Hay Requirements for Bred Cows

[sumdumguy]

Need info - to prepare for winter, what do
producers plan to store per cow? 30 lbs or 100
lbs.

[T.N.T.]

We normally try to have 10 6 by 5 rounds per cow,in case of a drought year we have enough feed then.Good quality feed we do 35lbs per day.

[ALLFARMER]

1200 pound cows...we use 5 or 6 per cow per
winter. Had an add in the paper to sell a few
bales had 10 phone calls at 45$/ea

[cottonpicken]

Sunday night and friday afternoons are mandatory
viewing for some.

[bucket]

I have some canola left. Had it targetted for 15 bucks, but the grainco changed the month they were pricing off, so it didn't trigger. The rep was some pissed off the company did that because when I put the target in and priced some other it was on May futures. Friday would have triggered it. And he would have had my canola.

Hoping it moves up to get it out of the way or is there some upside left in this market.

[haveapulse]

I think wheat will be the most interesting. Northern European winter crop damage is being quantified, and Canada has not forward supplied our crop to the world in our usual fashion!

Hope springs eternal, but we may get to see market action in wheat for the first time in our lives... one can only hope that the perfect storm is about the unfold!

[kato]

We allow eight round bales per cow, minimum. With grazing corn, we always have extra. It's good policy to have more than you think you need, because you never know what's going to happen.

There's nothing worse than being short of feed. Hubby couldn't sleep at night if he thought he wasn't going to have some spare.

[ASRG]

The 35 lbs/cow sounds about right although 25 hay and 10 lbs/straw is what we feed. Usually for about 150-160 days.
Hay at 3 cents a pound. Value straw at 1 1/2 cent a pound. 90 cents a day. Fuel/tractor would be extra.
I charge cows $1/day for grazing. Banked native grass (prairie wool).

[furrowtickler]

Also, more and more reports from Mid-West frost damage from 2-3 weeks ago. Damage showing up as far south as North Caroliana.

[smcgrath76]

Depends on the feed quality. A cow can
generally eat about 2.5 to 3% of her
Bodyweight in dry matter. If the feed
is poor she can eat less. Better hay
takes less, but she can actually consume
more.
We bale graze hay and straw, and
generally shoot for around 3 to 4 5x6
bales per cow (one of which is likely
straw). But we are generally bale
grazing a relatively short time period
(like 45 days or less).
We carry moisture insurance to use for
purchasing extra feed if we are short on
hay.
I would say to test your feed and adjust
accordingly. It costs a lot of $ to
move feed around, and even more if you
are overfeeding.

[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.