Root Crops before the Spring Grass comes in

I was reading an article about early farming practices and they were talking about how many small family farmers in the Middle Ages had to dry off their milk cows and essentially butcher most of their non-breeding stock in order to make it through the winter without grass to sustain their animals.

A man named Lord Charles "Turnip" Townsend (nice nickname!) around the year 1730 instituted a crop rotation system that included wheat in year 1, turnips in year 2, barley in year 3, and clover in year 4.  This crop rotation helped improve the condition of the soil as the different crops have different nutritional needs.  It also helped the animals and farmers.  Around the Middle ages, farmers found that using beets and turnips as feed for cattle and this enabled them to better carry their livestock over the winter when forage was slim to none.

I wanted to mimic this practice and began rotating root crops like turnips and mammoth mangel beets that we use as a livestock feed to supplement the hay that we keep over the winter to feed the animals.  This is a welcome treat for the cows, goat, and chickens as the Spring grass hasn't come in yet.  We have patches of clover that we rotate the animals into with temporary fencing, but they gobble it up quickly and bellow for more!

As you can witness, the leaves of the turnips are large and succulent, a real treat for the cows, goat, and chickens. Then there is the large roots that the animals love to eat.  They all line up at the fence like you would at a buffet line and feast on both leaves and roots as I toss them over.

Here is what's left of the turnip crop.  This was entirely full of turnips a couple of weeks ago and now I have approximately 15% left to pull and feed and the turnips remaining should buy me a few more days until the grass comes in.  I give the cows about a 1 foot deep swath of turnips every afternoon and they look forward to seeing me eating turnips everyday when I get home from work.

I'll pull handfuls of turnips up and shake the topsoil off of them back into the turnip patch.  Most of the time I'll cut the long, skinny tap root off.  I find that growing root crops loosens the soil, alleviating compaction and prepares the soil for planting the Spring crops.  I'm thinking that I'll plant tomatoes here this year as I haven't planted tomatoes in this patch in four or so years.

I'm not sure that I need to do this, but I do it to 'baby' the cows.  I take a garden knife and cut the turnips up into disks.  Those greedy cows might try to eat too fast and choke on a big, fat turnip. While I'm cutting them up, the cows begin to beg, pacing back and forth.  It's pitiful, really.

And finally it is chow time.  I hand over turnip disks and spoon-feed them.  First to be fed is Daisy as she's the matriarch of the pasture.

Then it's Rosie's turn.  There's lots of crunching, chewing, swallowing, and then begging for more. That process continues and is punctuated by frequent cow belches.  I'm serious.  Their belches stink. I'll continue doing so until I am tired of cutting up turnips or standing in the cow belch vapors.

They enjoy the turnips while they last and by then the grass will be coming in.  If not, I have a half of a row of Mammoth mangel beets that I'll cut up for them.  They like them a little bit more because they are much sweeter than the turnips.  Either way, cows love to eat root crops!