Hay Requirements for Bred Cows

[gcreekrch]

TNT, how heavy are your bales? And you cows?

At 10 bales per cow, 1400 lb bales, 35 lbs per day, we could feed a cow 400 days.

We normally rustle into late December and turn out sometime in the last 2 weeks of May and have feed left over @ 4 bales per cow

[T.N.T.]

Our bales weigh roughly 1500 pounds,and we feed 24 bales to the cow herd daily,our cows weigh in that 1350 pound range.Like i said i like to keep 10 bales going into winter because the following year could be a drought year,and the more bales in the yard the less we have to try and buy in a drought year.1987 we started feeding late october,and 1988 it decided it wasn't going to rain and we had the cows in the pasture in july and august and by the end of august we were feeding them again full time.By the time the spring of 1989 came around we had basically just fed for 500 days.Now if we only planned on having enough bales for the winter,that year could have had quite a devestating effect on our farm.

[kato]

You've got the same attitude about it as my Hubby does. Way back in the 80's drought years we had to scramble for feed we couldn't afford, and he said back then Never Again.

If you've got a stash of extra feed you can be more flexible with your marketing too. You can keep those calves longer if the market indicates, and maybe even buy some. You can also afford to give the pastures more time to grow in a cold spring. It leaves more options open when you have more than enough feed on hand.

It's a case of where your comfort level is.

[gcreekrch]

Agree with those sentiments, we like to have some hay left over also. What we call a drought year only allows us to cover more ground here in the swamps and the cows can access areas they don't normally use. More fuel and time but we can usually put up enough feed.
A benefit of a dry year for us is this swamp grass gets harder and our calves will weigh heavier than usual.

[ASRG]

Always good to have hay left over.
In 2009 there was little hay and very pricey to buy (like $160 a bale).
I baled up a lot of two row barley straw from my rented land, bought a bin of barley.
Roll out the straw, fill up the bucket on the tractor with a small electric auger and dump it on the straw whole.
Cows did exceptionally well and it worked out to right around $1/day/cow.
If I remember correctly the barley was $3.60/bu and I fed 10 lbs. a day/cow or about 75 cents/day. I gave them all the straw they wanted, priced it at 1 cent a pound.
A neighbor hasn't fed any hay for years. He gets in canola screening pellets and feeds with straw. Says it's a lot cheaper than buying hay and paying for expensive hay hauling.

[grassfarmer]

ASRG, I think straw is the most under used feed
resource in our area. We feed some to every category
of stock during the winter feeding period - weaned
calves maybe only 3lbs up to mature cows about
10lbs along with their silage ration. In this area the
oat straw we can buy is often quite green and can test
up to 6% protein and 55 TDN. That's better than a lot
of hay that is weathered or cut late July/August.
There seems to be a mindset though that hay is what
cows eat and straw is what you bed them with.