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Haymaker

We stockpile fescue and keep hay around just in case we get ice but thats it. Water well we chop ponds all winter but i dont see many tracks when we have snow on the ground. We do have wet snows from our humidity i guess. I guess it just depends on where you live and how big a pocket book you have if you dont stockpile, because it sure cost a lot of money to feed hay IF you can stockpile. NR is right on a lot of things thou even if he is up there and i am down here. I see the cows that are easy doers and the ones that are high maintenance. I keep heifers out of the easy ones of course. Some cattle are just designed for your area and grass and some just aren't.I am not sure if nr cattle would do go on fescue or if mine would do good on his grass but we both have what works good for our areas. Small framed easy doin cattle that make us money. And a lot of electric fence. Just my opinion but people that dont stockpile and make their cattle work for them dont really understand us that do.
 
I started this thread just to get us thinking. We all do many things the same but we also do many this differently.
Where I live we are always short of feed we can grow native grass and have natural shelter if the snow is not to deep our cows can graze out and recieve some supplement and do OK. If winter really sets in we have to have feed on hand . In Northern ranchers case he is in an area that usually has abundant feed. At times can buy hay for what it would cost us to get it baled. So does it waste some hay grazing bales? Sure probably does. does the waste add up to what it would cost to have a tractor on hand a bale processor, the manure hauling costs for cleaning out a corral. I imagine that NR doesn't think so for his situation.
I was reading where there is $9 worth of nitrogen ect depsoited in a feild from a bale when using it for grazing but the manure if hauled from a corral doesn't have as much nutrients as some leach into the corral plus the cost of hauling the manure add up. So I hear some on hear talking about fertilizing their pasture , could that not be what NR is doing?
 
No fair Soapweed! You're tarring all dogs with the same brush! Roper is right that good dogs put cowboys out of work, because its sure a lot cheaper to feed several dogs than to keep a hired man and all his/her horses around! Dogs don't complain about the work hours, and you can rotate them so there is no worries about not having help when you need it. The hired man might do better in the thunder storms, but I've seen quite a few of them running for the truck or buildings in a storm too! Of course I am a big chicken in lightning too, so I'm headed for shelter too. :shock:
 
Every place is different in respect to the grass it grows, and if you can graze thru half the winter or not. We are able on most years to graze thru the winter, but we also put out hay so that they have the option, which they always take. Never have I seen the cows turn up their nose at a bale of hay in the winter time. Our grass here is more tropical I guess you could say, it's usta havin lots of water on it, there for the protein content in it aint all that great to begin with, get a frost on it, and it's dead, it has no nutritional value, all it is, is roughage.
People fertilize their hay fields to up that protein. I should take a picture of what feedin the bales on the ground does here. We have such wet muddy winters normally that it doesn't pay to move your feedin area around, the cows tear it up so bad that grass won't grow in spots where hay's fed for a couple years. I'll make it a point to take pictures of the area we fed hay in a couple years ago. So you can see what it does. Granted the area will grow better grass when it finally recovers, but it takes a good 3 years for it to get over the affects of feedin in the same place for 3 or 4 months. We dont' ever feed in the corrals and move the poop out. That's just extra work. But..some people it may fit their program. Just not ours. we feed out in the pasture, in a round bale feeder. Only because we haven't built more feeders like Lil Lilly built for her ag project at the fair. But given time we will have about 5 of them to feed in, hopefully.
Our grass here in the winter time, after one frost, it basically has no nutritional value whatsoever. There are a few winter grasses that grow but not enuff to sustain a cow herd. Unless you plant rye grass or somethin to feed in the winter, you are either feedin baled hay with range cubes as a supplement, or your cows don't get what the require and will go downhill fast.
Extention Agents say we should be able to run 1 cow calf pair on 3 acres. In good years that works great, in years of drought, it don't work worth a dern.
 
Lilly the idea of bale grazing is that you don't feed in the same place for "3 or 4 months" that the cows eat at that bale until it is gone and move on. Trying to spread them out not cluster the around a hay ring for months. Also more then one or two bales are out at one time. Just goes to show that we all feed cows just some of us do it differently.
As long as we can remember "Different" doesn't always mean "wrong"
 
We generally have an annual hay field. One with hay Barley or oats cut for hay and than followed with Sudex or Millet of some type. This is the field that we winter our cows in Doesn't matter how much they tear it up as it is going to get tilled in the spring. Generally we start off grazing the regrowth in that field in the fall. pull the cows out and let them run through the fields picking of what is left in the other fields and than bring them back in for hay feeding. This way we don't have to haul manure as the cows spread it all over the 75 acre field. We just got our soil test back from that field and needless to say we sure don't need any P or K in that field.. I really wonder how much nitro we realy need to piut on in the spring too with all the manure deposited all over the place in it.


