The cattle look good?

[cowman]

Being retired and sort of lazy I don't get out too much to look at the cows, but spent about an hour yesterday walking through them. The boy has done a good job with them and they are looking pretty good. He never fed anything until Nov. 15 and he had some fairly ugly hay that he fed first. He bought some decent fescue bales from a neighbor for $20/bale(1400 lb.)and some better stuff for $25/same size. He hauled it himself so little expense there. He'd baled up a lot of good two row barley straw(with Redekop chaff saver on top of swath) right behind the combine. He is feeding 20 lbs. hay/day and close to that in straw. He thinks he'll get them fed for around $60/cow actual outlay! I gave him the poor hay I had and the straw was basically free so all he had to buy was the hay from the neighbor. Will finish feeding early May as he stockpiled 60 acres of native grass.
We still have about 60 calves on feed. hay and some light barley we bought from the neighbor for $1.50/bu. Don't even bother to roll it and they look pretty good. Will probably take them to grass for a few months as he has another 320 acres that he has to do something with. He has been shopping around for good young red cows but is awful picky!

[grassfarmer]

Cowman, pleased to see your son is making the cow business look easy - I wish a lot of other producers would look at their biggest cost of production - winter feeding. At the same time I think your figures are looking a little too rosy. If your cows are calving before May 1st they will surely be losing condition at this moment on a ration of 50% straw and a mix of good/fescue hay? Don't get me wrong I like straw and use it too but it has it's limitations. I am feeding really good oat straw that is 57 TDN and 6% protein but at less than 50% of ration along with good quality alfalfa/brome hay to the fitter end of my Mid April-May calving herd. Then we get into the "added" costs, as you always point out, there is yardage, diesel, salt, bedding, return on labour and investment capital. Even if you got the straw for free your son could have been custom baling at $7 a time instead so your bales cost you at least $7 plus haulage. I'd love the phone # of the guy that uses a chaff saver on his combine and then gives his straw away. Damn sure he isn't Scottish ;o)
I've actually been disappointed this winter at how much it is costing to feed cows in a year of "cheap" feed. We started feeding the higher maintanence 1/3 (old cows and last year's heifers) November 20th and the fitter 2/3 on December 20th and will need to feed into mid May. Even using good $60 ton hay and $25 ton straw (delivered prices) it will cost me $150 a cow to feed them (averages out at $1 a day counting salt and mineral). The higher maintanence third are costing me too much being on hay all winter but part of that is the situation with cull cow values. My conclusion is that next winter I may try and feed 2/3 of the cows on oat swaths for 4 months - hopefully we could get these cow days down to 50 cents a day.

[grassfarmer]

don't forget the 'added cost' of power, stock waterers etc. unless you chop a hole in the river cowman !!!!!@@@@@LOL !!

[15444]

An article in one of the December or January copies of the Western Producer talked about replacing water with snow in the winter for cows. Thinking that maybe this will be next years attempt.

The entire cowherd at our place has to walk almost 1/2 a mile to get to the stockwaterers in the yard. I have never seen the two old biddies I picked up last fall ever 'voluntarily' come up to drink. Their last place of residence made sure that they never had to walk more then 30 ft from water to feed, and they are bound and determined not to change at their age!

I generally assume that they must be eating snow out in the pasture, and I caught them doing just that earlier on today. Not the first time I have seen cows eat snow for sure, but I never thought cows could go the entire winter on snow and stay in such good shape. The article in the WP even mentioned that a cow's condition doesn't suffer from eating snow. The reasoning behind this lack of loss in condition is that even with eating snow, the cows are actually gaining net weight due to the fact they don't have to spend energy walking to the waterers...which makes sense.

[cowman]

Don't have an electric waterer. Cows drink out of flowing springs, corrals have an insulated tank with wood heater. Tank is filled from a hydrant. No yard lights. The straw was off our land that I rent to my cousin who has the chaff saver on his combine.
I really like the idea of swath grazing. There is a guy west of Red Deer who has had a good herd of black cows out grazing all winter and looks like they'll be out for awhile yet! Also some cows still grazing corn north of Innisfail.
The boy moved calving dates back to April from January as he isn't all that keen on "living with them".
We always try to do things as cheap as possible and are never extravagant! Feed with a good reliable front wheel assist Kubota(less fuel)and just roll the bales out with the front end loader. Would like to buy a bale processer but haven't been able to justify the price yet.

[cowman]

I have a yard light in the corral and flood lights that I can turn on when I check cows during calving. Always like to know where the mean ones are !!!
Waterers are costly and even though I do have an overflow spring where they could water, it is too close to the creek and I don't want them congregating in that area. Too much opportunity for manure run off, and I don't want to have to build a berm because in the long run it would likely cost more than the electricity for the waterers.

