Calculating hay requirments

[ourflockof4]

We are in the process of planning our hay & pasture requirements for the next couple of years, and I would like a little input on whether or not my numbers sound close.

We plan on getting weaned calves at 400-500 lbs and raise then until butcher size, 1000-1200 lbs. They will be rotational grazed on about 4 ac of pasture. The pasture is an orchard grass/clover mix. I'm going to assume that it will produce 5 ton of hay/ac per year (the guy who baled it last year claimed 10 ton/ac last year. I think he was stretching but we will see soon when we take the first cutting this year) We are hoping to be mainly grass based and just graining the last couple of months. We have another 10ac field that we plan on putting some, or all of into hay this fall for all of our hay needs. Doing some yield calculations I think this field will yield 5 ton/ac also.

So here is where I want some help checking my numbers. If I figure on feeding 2.5% of body weight/day with a weight gain of 1.5 lbs a day I come up wth about 6 tons of hay to get from 400 to 1100 lbs using orchard grass. If I also add in 15-20% waste I'm at about 7 tons of hay per head. Does this number sound right or did I mess up somewhere? I realize that figuring the DM of hay may not be the right thing to do for pasture, but it's the easiest way I can think of to ball park my numbers.

So 14 ac x 5 ton/ac = 70 ton of hay which would cover 10 head in a perfect world. I would only start with 2, then add 2 more if things looked good. I would think 6 would be our max regardless of capacity though.

I am a little worried though that the orchard grass/clover may not have enough protein. I was debating on going with more of an alphalpha mix for my new hay field planting.

So am I all wet, or on the right track?

 

[goodhors]

Not sure where you are located, but it can make a difference in how many cuttings you get, how dense the hay is to cut. Plus you need to fertilize to best produce a quantity of quality. Haying removes minerals, so you need to fertilize to put minerals back into the ground. And depending on your ground, you may need to fertilize each year. I know some EXCELLENT hay producers that fertilize after EACH CUTTING, to keep the quality up to what their customers demand.

I am going to say that I think 4 acres grazing for ten cattle is not enough. Maybe if it were small calves all the time, it could work, but bigger steers eat more. You will also need to be trimming the grass to keep weeds down and growth of grass productive. I mow each time I take the animals off the field, move them to the next field. And these are just 3-4 horses on a couple acre paddocks.

And you will get no grazing in winter, just cattle making a mess of your field. Better to not let the cattle out in the field at all, to reduce your turf to muck and holes.

Cattle tend to waste a LOT of hay off big bales, hay spread out for them. You might want to raise your wastage figures.

You might do well to have your hay tested CORRECTLY, to see what you have in nutrients for the animals. These EXCELLENT hay sellers above, test EVERY field's hay, so buyers know EXACTLY what is in those bales. Some grass hay is great stuff, while others should be only sold as bedding. A mixed planting can give you quite different numbers for each cutting as the various plants contribute to the mix baled. Not a bad thing, but will skew the numbers you are calculating with.

Cutting and baling ON TIME is probably the most important part. Too late means you have lost food value. Yeah, cows eat it, will gain on it mostly, but you must feed a lot more to have the same gain of hay cut and baled right.

You can sell extra hay if you have any. Horse folks love buying 2nd or 3rd cutting in small bales if hay is soft and leafy. A bit more work, but you could make some cash return if you have plenty for your cattle.

 

[WildRoseBeef]

This does all depends on where you live, because we don't know if you are in an area where you get lots of snow in the winter, or whether you are able to actually do rotational grazing 365 days a year.

Forage biomass, pasture conditions based on the amount of precipitation you get this year, animal impact and soil quality are the ultimate factors that affect how many animals you can graze on your land area. You need to know how many pounds per acre your land is able to produce for your area before you decide how many animals to run. Stocking rate depends on how many animal units you need per acre per month. One Animal Unit is a 1000 lb cow with or without a calf that consumes 25 lbs of forage in dry matter per day. You will be starting with an average of 0.5 AUs, then building up to 1 to 1.2 AU. That means, over time, you are doubling the stocking rate for your pasture. On average, you should be able to graze 1 AU/acre or 0.5 AU/acre. If you are in a more arid area, you may only be able to graze 0.25 AU/acre or less.