We have one feed wagon.. 24 feet long and holds 3 bales.. Workes great to haul feed out in for the cows and they don't wast as much. Only problem is that it was way overpriced or we would have the 3-4 more that we need... This past winter we basically feed a lot of corn stalk bales and those we would just break open and the cows would come in and clean up the space and bed down in it when they were done. That was the point. Different strokes for different folks.

Around here the hay growers are growing hay for Dairy, jumping horses and the club calf/lamb people and ask for prices that are, well 100+ dollars a ton it seems (Yes, you can find cheaper if you look a bit). Bale processor? Nope, we just either unroll it with the forks on the tractor or we feed in a feeder. Both work just fine. Alfalfa hay gets rolled and gut fill gets put in feeders usually... I have planted a bit of fescue as of late and that stuff is pretty good winter feed as stockplie. It has been a bear to get established in these two real dry years but we shall see.
 
Big Muddy rancher said:
I started this thread just to get us thinking. We all do many things the same but we also do many this differently.
Where I live we are always short of feed we can grow native grass and have natural shelter if the snow is not to deep our cows can graze out and recieve some supplement and do OK. If winter really sets in we have to have feed on hand . In Northern ranchers case he is in an area that usually has abundant feed. At times can buy hay for what it would cost us to get it baled. So does it waste some hay grazing bales? Sure probably does. does the waste add up to what it would cost to have a tractor on hand a bale processor, the manure hauling costs for cleaning out a corral. I imagine that NR doesn't think so for his situation.
I was reading where there is $9 worth of nitrogen ect depsoited in a feild from a bale when using it for grazing but the manure if hauled from a corral doesn't have as much nutrients as some leach into the corral plus the cost of hauling the manure add up. So I hear some on hear talking about fertilizing their pasture , could that not be what NR is doing?
Click to expand...

Bmr,your post makes a lot of sense but............I believe you would have to look long and hard to find some one that had 500 head of cattle to feed, that would trade his equipment for a sled and team of belgians,I dont care where you ranch.
And while I will agree there would be a sense of satisfaction feeding cattle with sled & horses,I doubt few would welcome makin a livin at it...............good luck
 
HAY MAKER said:
Big Muddy rancher said:
I started this thread just to get us thinking. We all do many things the same but we also do many this differently.
Where I live we are always short of feed we can grow native grass and have natural shelter if the snow is not to deep our cows can graze out and recieve some supplement and do OK. If winter really sets in we have to have feed on hand . In Northern ranchers case he is in an area that usually has abundant feed. At times can buy hay for what it would cost us to get it baled. So does it waste some hay grazing bales? Sure probably does. does the waste add up to what it would cost to have a tractor on hand a bale processor, the manure hauling costs for cleaning out a corral. I imagine that NR doesn't think so for his situation.
I was reading where there is $9 worth of nitrogen ect depsoited in a feild from a bale when using it for grazing but the manure if hauled from a corral doesn't have as much nutrients as some leach into the corral plus the cost of hauling the manure add up. So I hear some on hear talking about fertilizing their pasture , could that not be what NR is doing?
Click to expand...

Bmr,your post makes a lot of sense but............I believe you would have to look long and hard to find some one that had 500 head to feed, that would trade his equipment for a sled and team of belgians,I dont care where you ranch.
And while I will agree there would be a sense of satisfaction feeding cattle with sled & horses,I doubt few would welcome makin a livin at it...............good luck
Click to expand...


I think you right Haymaker, you might have to look to find many feeding with a team but you could be pretty sure if they were doing it they sure aren't lazy.
 
Big Muddy rancher said:
HAY MAKER said:
Big Muddy rancher said:
I started this thread just to get us thinking. We all do many things the same but we also do many this differently.
Where I live we are always short of feed we can grow native grass and have natural shelter if the snow is not to deep our cows can graze out and recieve some supplement and do OK. If winter really sets in we have to have feed on hand . In Northern ranchers case he is in an area that usually has abundant feed. At times can buy hay for what it would cost us to get it baled. So does it waste some hay grazing bales? Sure probably does. does the waste add up to what it would cost to have a tractor on hand a bale processor, the manure hauling costs for cleaning out a corral. I imagine that NR doesn't think so for his situation.
I was reading where there is $9 worth of nitrogen ect depsoited in a feild from a bale when using it for grazing but the manure if hauled from a corral doesn't have as much nutrients as some leach into the corral plus the cost of hauling the manure add up. So I hear some on hear talking about fertilizing their pasture , could that not be what NR is doing?
Click to expand...

Bmr,your post makes a lot of sense but............I believe you would have to look long and hard to find some one that had 500 head to feed, that would trade his equipment for a sled and team of belgians,I dont care where you ranch.
And while I will agree there would be a sense of satisfaction feeding cattle with sled & horses,I doubt few would welcome makin a livin at it...............good luck
Click to expand...


