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Feeding hay with horses on the Y6, 1-22-11, Part Two

floyd said:
What a nice set up. You harrow with them in the spring?. I really like the forecart. Good you have lots of room cause backing up would be tough.

I ran 4 abreast alot. Sometimes it's handier then doing a 4-up.

Nice they go while you run the fork.
Click to expand...

The six-horse feed outfit belongs to Wade Kramer, of the Y6 Ranch south of Hyannis, Nebraska. I was only in the right place at the right time to have opportunity
to take some photos while he was feeding last Saturday. On the same day, they also had another six-horse team feeding hay, and a nice four-horse hitch of Percherons
doing the same. Earlier in the day, another ranch hand had a two-horse team hauling and feeding cake. In other words, there was a total of 18 draft horses hooked up
and working that day on the Y6 ranch.

My wife and I got married in 1979, and we did feed with a four-horse team the first two winters when we started ranching on our own. Here are the "Rushmore Four,"
Tom, Abe, Teddy, and George, as they looked in 1980. Peach is in the driver's seat.

rushmorefourframed-cropped-50.jpg



Here is my current way of feeding. This outfit isn't particularly glamorous, but it does have a heater and a radio that works, and I can haul hay and cake
at the same time. :wink:

Myownhumbleandnot-particularly-glamorous.jpg
 
The problem with my bale deck is it can hardly handle those bigger 1800-2000 pound bales-it wouldn't take alot to make a little cab on a feeding sleigh but on most days you'd get too hot. It would be nice to break the wind. If your cattle are all spread out it can make a long day. Little Bow my horse driving is kind of like my roping I can do it good enough to get things done that need be but I have friends who are alot better. Next time through Hyannis I'm going to have to stop at that horse outfit I get through there every twenty years or so lol. Mind you our horse days here might be numbered some 'specialist' in Cattleman magazine just printed that it's impossible for horses to paw out in winter and survive so I guess we've just been lucky the last 90 years on this place.
 
hayguy said:
Soapweed, what do you resort to when the snow gets too deep for the truck. or do you never get that much snow?
Click to expand...

The snow can get quite deep here at times. I don't now remember whether it was 1975 or 1977, but during one of those years
we got 60 inches of snow just during the month of March. When the snow gets too deep for our pickups with Hydra-beds, we use
front-wheel assist tractors with bale processors. So far this year we have gotten by with just pickups. One day the Kosmo Kid
did use a front-wheel assist tractor with loader to move snow around in a few stackyards.

I still contend that we save 25% of our hay rolling it out long-stemmed instead of using a processor. 30 pounds will fill up a cow
where it takes 40 pounds of processed hay to do the same.
 
Soapweed said:
Northern Rancher said:
Is there any reason why they'd hook them up six abreast like that. Up here as far as I know they only hooked two or four in line. Not alot of capital tied up in that deal compared to a FWA tractor and a bale processor.
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Six head hooked abreast are more maneuverable in the stackyards. Another big advantage is there are only two lines, those controlling the tongue team. The outside horses are controlled by jockey sticks from the hames of the inside horse to the inside bit of the outside horse, and a line running from the britching of the inside horse to the bit of the outside horse. This process is repeated from horse 2 to 1, and from horse 5 to 6.
Click to expand...

Dad never used more than 4 when he was feeding with teams. he hooked them 4 abreast too because they don't get tangled up as easy as when hooked in line. On a set up like that it would take a teamster and a hydrafork operator to get the hay fed with them in line.
 
Northern Rancher said:
Some outfits up here went right from loose hay to round bales they skipped the whole idiot cube deal.

http://www.farmingwithhorses.com/horse-drawn-haying-equipment

Some nice stuff on this site.
Click to expand...

Looks to me like they more or less ripped off Allis Chalmer's sickle drive on the mower, or at least really studied their lesson on it. I know what happens when one runs a swather with no cab into a bumblebee nest. I know what happens when you do the same thing and the swather has a cab (you laugh). Anybody ever do that when mowing hay with horses? Did they live to tell about it?
 
Not to highjack this thread, but I'm wondering, Soap, if you are misweighing the hay if you think it takes 40 lbs of processed hay to fill up a cow?
Our cows never got 40 lbs. of processed hay and they were always in
great shape. I'm talking mostly grass hay here. We had a scale put
on the last processor we bought and WE KNOW how much hay
we fed per cow and it never was 40 lbs. We fed 30 lbs (or less) depending on the weather and grazing conditions. Weighing each bale assured us of how much hay we
were feeding; we were no longer guessing. The scale cost an extra $2500
when we bought the processor and we saved that much on one load
of purchased hay that was sold as much heavier bales than they actually were. When we started feeding the hay and weighed the bales, they were
about 200 lbs, less than the weigh tickets indicated. So we were able
to adjust what we paid for the hay.

We loved
the processor and saw very little waste. And it was so nice to have the processor for the heifer calves as we never fed in bale feeders.
We ran the hay out on the ground in a very small windrow and there was hardly any waste. We didn't grain the heifer calves and they grew out just fine with no supplement except mineral.

I hated to see a cow stand there eating hay with one end in her
mouth with her front feet on other end. :D

Like religion I guess. Not one size fits all. But I did want to clarify that
not everyone had to feed 40 lbs. of processsed hay to fill up a cow.

Sorry for the hijack...
 
Just depends on the team. Ever seen a 4-up plowing by themselves? Hell they even stopped when they got to the end of the furrow.

The teamster lined them out to get started.
Every team will not do this.
 
