If you see any farming terms that are unfamiliar to you as you read through this page, you can check our cattle and pasture glossary for definitions.
During summer months, our cattle graze on pasture. The herd is rotated between 6-10 paddocks with the sward allowed to regrow while the cattle are away. Cattle spend 3-6 days in each paddock depending on the condition of the sward. The system works well but not perfectly and we end up feeding a certain amount of stored or boughten hay when our grass can't keep up with the cows.
Our pasture is predominantly alfalfa mixed with other legumes and some grass. Alfalfa gives us the best tonnage and highest protein. That means more carrying capacity and less supplementation. The other plants are present in the sward to spread out the production over a longer portion of the summer, to provide better performance in dry years, and to reduce the likelihood of bloat.
We have some pasture with a stream in it. There, the cattle drink from the stream. We are monitoring the quality of the stream and banks as we continue our grazing, and may fence the stream and install a water system if damage is occuring.
Our other pastures have water piped in. We run cheap plastic pipe (1/2" polyethylene) about a foot underground. A riser with a faucet on it comes up to the surface every 100 feet or so, often enough so we can move the water tanks around and still have them close to a faucet. The pipe is buried to protect it from mechanical damage and to keep it from freezing in October and November when we sometimes still have the cows on pasture. We drain everything when the pasture season is over, since any water line buried less than 6 feet deep will freeze during the winter here.
For the wintery half of the year there is no pasture available. We keep the herd in a winter yard by the barn during these months and feed them corn silage. The cattle are kept outside except in unusually severe weather, when they are allowed access to the barn.
We feed corn silage rather than hay. Corn silage has a number of advantages for the midsize producer, including:
For operations of our size, the only trouble with silage is the dependence on fairly complicated unloading and feeding machinery, which is expensive and fiddly. Also, some protein supplement must be fed to bred heifers, particularly in the last months of pregnancy.
We have a belt feeding system that delivers the silage from the base of the silo to the manger.
We do also feed some hay. We like to have hay on hand so that if there is a power outage or something goes wrong with the silo unloader, we can feed hay by hand. We also feed hay when the cows are in pens during calving, and to supplement pasture during the late summer months when we would otherwise not have enough grass.