[cswilson]

Our cows winter on snow and have for 15 years or so-the only time my cows come to yard is to pregtest or sort calves off. They are restless the first couple days you switch from water but after that are ok. It has really helped cut costs as we feed out in the pastures instead of in pens-in fact we buy all our feed and most time we buy it delivered to the cows mouth.

[grassfarmer]

Most of my cows were on snow for water from grazing swathed grass in November-December right through to last week on hay/straw. They were very happy on it and kept good condition but the reason I brought them home was minerals. The hay/straw analysis indicated that they were OK for the major minerals but would benefit from a trace mineral/salt block. The cows wouldn't touch them so I was getting a bit concerned about possible weak calves at calving time and brought them back onto a waterer. They are now wolfing straight minerals but still hardly touching salt. Anyone else had that problem?
I don't like leaner cows on snow though as they seem to lose condition - or fail to gain as they should on the feed they are getting.
I'm thinking of going with a frost free nose-pump system on one quarter with no water and no power anywhere near and using it solely for wintering cows on (swaths and/or feeding.)

[grassfarmer]

my well water is high in sodium which of course ties up many of the essential minerals, so I feed a chelated mineral and mix it 50/50 with loose salt. Have no problem with the cows not eating it, although for some reason this year the bred heifers aren't eating as much mineral as normal.
I never have a problem with weak calves or retained placentas. I know that the cows don't come into the waterers when it is storming or very cold,so they must be eating snow .
They have about a 1/4 mile walk in to the waterers from the 20 acre field where I feed them all winter. I like to let them spread the manure around vs having a large seasonal feeding site where they bed down all the time, and the excercise walking to water is good for them.

[nerves]

We have also thought about trying nose pumps also. I believe they have a place to. We put some thought into this how to get water into remote places were there was no power. We came up with an idea 8 years ago and has worked extremly well. We built an insulated shack big enough to hold a 1200 gallon poly tank lifted off the ground level 2 and a half feet. We made one side that will swing open incase we have to repair the tank or put in a bigger tank. Then a 700 gallon watering trough was placed half in the shed and half outside we place a doubled up piece of strofoam sm to divide the tank and seal the outside from the inside. We put a piece of puck board on the styrofoam sm to keep ice from sticking to it and tearing off pieces of styrofoam. We also put styrofoam sm around the outside of the 700 gallon tank and covered that with puckboard and put a truckers tie down strap around the whole thing and cinched it all up tight.(made a big difference takes about minus 20 for ice to even show up on top). We cut hole in the big 1200 gallon tank and ran a inch and a half line down about a foot and a half into the 700 gallon tank beneath it. We then hooked up a gallager float valve to regulate the water level. The shack is on skids so we just slide it up beside the well casing. We have a generator inside the shack with an automatic shut off float valve inside the big tank. We found a submersible pump that will pump 25 gallons a minute. The temperature inside the shack is always warm so the generator always starts. We have had this system for 8 years and have watered 200 head on it and have no problems in any temperature so far. We looking at building another one to hook up with our solar pump to work in the winter. This is just another system that has reduced energy costs we burn about 5 gallons of gas in 2 weeks. Would also like to hear of any other ideas out there to help reduce costs.

[grassfarmer]

Interesting idea there. I'm not much of an inventor or technical person but i'm really impressed by these frost free nosepumps and the inventor/ seller of them lives close by so that's a bonus. I'm just blown away with the idea of a system that the cows provide the power to pump the water and it never freezes even in -40C. There are some great inventors on the prairies.

[nerves]

Grassfarmer I believe the fellows name is Anderson right? I looked at these pumps and thought they looked like a great idea. The reason we didn"t buy a bunch of them was that we don't wean untill late December or January so the calves are with the cows, and when we were looking at them about 8 years ago and they weren't sure if the calves could push the paddle as well as the cows. I believe the fellows name was Jim. He said they were going to look into some kind of pendulium kind of setup. As well as getting them to pull water up from deep reserviors. The thing I wasn't sure of was that all the cows come to water at the same time and after a bit of pushing and shoving they seem to leave at the same time great if your the boss cows not great if you are a calf or young hiefer. That was our reasoning behind the high volume tank setup we can water about 10 cows at a time with very little pushing and shoving.

[grassfarmer]

Yep, Jim Anderson was the inventor - he has a website at www.frostfreenosepumps.com. They say that they are suitable for calves too - there is a second position to put the lever at the back of the trough that makes it easier to push but also delivers less water per stroke. I find with my cows that this gang mentality of watering stops when it's not hot weather and certainly stops altogether when the cows are weaned. Dry cows in winter have plenty of time to stand around anyway. Chances are there would be snow when I'm using the thing so nobody will go thirsty - it's just making it a dependable place to be able to winter cows rather than a place that is OK as long as there is snow cover and it's not too crusted. It's not a cheap solution but I think so many operations here run inefficiently due to lack of drinking water availability.

[grassfarmer]

grassfarmer, Hugh McLennan interviewed Jim and Jackie on his radio show on Saturday.