Faster horses said:
Not to highjack this thread, but I'm wondering, Soap, if you are misweighing the hay if you think it takes 40 lbs of processed hay to fill up a cow?
Our cows never got 40 lbs. of processed hay and they were always in
great shape. I'm talking mostly grass hay here. We had a scale put
on the last processor we bought and WE KNOW how much hay
we fed per cow and it never was 40 lbs. We fed 30 lbs (or less) depending on the weather and grazing conditions. Weighing each bale assured us of how much hay we
were feeding; we were no longer guessing. The scale cost an extra $2500
when we bought the processor and we saved that much on one load
of purchased hay that was sold as much heavier bales than they actually were. When we started feeding the hay and weighed the bales, they were
about 200 lbs, less than the weigh tickets indicated. So we were able
to adjust what we paid for the hay.

We loved
the processor and saw very little waste. And it was so nice to have the processor for the heifer calves as we never fed in bale feeders.
We ran the hay out on the ground in a very small windrow and there was hardly any waste. We didn't grain the heifer calves and they grew out just fine with no supplement except mineral.

I hated to see a cow stand there eating hay with one end in her
mouth with her front feet on other end. :D

Like religion I guess. Not one size fits all. But I did want to clarify that
not everyone had to feed 40 lbs. of processsed hay to fill up a cow.

Sorry for the hijack...
Click to expand...

I bought hay from my neighbor. The truck that hauled them home has a scale on it. The bales weighed an average of 1608#. I have been feeding four bales each day to one bunch of older cows of 211 head. That comes out to 30.48# of hay per head per day, plus the two pounds of 20% cake they are getting. In the past I have known of the weight of our bales, and it sure took all of 40# per head per day of hay fed with a processor to fill them up. One of my neighbors is taking in some cows until calving time. He knows the weight of his bales. He is trying to do a bang-up good job feeding the take-in cattle. They are pretty big cows, but he says it is taking 45# of processed hay to fill them up. He is charging per head per day, so it is not to his advantage to feed the cows more hay than they can eat.

Just some random thoughts. Everyone needs to do what makes them happy. I am not smart enough to postpone calving to the "warm delightful months," so that is now staring us in the face. :roll: :wink: :-)
 
Never underestimate your intelligence Soapweed we all have others who'll do that for us. Reaching back into the dusty memory of my college days I always thought the reason for processing a feedstuff was to increase consumption. In the year of the drought and then the big frost-there was no hay crop up here but thousands of acres of frozen immature canola. It never snowed any amount at all. The rumour got going that you could bale canola with snow in the swath once it stayed below freezing at night-well you can't. We bought several hundred bales from a neighbor that had just started to heat-we got them shredded in windrows which seemed to stop the fermentation and swath grazed it all winter. Alot of guys just went out and baled a week or so feed at a time all winter long-that was definately a bizarre winter. Feeding on deep snow you do waste more feed shredding than feeding long hay-they work well for guys whole feed grain with roughage that grain attachment seems to work, feeding in bunks or stretching out bedding and the reason no one admits to you don't have to cut and pull twines.
 
http://www.spiritviewranch.com/pdf/Christoph/archive/Yet%20another%20reason%20to%20scrap%20the%20bale%20processor.pdf

another man's opinion on processors along with alberta ag study results
 
hayguy said:
http://www.spiritviewranch.com/pdf/Christoph/archive/Yet%20another%20reason%20to%20scrap%20the%20bale%20processor.pdf

another man's opinion on processors along with alberta ag study results
Click to expand...

That is an interesting study, but I would disagree with their findings of feeding hay in a feeder. The study claims a zero percent loss of hay, but my own findings and experience would say that more hay is wasted using a feeder than by either rolling it out or using a processor. When using a feeder, there is a lot of hay that gets pulled out, tromped on, and "peeooped" upon. Anyone who says there is zero waste using such a method is only fooling themselves.
 
i believe the study involved processed hay in the feeder not long hay. i agree with you that most feeders can waste a lot of feed. i'm feeding some barley green feed through a processor mostly to knock the rough awns off, otherwise i think rolling it out would be better.
 
hayguy said:
i believe the study involved processed hay in the feeder not long hay. i agree with you that most feeders can waste a lot of feed. i'm feeding some barley green feed through a processor mostly to knock the rough awns off, otherwise i think rolling it out would be better.
Click to expand...

Yes, that does seem to be the case after re-reading the study. Cattle seem to do a pretty fair job of eating low quality hay if it is fed on cold enough days, with snow on the ground, and when there are no other options to satisfy their hunger. The person doing the feeding just needs to watch for windows of opportunity to get rid of the lower quality hay.

It seems to be a big fad to grind hay into big piles, and then feed it in bunks. This seems like a lot of work and investment in machinery to accomplish the task. There are some hidden disadvantages in using this method. It is quite easy to pulverize wire, tin cans, plastic bottles, and other impurities into such a ration. Cattle can die from such ingestions. Every year, someone ends up grinding hay that is too wet, which gets into the middle of a big pile. Spontaneous combustion takes place, and many tons of ground hay go up in smoke.

After years of observation, I have recently come to the conclusion that ranch cattle (especially cows and replacement heifers) just naturally do better if they are fed on pastures or meadows instead of being in a dry lot situation. There is more room for livestock to exercise in bigger areas, and there is no manure to haul. The worst thing about a "dry lot" is that they are either too dry and dusty, or too muddy. A happy medium seems hard to obtain. Even when there is not much grass on a pasture or meadow, there is usually some high dry clean ground on which to feed hay and as a place for cattle to bed down at night.
 

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