Hi, I’m Mike.
Almost every job on the ranch is important and there aren’t many that just take up
time.
During the winter, cows need 2 things more than anything and that is food and water and
that’s todays project on Our Wyoming Life.
Welcome back to the project list, each and every week we take a look at the list behind
me and get working on a project around the ranch.
We add to it constantly, and we cross jobs off as they are done.
That’s the basic gist of the project list.
There is however much more to it than that, and some projects you may know they are coming
but you may not know when and today we get started on a yearly project that last for
us, months.
Please subscribe, hit the bell button so you don’t miss a thing and come along with us
as we explore the ranch life and escape the ordinary.
Every winter and sometimes even as early as fall, we hit a point where we need to start
feeding the cows.
For the past 7 months or so, they have been on their own.
Living off the native prairie grasses of the high plains here in north east Wyoming but
now with bitter cold temperatures over the past few days and continued snow fall, those
plains are beginning to be less and less of a source of feed for these cows.
A cow is really just one big eating machine.
Over the course of a year she will eat over 10 thousand pounds of feed, in the form of
grass, off the ranch.
Take her and all her friends and that quickly becomes over 1.5 million pounds.
The average house in America weighs about 300,000 lbs so that would be the equivalent
of about 5 houses.
Talk about eating you out of house and home.
Of course, there are only certain times on the ranch that grass will be available for
her to eat.
Our rain comes in late April, and May.
Our growing season is short, only 125 day, so that rain has to be on time in order to
grow grass in the first place.
If we don’t get rain, or temperatures are too cool in late spring, or a combination
of both, the grass, its not going to grow.
Not only do we count on that perfect mix temperatures and rainfall for the cows feed over the entire
summer, we also count on it for the cows feed during the winter.
Starting in June, we begin cutting areas of the ranch that are set aside for winter feed
for the cows.
We call these hay fields and using a combination of mowers, rakes and balers we begin storing
the food that the cows will eat all winter long.
We know how much extra feed we need to put up for winter, and we know how much the cows
need to eat during the summer.
It’s a delicate balance on the ranch, because if like this year, we end up losing winter
feed due to hail storms, we can’t just go and make new hay fields.
If we did, that would be taking away from the cows feed that they need during the summer,
while they are nursing their young and putting on weight.
Because of that hail storm this with summer, we lost a little over a third of our winter
stockpile of hay to feed the cows over the winter.
Normally, we would be able to buy the difference from other ranchers and farmers that grow
only hay in order to supply ranchers that are in need.
But because of past droughts and having to buy so much hay over the last few years, the
ranch just can’t afford to spend another 30 to 50 thousand dollars on hay.
We have to start thinking about equipment that is getting older, tractors that are beginning
to need more repairs, and the number of repairs and projects that were put to the side in
order to buy hay.
This winter we have to make due with what we have, and that has been one of the challenges
that we have had to deal with over the past few months.
We have put off feeding the cows as long as we can, and today its time to head out and
get them their first taste of that summer hay, cut and baled back in June, for their
enjoyment this November.
We store hay all over the ranch in different hay yards, that’s mostly due to insurance
concerns.
Our hay, once its put up and baled, is covered by our insurance as feed for the animals.
Keeping it spread out, keeps it safer.
If we have a fire that attacks one hay yard, we wont lose all of our hay and we will still
have something to feed the cows while we look for more.
Hay fires are not uncommon, caused by lightning, transformers and a number of other influences
and can quickly decimate a hay yard, even in the winter.
With each bale weighing about 1400 lbs, we need to put out enough feed for all the cows.
The simple way to figure how much feed to put out, especially early in the feeding season,
when we aren’t worried as much about supplemental feed is to figure that each animal is going
to eat about 20lbs of dry forage per 1000lbs.
If we figure our cows are weighing about 1300lbs, then we know that each one is going to need
about 26lbs of hay.
With 150 cows out here, that’s about 4000lbs, or 2.8 bales.
There are plenty of challenges with raising and feeding cows in northeast wyoming.
We need a crazy amount of land to feed each cow, winters can be almost unbearable and
hard on cows and calves alike but that cold weather makes feeding a bit easier.
Our ground, even this early in the winter is frozen.
It’s solid.
A cow pie could break a window, so we can take advantage of that frozen ground and treat
it a lot like a dinner plate for the cows.
We can roll out our hay, using a bale roller on the back of the tractor and make a buffet
for all the cows to come into.
In warmer climates, or places where the ground may not freeze completely, this method of
feeding hay will create too much waste, but here, the cows clean it up, spic and span.
The trick is that you have to feed in a new spot each time, but we have plenty of room
for that.
With our limited hay supply to get us through the winter, decisions are going to be made
here within the next week of life on the ranch.
Coming up next Tuesday we will be pretty checking the cows on the ranch.
That means that we will find out just who is pregnant in the herd and who isn’t.
Those cows that aren’t pregnant, will be leaving the ranch, its as simple as that.
In order to be a productive part of the herd, a cow has to supply the ranch with a calf
each year to cover the expenses of her living here.
We will also be selling a few older cows that may be pregnant as well because we can’t
afford to feed them.
Those will be sold to ranchers who may have extra hay this year and can make a profit
with another calf in the spring.
With our current hay reserve we are planning on cutting the herd by about a third.
Taking the number of head on the ranch from 150 to about 100 cows.
Those 50 or so that we sell, will bring income to the ranch, and quite possibility may allow
us to buy some bred cows in the spring.
The thing we do know, is that we can’t afford to feed them all winter long.
If we bring in new cows, then they will increase the genetic diversity of the ranch, which
is always a good thing but until we preg check, we can’t do much and the cows need to eat.
All of them, and they all get fed.
They get water too, although the colder it gets the less they will drink and the more
trouble the water will cause for us.
But that’s a whole other show.
Thanks for coming along today, and although the ranch faces us with tough decisions, almost
on a daily basis, we always try to look at the long game.
If you worry about only tomorrow, you are going to worry yourself to death, look at
the future, what you want to accomplish and what you want to see in your place and the
answer, most of the time, becomes very obvious.
I’m gonna finish up the rest of this feeding thing this morning, but I encourage you to
subscribe.
So much of this world doesn’t quite understand where their food really comes from, and has
no connection to the families behind the grocery store shelves.
That’s where you can help, but supporting us and other folks like us, you can help spread
the message of agriculture.
Thanks for helping.
Until I see you again, have a great week and thanks for joining us on our Wyoming life.