Winter vs. Spring Hay Usage ?

[Stocker Steve]

I was burning through a huge amount of hay during early winter. Selling most calves and selling a couple cows, cut the hay usage by about half. Now we are starting to see above freezing temps and some bare ground, and hay usage has dropped by half again. Looks like I now have a hay surplus... :?

Am I seeing some kind of spring fever driven hay hunger strike, or do cow needs actually vary this much ?

 

[turklilley]

That has always been normal for me. With the warmer weather, the little bit of grain that I feed cuts hay consumption a lot.

 

[farmerjan]

Up until 2 weeks ago our cows were eating hay like they were never going to get full. Since we got a break from the WET COLD RAIN they have slowed way down and are picking for every blade of green they can find. We will have a little left over, but have also been selling some big round bales to a few neighbors that were running short. That will hurt the carryover... we try to have 150 left but may have only 50 or so. We'll see. Have fed out most all the 2 yr old stuff too, trying to clean up and use up the old hay first. But we definitely fed more this past winter than we normally do.

 

[Rydero]

It depends what it is. Mine were eating like mad in the cold snap, throttled back a bit when it warmed up now I brought them home to calve and consumption is high again. Saved the best hay for calving. When I put out the stuff they wintered on vs the good stuff the same pen of cows will take twice as long to eat the same amount. I calculated one day last week and it should be just about impossible for them to eat as much as they are when they have the good hay. They were previously getting approx. 37lbs a day/cow including waste, they're up over 42lbs/day/cow on average. On days where they have better hay I calculate that they're consuming 63lbs/day/cow. Lesser hay and they consume 31.5 and there's way more waste.