Taking inventory of our hay

It is time to take inventory on our hay, both the square bales stored in the hayloft in the barn and the round bales under the tarpaulin by the gate.  This year we purchased 100 square bales and 8 round bales for our four cows.  Most importantly, I want to ensure that we have enough hay to last for the remainder of the winter.  I also want to have a gauge to use for purchasing hay next year.

I checked online and found that for our area, the last frost date is somewhere between Feb 21 and Feb 29th, so that sort of gives me a remaining time frame that I'm looking to use good quantities of hay before the Spring grass comes in.  It has been a mild winter so far.  I can only recall two days in which I've seen ice in the water troughs.  I'll keep that in mind when estimating hay usage in future years and ensure I have some "wiggle room" for normal or colder winters.  A cow, especially a cow in milk, needs to eat more hay or roughage to give her calories for producing heat.  If you don't have adequate feed/hay, the cow robs from her stores of body fat to create energy for warmth.  You don't want that!

Let's walk out to the barn and take inventory.  As I walk out there, I see three laying hens, scratching around in the barn for bits of grain or bugs.  This picture shows the diversity of laying breeds we have.  From left to right, we have the creamy white colored chicken that is an Aracauna.  She lays blue and green eggs.  To the right of her is a Rhode Island Red.  She is a prolific layer of brown eggs. To the right of her and in the foreground is a Barred Rock hen and she lays brown eggs and is a good dual purpose bird, providing both eggs and meat.  You can also see the ladder that leads us up into the loft.


cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck...

This loft used to be filled with 100 bales of hay.   You might recall from this earlier blog post when we put it up here:  The Hay is in the Barn  You can see the hole in the floor.  That is where the ladder leads up to the loft we're standing in.  

Hay Remaining in the loft

The hay is stacked three rows across and four rows high, giving you 12 bales per section.  As I look down the loft at the remaining hay and count, I can tell that we have 51 square bales left.  This is some high quality Bermuda hay that a gentleman down the road grows.  Most people buy it from him for their horses.  It must be some good stuff, because in the barn at the livestock show in Lake Charles, animals were foregoing the hay in their hay socks and were trying to eat our girls' hay.


This is some fancy 'ciphering'.

The two round bales we have left out will last about a week per bale once I roll them out and put a hay ring around it before Daisy and Rosie completely devour the round bale and I have to go out and remove the plastic twine.  Cows have been known to eat it or get it wrapped around their legs and sometimes it can can cause death.  So we have about a 14 day supply of hay from the two round bales.


Two round bales left (covered with a tarpaulin to keep out of the weather)

As a rule of thumb, I've read that a lactating cow will eat somewhere between 2 and 2.5 pounds of hay per every 100 pounds of body weight.  It is important to note that this is just for maintenance - not growth, so you'd look at this as the minimum.  Our cows weigh approximately 800 pounds, so that is about 16 - 20 pounds of hay per cow.  As far as the square bales, with 51 left we have roughly a 34 day day supply of hay.  We'll make it with no problem until the lush Spring grass comes in.  While we're at it, we might as well feed Stryker and Magnolia Mae some hay. 

Eat it up!