My plan...

[skyhightree1]

thanks all for the great info. My paddocks right now are around 8 inches so I guess I will be clipping sometime soon.

 

[jedstivers]

Cut the hay while you have it. You can't cut it if you ain't got it.
If a drouth hits your area you can be sure to have plenty for you and sell the rest of it. If cattle get cheap because of drouth you can buy while others sell.
You can bet if VA was to get dry and cattle cheap and I'm setting on a few thousand bales some pots would be rolling west. I'm set up now to handle them.

 

[skyhightree1]

Cut the hay while you have it. You can't cut it if you ain't got it.
If a drouth hits your area you can be sure to have plenty for you and sell the rest of it. If cattle get cheap because of drouth you can buy while others sell.
You can bet if VA was to get dry and cattle cheap and I'm setting on a few thousand bales some pots would be rolling west. I'm set up now to handle them.

jed you have excellent points I guess I will bale some. jed they were almost giving cattle away here 2 years ago and I could kick myself for not buying a ton now. Did you buy any when we had our drought here? we have been really wet the last few years so we are about due for a drought.

 

[jedstivers]

I wasn't set up for it then.

 

[skyhightree1]

gotcha they were practically giving them away. I don't want a drought though. You made great sense though and I definitely appreciate that perspective.

 

[Jogeephus]

Cut the hay while you have it. You can't cut it if you ain't got it.
If a drouth hits your area you can be sure to have plenty for you and sell the rest of it. If cattle get cheap because of drouth you can buy while others sell.
You can bet if VA was to get dry and cattle cheap and I'm setting on a few thousand bales some pots would be rolling west. I'm set up now to handle them.

jed you have excellent points I guess I will bale some. jed they were almost giving cattle away here 2 years ago and I could kick myself for not buying a ton now. Did you buy any when we had our drought here? we have been really wet the last few years so we are about due for a drought.

I agree with Jed. Every area is different though. Here, stockpiling doesn't work well because the rain leaches the nutrients from the stockpiled forage. IMO, I like to control graze and I rarely ever mow. It makes no sense to me to see people in my area apply all this fertilizer then have more grass than their cows can use then go out and mow it to make the grass more nutritious. Or they let the field go rank and cut it for filler hay. Cows can lose weight with a full stomach. I prefer to make the cows do the mowing and when the grass gets in front of them isolate fields to cut good hay from. This way I have high quality hay and I limit my fertilizer applications to only those fields I intend to hay. Its all a balancing act that you have to determine for yourself and your region but what is universal is the fact that you have a fixed cost in raising a calf and the more time and money you spend on raising that calf only increases your fixed cost.

 

[skyhightree1]

Thanks for the explanation and everything Jo. I took some pics of my paddocks I was going to rotational graze. Do you all consider these to be too tall for the cattle? Opinions please.

pasture 1

 

[skyhightree1]

3 acre calf pen behind my house

 

[skyhightree1]

pasture 2

 

[skyhightree1]

pasture 3

 

[skyhightree1]

pasture 3

 

[Banjo]

Nope...looks good

 

[jedstivers]

Sky another thing.
I don't really use this rule now because we have so much watered ground I can cut milo hay off of and I'm also growing oats in the winter and bailing them in April that I can know I'll have enough hay for me. Back years ago when I was running cows I thought it would be best to get to the point where I had two years worth of hay stored so I could weather a really bad drouth. Seeing what has happened in other areas in the last four years I see that's a very good plan. If it wasn't for my particular situation I would be doing that now.

 

[regolith]

Sky, that is still grazeable (pasture 1, the others look shorter).
The issue is how long it might last, because it's not going to be improving any from that point. So if you've got a week or two weeks of it and shorter pasture coming along behind, that's fine. Otherwise you're better to cut most for hay and get it re-growing, with the feed safely preserved for future use. Left on the paddock it will be declining in feed quality.

Twelve inch is about where I'd send the tractor in to cut silage, I usually put the cows in at six to eight inches if they're milking, a bit longer if they're dry. It can still be grazed at twelve they just don't clean it up well because it gets stalky in the base.
That's ryegrass, I've never farmed on fescue.
The only farming I've done in the Northern hemisphere was also on rye and year after year I still find it incredible how early you all have grass - in Scotland we didn't put the cows on it until May, hay making is July.

 

[Rajela]

Pasture 3 needs to have the clover grazed

 

[skyhightree1]

Thanks everyone. I was fixing my calf fence this weekend and plant to start moving cattle sometime this week.

 

[greybeard]

1. What are your total fall/winter hay requirements?
2. At what point, are you losing $ if you don't bale and sell as opposed to grazing it all?

I ask this, because I have been thru severe drought before. There was decades, when drought was pretty much confined to the Southwest and of course Texas/Oklahoma. This is no longer true, having seen drought impact the midwest last year, the Southeast the year before and Calif this year, as well as most of Texas.
You may have 300 extra bales left from last year now, but if your area sees severe drought this year or next, that 300 bales will look awfully small considering drought will affect hay availability and price if it comes to your region.

I saw lots of hay imported into Texas in 2011, and sold at prices of $100+/bale PLUS shipping from Ky, Tenn, Fla, & Va for round bales, and $15+/small sq bale, and some of it was very low quality hay.
Ads on most of the ag websites I saw said, "$100/bale and you provide the trucking. We will load it".
Kinda hard to predict what will happen in any given year, but if you can make 300 bales and still feed your cattle, and another hard drought hits somewhere, 300 extra bales will be worth a LOT of $$$. That's $30K where I went to school...

Just something to think about Sky.

I haven't seen any rain here in 2 weeks, and I'm already beginning to worry about hay for the winter. The rest of Texas is in worse shape than my area...

 

[skyhightree1]

GB I used 163- 5x bales last winter but have added 20 more head to the mix I don't know the mathematics involved but id say will use 200-210 bales for a winter if we hit a drought i think it would cause me to exhaust a good portion of the hay I have left over especially if I tried to take advantage and buy cattle while cheap that would burn up my surplus hay quick. I am seeing the light I guess I will have it baled while the getting is good. I thank everyone for putting me on the right track.GB thanks for putting the $$$ #'s right there in my face :tiphat:

 

[bigbull338]

you showed us pics of 3 pastures.i have some qs for you.1 how meny total grazable acs do you have.2 how meny cows do you have.the reason i ask those qs are this.when you rotate graze if you have 2ac paddocks thats 2 grazing days for 80 cows.so to go 30 days you need 30 to 60acs.from what i see youll be baling 1 of those pastures every 30 or 35 days.

 

[skyhightree1]

I have in total 97 acres of pasture land and around140 give or take some in hay fields I have a combined total of 53 head now I will be adding 18 bred cows to that this month.

edit I have more acreage in hay that people gave me the rights to just cut it but honestly not sure of the acreage there. I would assume no more than 75.