Feeding Plan for the Winter

With the bull back at his home, our hay inventory might last a bit longer.  That dude was big and could put down some hay.  Our three cows and herd of goats could go through a round bale in about a week.  With Nick, the bull, added to the animal family, the bale was gone in about 4 days!  In the past month, we've had some light frosts that effectively ended any new growth of grass in the pasture.  The cows and goats have methodically gone over the pasture, cleaning up little tufts of grass still remaining along the fence lines.  There's really not much left.

We rolled out the last of our round bales that were left over from last year and the cows knocked that out in no time.  I called for some more bales and the Monday after Thanksgiving, the gentleman who sells us hay showed up at the house with 10 round bales on the back of his trailer for $40 per bale, delivered.  I think that is very reasonable.  It is clean hay, stored in a barn.  We rolled it off of his trailer and then I covered it up with a tarp to keep it out of the rain.  The cows saw this process unfolding and ran, bellowing, to the gate.

The best I can figure, we have about 10 weeks of hay inventory on hand before we re-order.  Warm weather extends things a bit.  Cows can handle the cold and they can handle rain, but both cold and rain together is not a good combination.  They need the calories to keep them warm.  We've had weather approaching the 80's for the past couple of days.  The cows aren't even around the hay much.  They are sitting out in the pasture chewing their cud.

We do have the 75 bales of good Jiggs bermuda square bales up in the loft.  We haven't even touched that yet.  We generally ration that and feed a half a bale a day of this in addition to the round bale as it gets colder.  We also feed them some sweet feed and salt.

For the goats (and cows to a smaller extent), I jumped over the south fence two days ago with a machete and went to work on the privet and other weeds, tossing it over the fence for them to eat.  They absolutely love eating on this browse and the chickens gather around as bugs and worms are always on the stuff I throw over.  I'll do that from time to time throughout the winter and it serves a double purpose.  It gives them something to eat AND it cleans up a buffer zone between our property and the woods.  I'm guessing that may discourage some varmints from visiting as they have to pass through a cleaned out area to get to our pasture and that exposes them to hawks and other predators.

We keep a close eye on the animals' conditioning during the winter months.  Sometimes I'll get the lead rope and get them out of the pasture to eat on winter grasses in the surrounding ditches and fence rows.  Which reminds me, I need to quickly plant a big plot of turnips.  The cows LOVE to eat big, fat turnips and turnip greens in February and March.