With the end of the season for grass growing starts the season of feeding hay to the herd. For the summer we rotational graze the adult herd from April until the latest in September or October we can before the grass stops growing. We moved the adult herd back to the main farm on October 1 this year.
Over the summer we stock piled 320 bales of alfalfa mix in our barn. The alfalfa mix is used to supplement a higher protein hay when the moms are in late gestation as the babies start to take up room and minimize the amount of hay the moms can eat.
Our supplier of grass hay stores the majority of our hay for us until we pick it up in 162 bale wagons as we need it. Luckily both suppliers load the wagons with a hay grapple which save us time and energy where we only have to unload the wagon.
The wagon with 162 bales takes about 75 minutes to unload. Each bale is 50-55 lbs for a total weight of 8100 - 8900 lbs. No gym membership is needed when you account for all the hay the adult herd eats in the winter! In the winter we feed ~8 bales per day to the herd. If you do the math, those 162 bales do not last too long, only about 20 days. With the supplemented alfalfa bales it stretches the grass mix to restocking every 27 days.
The herd is also fed grain to increase the amount of protein consumed over a pure grass fed diet. We will have a post on grain management in the coming weeks. On a side note you will see the restocking of grain aligns pretty close to our 20 and 27 day hay refill dates. All of this is based on the space available for feed storage in the barns.
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