anyone ever ...

[Supa Dexta]

You mean to tell us you cannot find a place to feed that is not muddy. Try moving that hay ring more often.

I'f I moved feeders all fall and into the winter to avoid mud I wouldn't have a blade of grass left on a couple hundred acres by summer. And it don't matter if I'm next to the ocean or up in my hills, it all makes mud real quick.

 

[hurleyjd]

You mean to tell us you cannot find a place to feed that is not muddy. Try moving that hay ring more often.

I'f I moved feeders all fall and into the winter to avoid mud I wouldn't have a blade of grass left on a couple hundred acres by summer. And it don't matter if I'm next to the ocean or up in my hills, it all makes mud real quick.

Well you guys with the mud will have to live with it. I do not use any hay rings. And get by with it and can always find a clean high spot. I keep moving the hay site each time I feed. Coud be I am not feeding the amount of cows that you mud hole types are trying to winter. I only have 75 pairs on 125 acres.

 

[Bez__]

When folks complain about mud and then drive over the fields to feed animals they are their own worst enemy.

The big difference I see is I put all the hay out at one time and never drive on the field again.

I never start a tractor to feed an animal all winter unless it is an unusual circumstance. I never have to clean pens and spread manure. I never worry about ruts. My fertilizer costs are lowered. Cattle never stand in knee deep mud to eat at feeders so they stay a lot cleaner. I never have to go out in the mud and rain or snow and move feeders. I never have to slog through the mud. I never have to get dirty working in lousy conditions. All of this is worth money - but most folks will tell you they spend little money feeding and forget about the wear and tear on equipment. Most folks will also tell you that it takes very little time to do their feeding. But it is every weekend or every other day and that time does add up.

I do get to go out and enjoy looking at them and checking them out.

The health aspects of clean animals cannot be denied - scratch an ankle and then eat while standing in mud might mean another thread - "Cow Limping". That is an almost continual topic here and sometimes we do it to them.

One thing I do notice about folks is literally every year they complain about mud they have - yet no one has ever come on here to tell us how they changed their operation dramatically and successfully got away from the mud. When they get some suggestions the response is often resistance. So why ask about other ways?

I would be curious to see someone else other than Aaron and I try this. And do an actual pencil out over the space of a year - and not come back here in the first week going OMG the hay waste is terrible!

I forget who it was, but someone once stated - Doing the same thing over and over yet expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.

Put all your hay out when the ground is dry - no fuss, no muss and no ruts.

If you have mud you need to solve the problem - perhaps actually try something different?

Out of this one.

Best to all

Bez__

 

[pricefarm]

I thank a lot depends on where u live and the number of cows you run per acre. If u only run one cow per 10 acres for example u have plenty of room to spread the hay out different places or feed somewhere different each time. On my place I have good pasture and rotional graze and I run one pair to about 1.5 acres and usaly don't start feeding hay till dec 1st. So on let's say 50 acres u run 30 cows and you try and feed somewhere different each time u run out of places fairly fast. Also her in the mountains some places in the pasture are hard to get to in the winter as wet and soft as the ground stays. I have a lot that I feed in all winter. I have put down rock in it this year and it has helped a lot but still have some mud problems. Come spring I do have a lot of manure to spread but I can spread it on my hay feilds or corn feild where Iam not able to put the cows on so that helps with not having to buy as much fertilizer. So I guess there's right and wrong ways to do things and if you want to be a farmer sometimes u just have to deal with the bad and the good. I hate fighting the mud just like everyone else but I sure do like when I sell a load of calves and have a pocket full of money.

 

[Supa Dexta]

That's just it - I have to live with it.. So I cant even leave cattle on pasture much past the 1st of oct or so. I have to have a sacrificial area to feed and deal with it there. They will turn everything to mud and cow holes if they're left to roam.

I'd love to put in a parking lot worth of cement or ashphalt.. And I may have to bite the bullet on it someday. Put up some windbreaks and keep them drier, cleaner and healthier. I'd also save on hay usage and manure recovery as well as keeping them off good usable ground when it's too wet for them. Its just the nearly 100k price tag that stings.

 

[machslammer]

When folks complain about mud and then drive over the fields to feed animals they are their own worst enemy.

The big difference I see is I put all the hay out at one time and never drive on the field again.

