Grass Farmer

I've been told for a long time that if you're intending to raise cattle, or goats, or chickens, like we are, you'd better consider yourself a grass farmer first.  For grass is the one thing that you must grow in order to have healthy livestock roaming on your pasture.  While it might seem like an easy thing, sometimes it's not.  Our soil pH is low and this means that a lot of the fertility in the soil is locked up, unusable to the grass.  I really need to lime.

Sometimes you don't get the rainfall that you need.  Last year we got very little rainfall and the grass was virtually non-existent.  Sometimes you get too much.  The photo below shows a view of the pasture.  You can see the four boxes of bees and a dead willow tree that I need to fell before it falls over the fence.

You can also see the grass in various stages of growth.  The pasture is made up of a bermuda and bahai mix.  Much of the grass has matured and has seed heads on it.  The cows aren't fired up about eating that and it doesn't have the nutritional load that lush spring grass packs.  But they'll eventually eat it.

The grass, looking back the other direction, is thick.  It has grown up also because it's gotten real hot.  Instead of eating grass all day, the cows lay up in the shade all day and only go out to graze in the late afternoon/night.  As you walk through the tall grass, mosquitoes, horse flies and deer flies hover around giving us and the livestock fits.

There's more than bermuda and bahia grass out there and I've always got my head on a swivel.  I don't want invasive weed species to invade.  This afternoon I looked around and saw some of this coming up.  We always called it bitterweed.  Supposedly, if your cows get into this and eat it, it makes their milk taste bitter.  For that reason, I don't want tot let it get a foothold.

I promptly pull this up by the roots, making several passes to ensure I don't see any more.

I'm okay with different grasses and even weeds growing out in the pasture.  It lets the animals free-range and eat what they like, but I'll always be on the lookout for those species of weeds that I don't want on the homestead.

We All Need a Little Roughage In Our Diets

It is at this time of year that the quality of grass in the pasture falls way off.  What used to be lush and green is now tough and dull brown.  Most of the remaining grass has gone to seed.  Although they'll still meander out to the pasture and pick around and eat a little grass, the cows are not too excited about eating it.  The nutrition level of the grass has fallen off.  So where do the cows get their nutrition?

Well, we only feed the cows that we are milking.  The rest of the herd is on their own until they are making milk.  Furthermore as discussed in yesterday's post, we do supplement Rosie's diet with oranges - but not too many. Where else do they get the food they need to prosper and grow?  From hay, of course.  In the summer we showed in THIS POST how we purchase and pick up roughly 100 square bales of high-quality bermuda from a neighbor down the road.  We like to ration that and only begin feeding that in mid-December, depending on the weather.

However, we purchase round bales of hay from another neighbor, and he delivers them to our home. He can fit 8 bales on his trailer and he offloads them with a tractor with hayforks.  When it is muddy, I set them on pallets so they aren't sitting directly on the ground soaking up water.  It keeps the quality of the hay high, and I like to think the cows appreciate that attention to detail.

Round Bales

We rolled out a bale and put the hay ring around it to protect it (as much as possible) from the wastefulness of the animals.  Here you see in the Sunday morning sunlight filtering through the trees, most of the animal family.  From left to right, you can see Daisy, Luna, Clarabelle (well at least her tail), Rosie and finally Annie the Nubian goat.  Her kids are running around getting into mischief, you can be sure.

The cows love the hay.  They push the bale with their heads, loosening it and then they stand around the hay like office workers stand around the water cooler, gossiping and conversing with each other. Annie can wiggle her way inside the hay ring and she, very rudely, poops and pees on the hay.  I wish she wouldn't do that, but what can I say?  She's a goat.

Catching up on the latest gossip

Those cows will stay there all day eating hay.  You can tell be the angle of the sun that this photo was taken in the afternoon.  Now you can see the two of Annie's kids, Darlin' Darla and Jane have joined her inside the hay ring.

Bad kids

Not to be left out, we rolled a bale out to Chuck, the Jersey bull, and Buckwheat, Annie's buckling, who both reside in the 'bullpen.'  Chuck really enjoyed his hay, too.

We will keep free-choice round bales out in front of the cows from now until April. The gentleman who delivers the round bales to us works offshore and is out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico for 14 days straight.  Then he's in for 14 days.  I have to make sure that I take a good inventory of hay and let him know when I need more so that I don't run out while he is offshore.

It generally takes about a week for the cows to polish off a round bale.  Since Chuck and Buckwheat are by themselves in the bullpen, it will take them longer to reduce their bale down to nothing.  It is important to keep hay in close proximity to the animals for protein, nutrition, and fiber, especially during winter months when there's not much grass.