rachels.haven's Journal

[Bruce]

(And the poor kid still thinks we can stuff a cow in the minivan when in reality we'd need a truck, trailer, and a different property in a different state, fencing, barn, and all. Maybe when he's a teen depending on where we're at.)

Normande cattle would probably make him happy too, but the Fjall are smaller...and in sweden.

Sounds like you need to move to Sweden
I think he really needs to be somewhere with an active farm animal based 4H group.

 

[farmerjan]

I forgot about Normande cattle. They are pretty.... but they are "dairy cattle".... you would have a ton of milk.....They do hold their weight well, and the calves make a real decent beef because they gain good. They have very good rich milk.....several of my dairies have used Normande in crosses to improve grazing ability..... and the cows stay "fat" ...very well fleshed, when on the normal dairy rations with corn silage and such.... they still milked good.

 

[Baymule]

There are no Normande cattle here in Texas. I think they are very pretty cows!

 

[rachels.haven]

Uh oh. Bloody poo and a dead chick in the chick house. Time to break out the corid for the next 5 days

50 bales of hay in the garage to put away. My hay guy is out and he thinks it's to be a "blood bath" come March and he advises me to keep looking until we're at stuffed capacity and if I get desperate he an help look too. Apparently his contacts in New York and VT had worse drought than we did and are out or are down to almost nothing. I'm going to get this stuff put up and decide how much more I can fit.

My "c" key on my chromebook is being insensitive. Sorry for typos I didn't catch. Keyboards getting ruined beyond repair is the number 1 reason I replace laptops. The other being destroyed housing due to kid incidents. Not in the mood for replacing right now, so may need to get some canned air or putty to try.

 

[Bruce]

Yep, mild drought here though not as bad as 2 years ago.

 

[farmerjan]

I feel for you with the drought and the shortage of hay. This is why I keep preaching to people..... have a surplus.... try to have enough for 2 years stockpiled. It is easy enough to rotate out hay.... feed from different sides of the barn, when you get down, move all the older hay to the front....do whatever.... but get and keep extra.... We try to keep at least an extra month or 2 of round bales, than what we fed the year before.... so that we have a bit of a surplus.... And if hay is offered to us by guys who want to get it moved so they can put in this years, we often buy it.... at a discount usually, so that we have extra.
Hay won't go bad as long as it is kept dry....get ahead and then try to stay ahead. Times like what you are seeing now @rachels.haven is what taught me to not ever get down to where I am "looking for hay". Good luck getting some more.

 

[Baymule]

We had a BAD drought here in 2011 and 2012. Pastures burnt up, trees died, beautiful old oak trees just died. It was heartbreaking to watch the trees die. When we bought this place in 2014, it had dead standing trees on it from the drought. We had over 2 months of 100+ degree heat. Eighteen wheelers were bringing in round bales for $125 to $275 for a single round bale.

People dumped their horses at sale barns and kill buyers snapped them up. One kill pen owner said he shipped out 40 eighteen wheeler loads of horses a WEEK. FORTY LOADS. Ranchers sold their cattle. Some tried to keep a small herd to preserve their genetics, many couldn't afford to do so.

We were lucky to find round bales for $80 and bought a bale each week. It was not great hay, loosely rolled, but it was hay. Our horses stripped bark off trees to supplement the hay. We fed them as good as we could, but you can't over feed grains and pellets unless you want a foundered or colic horse.

@rachels.haven if you need to go out of state, take a trailer and have a weekend mini vacation. Maybe you need to go see @farmerjan LOL

For storage, build a hoop shelter out of cow panels. you can put them up with t-posts driven in the ground to tie the panels to. Put a heavy tarp over the bowed over cow panels and lay pallets to stack the hay on. To keep the ends of the panels from poking holes in the tarp, put foam split pipe wrap on the edges. Wire the panels together, you could probably make a tunnel with 3 panels. Since you have snow, you might need to put a post in the middle of each panel to keep it from collapsing from the snow.

 

[Baymule]

Oh, any animals that you need to sell, sell them now before you can't even give them away.

 

[Bruce]

Since you have snow, you might need to put a post in the middle of each panel to keep it from collapsing from the snow.

At least one Might be worth putting in a ridge pole so it doesn't change from an upside down U into an M (like the "bird excluder" over my 3 blueberry bushes.

 

[rachels.haven]

Snow stinks, eh? I will definitely do something like that if I go that route.