As goodhors said, when you take hay off, you take nutrients out of the soil. The only way to put these nutrients back into the soil is to fertilize manually, or use the field for grazing to allow the cattle to put nutrients back into the soil with their feces and urine. You can also put these nutrients back into the soil by bale-grazing your animals, but beware, with young growing animals, you MUST supplement with a high-energy, high-protein feed. Your pastures need to be good quality as well, which means no or only a small percentage of grasses going to seed. You can increase this quality by bale-grazing in the winter.

Yes cattle do waste a lot, but that's only because they haven't been trained to clean up everything before they get the next bale, or because the right hay feeder isn't available to minimize waste. When hay is spread out they will clean it up if you make them clean it up. We've had stocker steers before and I can remember that often we didn't feed them until they had cleaned up all that was left (except for the stuff that they did their business in of course). So I disagree with goodhors - your value for wastage is about right.

Also remember that most of your values are based on dry matter only. You will have to feed more hay when you add in the moisture content that is in your feed. Hay is primarily 20% moisture, so that can be a 4 to 5 percent increase in the amount of hay your animals consume per day. (The amount of grass they eat will be higher because often grass contains 50 to 60% moisture)

Now, back to your issues with pasture. How much you have to mow and whether you have to mow or not depends on how much weeds you get. Some weeds are decreasers, or they decrease in number if grazing intensity is high. If you mow at the right time the grass will quickly take over the weeds and push out those weeds. Cattle grazing and trampling will also decrease the weed content. The way horses and cattle graze are quite a bit different: horses are able to graze around and under weeds, whereas cattle will most likely trample them down as they graze, and graze only around them. Animal and hoof impact, as mentioned above, will determine how many weeds will grow after the area has been grazed.

And finally, I'm not a big fan of orchard grass because it is such a fast-growing and early-growing grass that you really have to graze your cattle quickly in order to prevent the grass from going to seed. Also, it doesn't last very long either: after 3 or 4 years the stand starts to thin out and then you have to reseed again. And during summer time, if you understock and consequently let it go to seed, quality decreases to the point that it doesn't have much quality to it, and it won't grow as vigorously. We had orchard grass planted in one of the pastures of ours and boy did it grow in the spring, but we didn't have enough stockers (nor did we incorporate rotational grazing) to be able to keep this grass at a vegetative stage and keep it growing throughout the year. So you really need to be careful and vigilant to how you graze this grass. You may need to consider grazing your cattle on an annual grass like Annual Ryegrass or Italian Rye, which will grow during the hotter summer months. Also other grasses that mature later in the season are good to consider such as Brome grass.

But remember as goodhors said, you have to cut at the right time so that the forage maintains GOOD quality, enough so that your stockers will grow on it. And have it tested for quality, though your stockers will be good testers as well: if they're loosing condition on the hay, supplement them.

I may have proven to be a bit too helpful, but hopefully these will help you a bit in pasturing and feeding your stockers.

 

[ourflockof4]

Thanks for the info. I have not had my fields tested, hence the question. I was hoping that I could get a rought gut feeling from someone without going through all the hasle of testing and figuring AU's. I guess I'll just have to play around and figure it out.

I haven't heard the term "bale-graze" before, what is this?

I'm also not a huge fan of orchard grass, but it's there now, so it will staty to start with. I do plan on overseeding the pasture every fall, so it should be fairly easy to switch that up a little though. I haven't decided yet how I want to split up the pasture, but we will probably have a couple of goats also so I will send them into a new paddock first to get at the weeds.

I know it's kind of a hard this to pin down. I don't want to end up with a feed lot situation, and I also dont want to have to worry about selling a ton of bales that I don't need.

Thank for the help