Another Delivery of Hay

The hard freeze last put an end to any remnants of green grass left in the pasture.  What's left is brown.  There are a few small patches of clover, but the chickens, goats and cows clip it down just as fast as it grows.  From now until Spring, the animals will depend upon food that we give them in the form of hen scratch and laying pellets for the chickens and dairy ration for the cows in milk.  Everyone else will make it on hay.

We keep a round bale in the pasture always so they can eat it as they are hungry.  In late December, we'll start supplementing their feed with square bales of choice bermuda hay, but we really ration that to get us through the winter.  Sometimes, they'll spend all day around the round hay bale eating and eating.  Right now it takes them about 6 days to devour a round bale.  I have to keep my eyes on them and our hay inventory so I never run out.  The person that I purchase hay from works offshore and is gone for 14 days at a time.  I always call him when I have 3 bales left to deliver some as soon as he comes back to the beach.

He has a trailer that can hold 8 large round bales and he'll bring them to the house and unload the trailer with his tractor with hayforks.  He stacks them on our property boundary line and I promptly cover the hay with a big tarp (actually a billboard).  That keeps the hay from getting rained on.  I do have to weigh the tarp down with cinder blocks and blocks of wood to keep the wind from blowing it off during rain storms.  Another bad thing about rainstorms is that if the ground is wet, fire ants will build their nests in the hay, and when you try to roll the bale out in the pasture, they will bite you.  Not fun!

There is a chain around the exterior gate that I open to roll the bales in the pasture.  The cows can hear that chain tinkling when I open the gate.  They equate that sound with FOOD!  They can be far out in the pasture, but when they hear that noise, they all come running.  And those darned goats!  What is it about hay bales that make them want to get on top of the bales?  I guess I can't complain.  I remember as a kid out at the farm, I liked to climb on top of the bales and jump from bale to bale.  The neighbor kids come and do the same on our bales here at the house.  King of the Mountain!

I wish we didn't have to rely on just hay, but the hay gets them through our winters just fine.  We've tried year after year to grow rye grass on our property to help feed them some grass during the winter, but we've never had any luck.  I am planning on putting down 3 tons of lime on the pasture in a couple of weeks and maybe that will be the trick that unlocks nutrients so that we can grow rye grass next year.  For now, though, hay is the main entree until the spring time grasses begin popping up.