to dig it out.
 
Part of the cows loved all the fresh cut hay and part of them wanted nothing to do with it at first. I will see how much they eat of it before dinner and decide how much I will cut in the morning. It did not to feed right at first but I got that working well after my third try at adjusting it.
 

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