Making Hay while the sun shines.....

After a fairly dry start to summer with the strong possibility of a drought....we later had some reasonable sprinkles of rain which was fantastic to keep the grass growing and we just managed to find a five day window where we could cut hay, which we feed out in winter when the grass slows down. A diet of Hay and Pasture promotes rumination throughout the day and night which helps with thermoregulation when the weather is cold. So the Hay keeps your cows happy and warm through Winter, it also provides a soft warm bedding.

This picture shows me (Debs) picking up the hay from the paddocks close to the hay barn, to transfer and stack them in the barn under cover. The contractors are in the further paddocks baling up the hay on the home farm. The contractors also bring the hay we cut from our runoffs (non-milking dairy cow blocks) and drop it off for me outside the hay barn and I stack it all away.

It's very important to get a great quality of hay that has had all the necessary days of full sun to dry it out and get it put away safely in the barn to stay dry. Then when we feed it out to our ladies over winter, they get the maximum nutrition value from it which is really important as they are carrying calves and we need to ensure the calves that havent been born yet are well looked after to.