How common is this?

[cakadu]

Sorry grassfarmer, perhaps I should have qualified the statement with something like with the exception of sustainable grazing management practices, most see themselves having to feed for 200 days a year. I agree that more producers are making the shift to stockpiling forages and moving the cattle around the feedsource versus moving the feed to the cattle, thereby reducing the number of days that the livestock have to be fed. For right now, sustainable grazing and/or swath grazing is the exception and not the rule.

Even though we deal with a much smaller carcass, we give samples of the product to people to try and most will then order either a half or a whole lamb. Of course, we have to deal with the stigma of the "grandpa in the war eating mutton" but once they have a taste of what lamb should be, they are generally quite impressed by it. At this same trade show, I couldn't believe the number of people that were coming by saying that they loved lamb and didn't realize you could buy it from the farm. Of course, the stuff that they generally have access to in the store is off-shore lamb, so there is no comparison in taste and quality.

[cakadu]

grassfarmer any cattle producer in the central to north part of the province has got to be prepared to feed for in excess of 150 days. In some years we have received over a foot of snow in mid October that didn't leave, so feed conservation measures such as swath grazing would have been out of the question.

I always figure I need so many bales per cow and if the winter is an easy one and they can pasture later and head back out to grass earlier its a bonus but certainly not something to count on every year.

[grassfarmer]

Why? cows can graze through in excess of a foot of now. In practice with swath grazing the early winter snows tend to fall straight and deep so if you have 12 inches of snow between the swaths you likely have 12 inches less the depth of the swath to graze through. I have a friend who tells me a foot of snow usually only leaves 4 inches on top of the swath. I've been assured that most years it is possible to graze into December in Central Alberta. Last year we had that mid October snow but it all went and we had less snow at Christmas than we had in October.