Square Bales in a Round Ring - Not Quite a Fit! For People or For Hay..........

Southeast Texas just had a few days of temperatures reaching the freezing point, seems unusual for this time of year, but fortunately no pipes burst and the ice in the troughs was minimal, but then lately I've got water leaks on what seems a daily basis, that's surely as effective at preventing pipes from bursting as setting a faucet on drip!

I've been feeding alfalfa as a supplement for my British Whites some years now, but it was only this past winter that had me wishing for square hay feeders. Prior to last winter I fed the alfalfa in flakes on top of their round bales of coastal and that worked fairly well. But last winter saw a shortage of hay and the coastal I had lined up didn't work out. With greed running rampant in the hay business, the price of good coastal hay per bale plus delivery to my place was equal to and sometimes more than the cost of shipping in cow grade alfalfa from Nebraska. Thus I chose to ship in nothing but alfalfa last winter, and my cattle thrived like no other winter.

Shipping costs ran higher this year, but the total out of pocket cost per ton for Dairy Quality alfalfa was still equal to or less than buying a decent quality 20% protein grain by the ton in 50 lb bags. So this year I'm feeding coastal baled from my pastures as well as crabgrass hay out of Louisiana, and providing alfalfa as their supplemental protein, but feeding it by the bale rather than topping round bales of regular hay forage with the alfalfa.

As you can see from the photo, the big alfalfa squares barely fit into my rings and I have to bust up that middle once they've eaten down enough of it to make it doable (also, these girls are getting alfalfa from last summer that went through a 20 plus inch flood, thus the dark bottom side that you see!) -- to make the hay accessible all around the feeding area of the ring. I'm hoping a welding shop in Pennington will be able to make some square feeders for me. I've looked around online and most of what I find is very very heavy square hay feeders from up North that look more functional as stationary objects in a feedlot, which will not work here. I try to move the haying area all around my pastures to avoid excessive manure build up, and follow up with busting up the manure with a drag harrow. In the second photo you can see the adjoining pasture where my big herd is being fed and that it's time to move their hay rings to fresh ground. I try not to feed more than twice without moving the rings to clean ground, and so really heavy feeders aren't practical.

British White Breeders Looking to Cut Down on Tradional Meds & Wormers - Read Dr. Buddy's Blog - TAMU

September 08, 2006 Dr. Buddy's Blog

When is the right time to deworm cattle in 2006? (Click on the outlined boxes for the photos....sorry, don't know why they aren't showing in thumbnail!) (Update 12-09-06, Photo of day after arrival home at the ranch is posted below in the body of this blog, note the bull, JWest's McCluskey, opposite the fence that is right at one month older than all 5 ET calves, and obviously raised very well by his dam DFTX Snowflake. Always ensure that Recipient Dams are Healthy and will be fed well by your ET program provider.)

"Short grass is commonly thought of causing wormy cattle by the cattle grazing down where the worms are, but that thought is a misunderstanding. The reason that producers think that way is because the cows look wormy, when actually the cows' poor body and hair coat conditions are related to malnutrition from low intake of roughages on short grass pastures. When short grass is caused from dry conditions due to lack of rain and from overgrazing the slow growth of grass, the worms are not down there in the soil; the larvae have died from the dryness, and also from the heat in the summer.

When stomach worm eggs are passed in cattle manure, the eggs hatch in the manure. The larvae must be washed from the manure by rains. The larvae can only crawl (swim) up the grass blades while the grass is wet from rain or dew. As the grass dries, the larvae go back down to find moisture. As cattle graze dry grass, they don't ingest larvae. After weeks of dry weather, larvae die, and without grass mats for cover, all the larvae die, and the pastures become free of contamination. . ."

The images you see above (may have to click on a little box, they're not wanting to load properly, but if you click on the outlined box they will load!) are of extremely dirty, barren, over grazed conditions at an ET Facility in Athens, Texas in early fall last year, one can only imagine the level of filth that continued to accumulate around them, it's a pretty good guess that no one there understands, or wishes to work at, the concept of dragging a pasture after rotation. These calves came home underweight, sickly, and have yet to thrive and grow like their peers, and one heifer is permanently blinded by pinkeye in one eye. This would be an example of conditions that Require worming and medication, quite regularly. A well run cattle operation, whether Grass or Grain based, should never reach this level of living conditions for any Seedstock cattle, much less Embryo Transfer calves. Actually, I wish to never see these conditions in any cattle operation.

" . .While pastures are contaminated with larvae, it may be cost effective to worm if the cattle have become exposed to enough larvae during 3 6 weeks of continuous rains with soil temperatures of 55 85 degrees when the larvae are active. If these conditions occur in the spring on some pastures; the timing to worm the cattle is following 3 6 weeks of continuous rain. If the rains come on contaminated pastures, that would make deworming cattle in May but not all pastures are contaminated because of the drought and good management practices. With rains in a cold April,..........." Follow the link above to read the rest of this blog!