Hay Day and Goliath

Today was pretty mundane. I usually try not to get myself too busy on my in between day of being a fire fighter so I figured I would go and get our last loads of hay to get us through till our rye grass and clover are coming in great. This whole thing is kind of silly because out of inexperience, I thought that since I planted rye grass and clover this October, I would not have to feed hay in the winter. This being our first year to plant, I made a mistake because the rye grass started coming in fast. However, the cows love this stuff and immediately started eating it up. My fear was that they would eat it too much and stress it out, thus causing it to not be strong enough to really take off in February. So I flash grazed all our paddocks of rye grass and clover, 24 total, and moved the cows into an 8-pad section where I will feed hay.

Here’s the kicker. I baled 110 bales of hay in October but thinking I wouldn’t need them, I had a guy come and buy them all. Yep, I sold all our free hay. Well not free, my labor, wear on equipment, and diesel. But still, felt free. So while I have been loading this fellows trailer and he leaves, I am off going to another place and bringing in hay. Looks kind of silly from the outside I’m sure. In the end though, it isn’t as bad as it seems. Our grasses are not very good right now. We are in a3-5 year plan of completely changing the soil and grasses available for forage so rather than feed these cows our not so good hay, for just $10.00 more a bale, I was able to get great hay to feed. Not only was it better quality, but more dense than our grasses were. The plan is in about 5 more weeks to begin our cows on the rotations again on the cool season grasses that are coming in. For now, they are really putting the manure and urine down on these 8 pads they are on now which I will lightly till under in late February to seed new grass.

After putting all the animals up tonight and checking the eggs, there was the biggest egg I have ever seen in my life in the coop. I mean gargantuan. This was the best prize I could have possibly found. I began looking inside the coop to see which bird looked like she was in pain because there is no way that this sucker came out easy. I mean, this looked like she had stored up several eggs to put into this one. Huge I tell you. Needless to say, there is more to this story but you can read about it if you like on our family blog (link) in the near future. My wife said that she had to tell the story. All I can say is take a look at this Goliath of an egg.