Anyone feeding hay already?
 

Since we have had no rains in weeks and weeks my pasture is eaten down to the roots (or so the heifers tell me). I have been moving them into the VERY small pasture in the front of the house but I really don't want to have that grazed down. I need to rest it for spring.

Anyway the heifers have been complaining LOUDLY that they are hungry so I had the neighbor bring over a roll of hay last night. Talk about happy happy heifers!

I hate to start feeding this early but I sure don't miss rotating them from one place to another.

Anyone else feeding hay yet?

Neighbor said that they are fat as butter (as he put it) and they sure aren't starving no matter what they moo at me.

Things are good my way. The warm fall temps is letting the grass keep on growing. We could stand a bit of rain though. Not feeding any hay yet here. (Still cutting and baling in fact.)

yup. Just starting to really feed hay now. The grass is almost all gone. Next year I will be adding more fencing to increase our pastures. Since we just moved here in May, I had to make due with what was existing this year, but we'll have much more time next spring for fence building.

We have been feeding hay sinse July.

Is it that dry in MI?

I've been feeding for a month, but they are just now getting the idea that there isn't much out there besides the hay. They try to graze, but they are spending more and more time at the hay feeder.

Ugh, yes, we just started this week and probably won't get much regrowth this late in the year. We need to do some more cross fencing and rotate through our grass better next year.

Well it has only been a day and my two are not trying to even graze what little is left of the pasture. They are either eating the roll of hay or just lieing around. At least they are not complaining anymore. I have bales of hay some alfafa and some mixed grass. They WILL NOT eat the bales of mixed grass and I have no idea why. I guess they would eat it if they were hungry enough but they have done everything they can to avoid it. I want to save the alfafa bales and not feed them unless I really have to. Both heifers are bred for next spring.

I am not feeding hay but it is taking every trick I know to keep from it.

If the fellow that brought the hay to you said the cows were butterball fat they probably arent' hungry enough yet. Once they get hungry for some roughage in their diet, they'll happily eat it or starve.

As long as they can sucker you into feeding them a fresh roll everytime they bawl they're gonna keep doing it! lol.......

I've been feeding a bit in the morning for 2 weeks now or so. We've had a couple hard "ice on the buckets" frosts, so the grass is pretty much done. They're starting in on the leaves and swampgrass now, just for munching's sake. Only the oaks are holding on to their leaves at this point. I guess summer's over....

We have fed some hay, but we did some new fencing and are hoping to make it until Nov before we need to feed more!

I thought I would run out a couple weeks ago but some nice weather and a bit of rain got the main pasture growing a bit. The ewes and lambs were moved to a 7 acre stockpiled pasture with beautiful 12' clover and orchard grass mix and they are mowing through that like crazy. I thought it would last until the end of the month, when the lambs will be shipped, but I don't think so now. I gotta admit, though, I'm a bit pooped moving electronet around. The sheep require daily moves, and the ground has been hard and my hands ache. Seems all I do is stare at grass.

Sorry to ramble,

Wendy

Like agmantoo we are using every trick we can think of. The farmer that has been leasing my dad's place just picked his corn. We are putting some temporary fence around that and are going to put the cows in there this weekend. If it lasts long enough it will make up for our shortage of hay due to drought this year.

Mike

I can easily make it to November with my pastures. Maybe can go longer if the hard frosts stay away. Getting some rain would certainly help right now. The fence posts are getting a bit hard to poke in the ground for the cows daily fence move. We'll be feeding hay solid for a while and then we will be able to supplement with winter grazing. We have 30 acres of winter wheat and brassicas. I'm thinking I may run the cows through our Bermuda one last time and then try over seeding with turnips. See how that goes.

We are grazing some fall hayfields. If my choice were between grazing a stressed pasture, or feeding hay, I'd feed the hay. You have said that you were planning to rest that pasture, placing it under grazing stress in already poor condition will only make it weaker in my opinion. I would place the cows in a lot and feed hay, taking them off the pasture entirely, or else they will graze over the regrowth preventing the pasture from recovering.

Drought stress, cold, soggy ground... the pasture will recover better once conditions improve if you feed hay and keep the animals off of it during those times.

Yes - we haven't had much rain.

Goodness, no. Our herd is the smallest in years and we've got more grass than they can eat. They'll probably be eating standing grass until January, depending on how much it rains/snows. We will have to supplement with cubes as the grass goes dormant. But we should be able to save that high dollar hay for a while.

They do complain. And if we gave them hay, they'd stop grazing, lay around by the hay ring and wait for the next bale. You've got to be smarter than they are and know when to feed them.

Not yet but I'm watching the field and thinking not long now. We haven't gotten much rain~ and if we don't get some soon it's gonna start to look like we never left the desert out there!

I've been feeding hay since August. We had lots of dry weather, but mainly I too many head on the pasture. I was "babysitting" 3 adults plus my 5 and the pasture couldn't keep up. I sold 2 a couple weeks ago but the babysittling cows are still here....shold be gone in a week or 2. Luckily the owner brought me 16 round bales for free (it's actually pretty good hay!) for my trouble so I should be pretty set for winter since I'll only have 4 cows total. In central OH here.

We had no rain all of July and August. Our hay production is down by half.

Sorry to hear that 7thswan. So dry here also. I fenced off a part of the pasture this weekend with temporary electric rope fence to keep the heifers off the other part and give it a rest. I made a so called dry lot around the tarp shelter the hay is in and they also have access to a big stall that has their water tank and feed trough in it. That way the rest of the pasture will be rested all winter.