I think you right Haymaker, you might have to look to find many feeding with a team but you could be pretty sure if they were doing it they sure aren't lazy.
Click to expand...

A local guy here not only feeds with a team of horses but he uses horses on his stacker.
 
It's funny how some guys harrow or spike grass to rejuvenate it but worry abouts a little hoof action-we bale graze probably 20 different sites at least a winter and rotate them from year to year.
 
Northern Rancher said:
It's funny how some guys harrow or spike grass to rejuvenate it but worry abouts a little hoof action-we bale graze probably 20 different sites at least a winter and rotate them from year to year.
Click to expand...

So with your bale grazeing how many bales roughly do you let the cows in at a time and do you let all your cows run in one bunch?Do you spread them all over as if they were dropped by a baler or do you group them up some just wondering how you do it?
 
We buy all our hay in so we put a semiload in each spot-probably 18-20 tonnes in each spot-I don't scatter them all around all that much-if they are closer together they get out of the wind a bit by crowding around them. It looks pretty wastey about half way through the feeding period but they clean it up pretty good. One thing it does do is give the smaller younger cows a chance to eat their fill most days-they can get shoved out if you only feed daily. It's nice when a cold spell hits to know that all that's involved in feeding is opening gates once a week. Some guys up here do it but move a hot wire every day or two but that's too much like work for me-I'm a warm weather fencer lol. I'll try and get a pic of it up I took.
 
P1012515.jpg


Ok here's a worst case scenario for bale grazing-this was one of the last spots we used-somebody unloaded the bales where water would lie in the spring-I'd kick his ash if I was acrobatic lol. They've been on that spot for a few days already-you can see some calves were starting to come-we'd bred some earliar to sell but kept them-if you call late April early lol. In the drought we did this when we wintered on straw and grain but we had to go out with their screening pellets every day-I had a little hopper box I used to pull on my sleigh.
 
Northern Rancher:


Intrigued, so a few more questions:

Do you have trouble with deer (or elk) getting into that hay before the cows, by the end of Winter? Unless I misunderstand you, some of this hay would be there "unprotected" for 4 - 6 months.

As I understand it, each of these bale "stockpiles" are in a different pasture?

It sounds like a lot of pastures to rotate through over the Winter, or do you restock the bale piles halfway through, and then use the same pasture again?

Do you harrow, or spread out the manure in the Spring?

Thanks

Badlands
 
We have alot of pastures but you sure could just keep replacing piles as you feed them. We haven't had a p[roblem with deer yet I usually aren't buying deer quality hay for my cows-there is usually lots of feed available for them other than hay-I guess if they got into them I'd suffer through it -my local deer provide with too much hunting fun for me not to feed a few. The big elk bunches are 20 milkes or so away and lots of feed to eat through before they reach me. Alot of guys harrow in the spring but I haven't seen a nedd to as yet-the difference in grass growth is remarkable-probably at least double.
 
Roper.. I was just wondering why you hate the modern way of things.. quads, tractors, cell phones?




Where I am.. Branding tables, quads and pickups are used for working cattle.. and there are some that work a four wheeler and pickup with cattle as good as I have seen some on a horse.. Its all the person.. When I used to help my grandpa(on my moms side) brand and now my uncle.. We use horses and drag.. But when I work mine and my dads we use a table.. maybe its the area.. we run our cattle here on corn and milo stalks tell about March when they start calving, then we feed hay until may 1st.. We supplement with cubes on the stalks..

I will agree I dont like plowing with my FWA tractor when the snow is deep or when it is gone and we have slop.. But its the way we have always done it.. and the way I was taught..

But dont get me wrong we calve on grass too.. I just think cattle do better on sod with shelter instead of the slop.. Yet my uncle calves his 350 head of cows on corn stalks and only feeds hay when it storms and supplements with tubs.. And gets by alright.. He has NR's way of thinking cattle were cattle 1,000s of years ago and calved by themselves.. and they can now.. And he is right and does a hell of a job with it as he weans just as big of calves as I do.. With less work.. Not dont get me wrong he isnt afraid of work in anway.. He's 57 and can out work me anyday of the week.. Just his way of d oings things..




Sorry I got off topic.. I just wanted to give some input on how cows are winter in south central nebraska.
 
Don't you see a lot of waste from the bale feeding. When the wind blows terrible here we will just sit bales out instead of watching it blow away out of the bale processor. We thought we had more wasted due to the fact they stand on it eat and remove waste and then who wants to eat what another cow has used as a dump site? :?
 
No more waste than from bale rings and bale processors-tried them both at various times-bale processors won't make poor feed better but they sure do a good job of making good feed poor-most efficient machine i've ever seen at sending the best part of feed airborne. One thing you get to know your fuel dealer on a first name basis-I never was one to spend $5 to save $4.
 

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