I never start a tractor to feed an animal all winter unless it is an unusual circumstance. I never have to clean pens and spread manure. I never worry about ruts. My fertilizer costs are lowered. Cattle never stand in knee deep mud to eat at feeders so they stay a lot cleaner. I never have to go out in the mud and rain or snow and move feeders. I never have to slog through the mud. I never have to get dirty working in lousy conditions. All of this is worth money - but most folks will tell you they spend little money feeding and forget about the wear and tear on equipment. Most folks will also tell you that it takes very little time to do their feeding. But it is every weekend or every other day and that time does add up.

I do get to go out and enjoy looking at them and checking them out.

The health aspects of clean animals cannot be denied - scratch an ankle and then eat while standing in mud might mean another thread - "Cow Limping". That is an almost continual topic here and sometimes we do it to them.

One thing I do notice about folks is literally every year they complain about mud they have - yet no one has ever come on here to tell us how they changed their operation dramatically and successfully got away from the mud. When they get some suggestions the response is often resistance. So why ask about other ways?

I would be curious to see someone else other than Aaron and I try this. And do an actual pencil out over the space of a year - and not come back here in the first week going OMG the hay waste is terrible!

I forget who it was, but someone once stated - Doing the same thing over and over yet expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.

Put all your hay out when the ground is dry - no fuss, no muss and no ruts.

If you have mud you need to solve the problem - perhaps actually try something different?

Out of this one.

Best to all

Bez__

Don't think the mud problem was the actual topic but it went there. .so i guess your answer is no, you haven't ever built anything like that for rings lol. I put chain slings in 2 of mine so gonna see how that works

 

[TexasBred]

Post some pics of this operation Bez. I'd like to see it and I'm sure others would as well.

 

[machslammer]

Post some pics of this operation Bez. I'd like to see it and I'm sure others would as well.

I am very curious of how this works as well. I feed about 100 rolls on 15 acres to 15 cow/calf pairs during the none grass growing months. OCt-nov till april-may. How to keep from wasting, stomping in ground, and attempting to eat from top to bottom and walking on the bottom 1/3 of the hay which is wasted.

 

[Bez__]

Well, I said I was out of this one - but you want more info.

First - I have never in my life personally posted a picture on this site and I never will. I have sent two to someone else to post for the pic contest. Won one and placed dead last in another.

Go here: http://www.agrireseau.qc.ca/bovinsbouch ... 05%20p.pdf

Fairview is my old home town - we did the cattle thing there for a lot of years. Miss it terribly.

I know or know of all the guys in this paper you will see and read.

Page 20 has a picture winter, spring, summer and fall - of the same field from the same direction taken from the same spot in the field.

machslammer wrote:

I feed about 100 rolls on 15 acres to 15 cow/calf pairs during the none grass growing months

If I was feeding 100 bales on 15 acres I would put them all out in groups of ten bales - I would take all the wrap or twine off of them and walk away - I might or might not - depending upon the conditions - separate them with a wire and walk away. I am done feeding for a year.

Waste? Yup - but I have said this so many times I get tired of writing it. That waste pencils out into the profit side. So in the end it is NOT waste at all!

So - right now you have to stop calling it waste - you cannot take from fields and not put back in. That hay you call stomped is actually going back to the ground. Every bit of pizz and schitte is going back into the ground and it is going right back in where they stand. They work it in for you.

This is not a one time shot - it is a continual thing - if you do it one year and then quit you will not see the full benefit.

If you do not want to try it that is fine - but as I said - everyone complains about mud and feed and ruts and forgets about their time and their fuel and their wear and tear and their fertilizer they buy and the beat goes on. And - important - in your area it really MIGHT NOT work for you. But if you have not tried it how the h e l l will you ever know?

But every time I read this stuff from you folks it starts around now and goes until around April - complaints all the time. Fancy jury-rigged pieces of kit that in the end are a pain in the azz and mostly do not change your situation one iota. And every year I tell folks about this system and one year even Aaron chimed in.

To the best of my knowledge not one of you folks down south has ever truly tried it and not one of you who writes in here regularly about mud problems has really stopped writing in about field conditions and mud problems and how can "I modify a feeder to make it work in wet conditions" and "moving round feeders in the mud" and preventing rutted fields and so on.

If you are running a high density 10 cows on 3 acres and store all your feed in a 24 x 24 garage this system probably would not work - but if you have a farm and are capable of moving cows and do not hay your pastures (we never, never do) and do not pasture your hay then you might want to try something new.

