11/23/14, 07:16 PM
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Join Date: Mar 2013
Location: NW Pennsylvania zone 5
Posts: 640
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I figure 7 4x5 (or larger) bales per head (brood cows/bull, feeders and calves combined) per winter plus whatever winter grazing can be attained. Here I figure "winter" to be Mid October through the end of Aprilish. That's right around half the year. Hay consumption on both ends of those dates are typically on the lighter side as grazing is being done to some degree. I usually have a fair amount of hay left over. With last years cold temps I only had about ten bales left over.
This winter I'm grazing an additional 12 acres that is mostly summer pasture, but has about two acres of sweet corn stalks. I'm waiting until after deer season is over to allow them on this area in order to keep it attractive to bambi.
When I feed bales throughout the winter, I keep moving the bale feeder to distribute the manure, waste mulch hay and hay seed throughout the pasture. When the weather gets nasty, I'll drop a bale into their 12x20' mobile shelter. On the bottom of this will be the only manure that I collect and compost throughout the year....the rest is spread by the cows themselves.
By the time the ground is thawing well in the spring, I pull them back to my core winter paddock which is gravelly and well drained. Later in the spring as things dry out I rotate the cows out of this area and move the pigs in to clean up the hay ring piles and turn over the hay/manure in the cows winter shelter.
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'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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