Hay Conundrum
January 17th, 2016 · No Comments · Posted in farming
The guy who was supposed to deliver our hay this year took a powder and that turned out fine. Since we don’t have a barn or other storage facility, we would have had to put the hay under a tarp. Been there, done that. The last tarp we owned was in tatters after two years. I got tired of listening to it flap in the wind.
So how to feed all our animals this winter? We arranged to buy our hay from the same farm family that sells us our feed grain. Since we didn’t have a place to put large quantities of hay, we’re moving it in our pickup truck 27 bales at a time from their barn to the walk-in shelter inside our main paddock. You can’t see it in photo. But off in the right-hand corner is a gated area where we stack the hay and also milk our Jersey cow, Emily.
The first load went fine. I have to climb into the back of the pickup to stack the bales. I trundle home with a load clinging to the open tailgate–up the driveway and through the gate into the paddock where I unload and re-stack the bales in the shelter.
Between 11 sheep, seven goats, one cow and one growing calf we seem to go through about three bales a day. So I get nine days out of one pickup-load of hay. In fact, I’m scheduled to make another pickup tomorrow on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
How to feed the hay is another question we’re trying to better address this year. In the past, I just tossed the bales on the ground and let the critters help themselves. A lot of hay got wasted, and there was always the chance the livestock would pick up some sort of disease.
This year I’ve mounted hay feeders on the walls of our outbuildings. Here you can see them inside the walk-in shelter. I’d rather have the animals eating outside the shelter so they aren’t hanging around in there all day pooping and peeing. Also, there’s still wasted hay–the animals don’t seem to care for the hay that falls out of the feeders onto the ground. Although the hay that does fall out of the feeder makes a really cush bed for the animals to sleep on.
The best arrangement would be a feeder outside the shelter built to catch the hay before it lands on the ground. Remarkably enough, such feeders do exist. We just have to dig into our pockets to buy one.
Next year, maybe.
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