I guess what I am saying is if you are a hobby guy and do not have some land, then keep feeding the old way - if you are a farmer or rancher then you need to look at this ( AND swath grazing for dry or cold areas) because it will indeed make a change to your bottom line. If that sentence alone does not interest you then I am wasting my time. LOL

Even if you do not do some of the things I do here - then you still need to change and up date - or nothing will really change for you - ever! LOL

One real big, big benefit of this is the improvement of marginal land and the clearing of brush and shrub land - this system will make your crap land better. If you have the time it will also allow you to literally clear land - and that is in heavy brush and turn it into real good pasture - and not one dollar is spent on bulldozers and backhoes. We have used the cows here to turn about 50 acres of crap land into top notch pasture. It took us about 5 years. Just feed all the bales in that crap land and watch the changes - lay all the bales out and leave. In fact take a picture from the same spot every year so you can compare as time goes by.

Hmm.... - I got two big steel custom made feeders up here that I abandoned in an old pasture - I must get them out for scrap because you know something? When I came here all the locals advised me that my old system would not work and I would need feeders because the ground was too wet and mud was an issue. I used them for two years and went back to my old system. Now folks here are copying me.

I just copied this from another post I made:

I never start a tractor to feed an animal all winter unless it is an unusual circumstance. I never have to clean pens and spread manure. I never worry about ruts. My fertilizer costs are lowered. Cattle never stand in knee deep mud to eat at feeders so they stay a lot cleaner. I never have to go out in the mud and rain or snow and move feeders. I never have to slog through the mud. I never have to get dirty working in lousy conditions. All of this is worth money - but most folks will tell you they spend little money feeding and forget about the wear and tear on equipment. Most folks will also tell you that it takes very little time to do their feeding. But it is every weekend or every other day and that time does add up.

You will see how these guys feed and there is some info there on swath grazing as well.

You guys all worry about losing the bottom of your bale - but the costs for us are more than borne out by the benefits of feeding in place. When I came here folks laughed at us - now probably everyone who knows us and has more than 10 beef cows down here in the deep south of Canada does it the way we do. We are probably right out of cows once we get rid of the last original bunch we trucked in from the west when we came here. They will go this Spring I suspect. Am now too crippled up to do much more than walk 100 yards to see if they are still alive.

In closing - go back and read all the old posts - there is a tonne of complaining and moaning about tough conditions and more. And you know something? Those conditions ARE tough. But you can make some operational changes that will make your life easier. Improve the ground. Make it easier for your cattle AND possibly improve your bottom line.

Year after year after year those posts have not really changed much. But no one ever does anything other than a tiny bit of this or that. And in the end they really have not changed anything.

Read that paper - maybe some of it would work for you. Anyone in the mid west that does not use swath grazing is missing out and spending a pile of money that does not need to be spent.

I promise to never - ever - write about this ever again because I do not want to bore you

Am well and truly out of this one now - enjoy.

Best to all

Bez__

 

[TexasBred]

Have it your way but some of us really wanted to see "your operation" in action rather than read about research done by others. They all seem to be quite busy during the wintertime moving fences, cattle 3-4 times a day, etc. etc. etc......another dead end.

 

[machslammer]

Well I made 2 hay slings out of chain to see how it worked... It was wonderful and they cleaned every drop up with no mud on it. Thanks for any advise you gave.

 

[James T]

Bez~
I appreciate your trying to get a very unique point across! I am always open to new ideas so I read through the link you offered trying to get a handle on just what "bale grazing" is all about. You offered some information on how you go about it - setting out several bale rings and using a hot wire to manage cattle access. I gather that if scores of bales have to be fed out then instead of bale rings:---->

As quoted in the article: "He sets out the bales in the fall, lining them up in rows of 4 bales... .Neil places step in posts and wire in each bale (?) in the two rows ahead of the bales that are being grazed. He spaces the bales far enough apart that the cattle won't touch each other when eating, and the rows are spaced so cattle won't back into the wire. The bales are 800 lbs and he uses sisal twine to prevent having to cut twine in the winter. It is easier for fencing purposes to set the bales as straight as possible. The wire is moved every two days which provides fresh/cheap bedding, parasite control and a snow and manure mat to prevent water run off in the spring."

I can see the the labor savings and fuel savings. Mud will still be an issue but spread down the line of bales, maybe not so bad. I'm gonna try this out since I already have electric wire up near the bales anyway. Getting tired of cranking up the tractor, running it through the mud, moving the bale ring etc.

Thanks for sharing the idea Bez!