The Last Hurrah

The cows have picked through the remaining grass in the pasture.  What remains is the long, mostly innutritious grass with seed heads.  I contacted the gentleman that sells us round bales of hay each year and asked him to reserve about 24 round bales for us.  He'll deliver 6 bales at a time and we roll out one bale at a time into the pasture and put a hay ring around it and the cows eat it at will.  It normally takes them about a week to polish off a bale.

Our hay man will deliver the first delivery on the weekend following Thanksgiving. We normally try to start feeding hay beginning on December 1, but this year is a little different.  We've already had a light freeze last week and expect a heavier freeze on Tuesday.  This will knock out the remaining grass and we'll supplement with the square bales that we have up in the hayloft until the round bales arrive.

Not appetizing to the cows

We do have a little spot where the grass is still green.  We call it the 'sacrifice pasture' and it is right south of the barn.  I ran a 'jump wire' from the perimeter fence to electrify a temporary electric fence around the sacrifice pasture and moved Daisy, Rosie, and Amy into the area.  They ran into it and stayed, heads down eating, all Saturday.  In the late afternoon, all 3 of them were sitting down, full, chewing their cud. They were very happy and had all eaten their fill.  Later that afternoon, I opened the gate and they lazily walked to the barn.

The Sacrifice Pasture

There is still some good grass remaining in there and I'll move them in there the next time I'm home in daylight hours to watch them.  A couple more times into the sacrifice pasture and they will have it all grazed down.

Rosie, Daisy and Amy eating the last of the green grass

They'll have to be content with hay from now until Spring.  Usually we'll have some clover that will pop up out of the barren, brown, dormant grass and we'll let them enjoy that, but that's not until after the first of the year.  I have hundreds and hundreds of turnips planted that we'll supplement their winter diets with.  They love turnips.

Last night after milking, Daisy ambled up to the gate to get back into the sacrifice pasture.  We laughed and pulled her away from the gate and out of the barnyard and locked the corral behind us. Since the sacrifice pasture only has electric fence, we have to remain outside keeping watch over them as we can't have them escaping. There is a busy road not far away and the old adage about "the grass always being greener on the other side" is always true in a cows' mind.