With kidding season only six weeks away, it is time to stock up on straw! We took a new approach this year and ordered a semi load of large square bales so all the girls can have a nice, deep bed and we don’t have to worry about making a trip to buy more.
Clayton manned the tractor for almost four hours in the cold unloading 54 bales from the semi and stacking them in the yard before moving them into the arena for storage.
I’ve been reading about “bale grazing” as a method of feeding hay to cattle in the winter and have wanted to try it. In bale grazing, you unroll your hay onto the ground rather than feeding it out of a hay feeder. This spreads the manure around the field rather than concentrating it around the bale feeder, adds carbon from the waste hay and helps seed the pasture. People claim there is also very little wasted hay feeding this way.
Sometimes fate has a way of pushing you down the path. The cattle were out of hay this morning and needed a new bale but the tractor refused to start in the sub-zero weather so it seemed like the perfect time to try out bale grazing since there was no way to get the bale up into the feeder without the tractor.
The boys were away at town so Kati and I used the pickup and a tow strap to haul a bale out into the pasture and then pushed it down the hill to unroll it in true “get it done” farmher style. 🙂 The cows seemed to approve of the results. I’ll watch to see how much waste we have and how long the hay lasts as compared to using the hay feeder.
And for a little sub-zero fun, Kati practiced driving the pickup truck down to the hay shed and then bale-surfed all the way out to the pasture.
