The longer days, warmer weather, and the sun in exchange for mud is a fair deal in my eyes. The next few weeks on the farm will be pretty busy as we try to get the new store finished so we can be open by April 1. April first is the start of lambing which leads in to all the other spring jobs so we hope to have most of the store done by then.
Here I am feeding the calves and bred heifers on a nice sunny morning. They eat one round bale of baleage a day. Every bale is fed in a different spot to keep things clean and spread the manure (fertilizer) all over the field. I carry bales on the front and back of the tractor and move the feeder with the front end loader.
During feeding is a good time to make friends. Here are two of the friendly heifers looking for some more scratches.
Here are the mature cows. I just dropped off two bales for them. They go through a bit over a bale a day. They are mostly fed dry hay which is less nutritious and cheaper than the baleage I feed the calves and heifers. They don’t need the higher quality feed and would probably get too fat on it.
Here are the finishers, which are the last stop of the morning. They get a bale of the best quality baleage which lasts them a few days. It takes about an hour and a half to feed the three groups if I don’t spend too much time scratching my favorite cows.
Thanks for reading,
Leith MacKenzie