In springtime, the grass will slowly grow, filling the pastures so that happy cows, goats, and chickens can roam about and pluck the tender green growth, converting that grass to milk and meat. During times of plenty, we've learned to look toward lean times and prepare. I'm talking about hay. While grass is abundant in the spring and summer, it's not that way at all in winter. Oh there are winter grasses that grow, but as fast as they come up, they are nibbled down.
In the hot days of summer, we do several things to prepare. First, we fill our barn's loft with square bales of good bermuda hay. We purchase that from a neighbor down the road. Each day we throw some of that into a wagon and the animals eat it up. I pick up what they miss and fill the nesting boxes in the hen house with hay. We also line up round bales that we purchase from another farmer. Over the winter, he'll deliver a couple of loads of round bales. He delivered 10 round bales and our inventory is down to three bales now after we rolled this one out.
It's funny, the cows have a trained ear. As soon as I unchain the gate from the post, they hear the chain hitting the gate and they come running! They circle the bale and eat to their heart's content. On sunny days, they'll be out in the pasture sitting down or trying to find a sprig of grass that the goats haven't found yet.
On colder days when it is drizzling and the wind is blowing, they'll be huddled around the round bale eating hay and then chewing cud later. We watch them closely. Although they haven't been palpated, we are thinking that they are all bred and want to ensure that they have proper nutrition for themselves and the calves that are developing within them.
It is crucial to put stuff up for a rainy day. It's almost as if the cows in the photo above (Elsie, LuLu, and Rosie), are thanking us for stockpiling provisions for them to eat in the winter when there's not much grass to speak of .
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