After I was a child rising up in south Louisiana, we used to purchase our sq. hay from a retired gentleman who lived a number of miles down the highway. Mr. Ralph, as we referred to as him, had a large herd of cows and all the time appeared to have a barn filled with hay on the market. Anytime Daddy despatched me there for hay, Mr. Ralph’s parting phrases in his deep voice was all the time “be certain and shut the gate, son”. Phrases each farm child has grown up listening to. “Shut the gate”, “shut the gate”, “did you verify the gate?” The rule I try to educate our 4-H judging youngsters throughout exercises is the outdated customary, “the final one by way of, shuts the gate.”
So why is it when grass will get brief, whether or not its throughout dry spells or drought or in early spring when the grass is simply greening up, that we “farm youngsters” have the tendency to open all of the gates? I do know it’s human nature to try to let the cows scratch for something they’ll discover, however that technique is brief time period at finest. What often occurs is we hammer our forage base into the bottom which not solely will increase restoration time but in addition opens the cover for weeds down the highway. One other potential drawback in drought years is cattle which might be allowed to wander and scrounge for forage could get tempted to eat noxious weeds they often keep away from similar to perilla mint.
Shutting the cattle into both a sacrifice space or, higher but, the worst paddock or pasture on the place is a significantly better technique. Feeding hay in a extra restricted space won’t solely permit the rest of the farm to relaxation and recuperate when rainfall happens however could give you a chance to “fertilize” a poorer paddock or pasture by way of hay feeding. Keep in mind, 80% of what a cow eats comes out the opposite finish, so hay feeding/bale grazing throughout a poor pasture throughout drought circumstances could possibly be a win/win when it comes to nutrient recycling for a later renovation of the poor pasture and avoiding grazing injury in your good pastures.
This drought could current one other alternative to attempt a hay feeding technique we demonstrated on the Circle F Farm in Gracey, KY approach again in 2006-07. We referred to as this technique “strategic winter grazing” for lack of a greater identify. It may merely be referred to as “feed your hay first” as a result of that’s the foundation of the technique. Our demonstration consisted of 41 spring calving cows and 71 acres of obtainable pasture. A easy abstract of this demonstration follows:
- Weaned the calves in mid-September, cow grazed stalks for 17 days then fed hay in a drylot for 70 days. Cows gained 135 lbs through the dry lot interval and averaged 1345 lbs on December 15.
- Cows grazed stockpiled fescue pastures from December 16 to March 31 (106 days) and commenced grazing new spring grazing on April 1. No different dietary supplements or hay was fed throughout this time.
- Cows calved out on stockpiled pasture and never round muddy hay rings.
- Physique situation scores ranged from 5.2 (Dec 15) to five.5 (March 5).
- Hay examined 10% protein and 51% TDN.
- Stockpile pasture averaged 14.6% protein and 62% TDN.
- 97% of cows calved earlier than March 15, 2007.
- 94% of cows calved earlier than March 1, 2008.
What’s attention-grabbing, is that this demonstration was performed the winter previous to the Easter freeze and the following summer season drought of 2007. Hay was very scarce that summer season however thankfully Circle F Farms used solely half of the quantity of hay that they usually feed in a winter and was in a position to climate the summer season drought extra simply. I understand this technique might not be for everybody and yearly is clearly totally different when it comes to climate and rainfall, nevertheless, it could be a technique that’s price contemplating in whole or partially to strategically feed decrease upkeep dry cows together with resting our pastures for fall progress and subsequent winter grazing.
Final week I spent a substantial period of time on the highway in western KY and I noticed fairly a little bit of hay feeding happening. Typically nevertheless it seemed very like early spring when it comes to hay being fed subsequent to the woods and cattle roaming in giant fields. With a few of our space beginning to obtain vital rainfall this week, we actually have to get the early spring mindset of permitting our fields to recuperate earlier than initiating grazing once more. This could possibly be merely performed with momentary electrical fencing or we may simply hearken to the Mr. Ralphs of our previous and “be certain and shut the gate, son”.
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