Winter feed

[82-1258392726]

This must have been covered many times in the past but as newcomers to cattle farming would be glad for advice.

We are on heavy arable fenland, and hopefully entering HLS shortly, including some arable reversion to grassland, and some low input spring cropping options.

In August we bought two 6 year old cows with 8 month old heiffer calves, and the cows, touch wood, are pregnant again,due in late June/early July. Want to keep them grass-fed, at least any steers we produce in future, as far as possible.
They've cleared up all the grass on their current two acre field and are starting to poach it, so we're going to house them for the winter but would like to let them out from time to time when conditions permit. They've been on grass plus some good barley straw, mineral bucket and lick up until now. Thinking of putting them in a shelter in the grass field c 15 foot by 12 foot with one open side facing south, with 15x15 foot hurdled open area to the front. We have other sheds but without ready access to the grass field.
Is this shelter too small?
What feed will they need eg how much hay/haylage/silage/barley straw per week?
Do I ad lib it?
If I put eg a round bale in a feeder, does it need to be under cover or is outside OK?
Will some concentrates be advisable?

Roger Goy

[Broomcroft]

I think cattle inside are "supposed" to have 8.5 sm minimum each including loafing area, but that's for normal sized cattle.

We feed nearly all our cattle hay and haylage outside in ring feeders whatever the weather and they do fine on it. We feed it ad lib although they run out every few days. really rough calculation for hay/haylage would be 6 cows would finish a large round bale in a week no problem. My hay doesn't last as long as haylage/silage. Over the winter a full sized, average dexter cow or steer on my farm will consume about 5 large round bales. We rarely feed anything else, but we are feeding some corn and fodder beet this year because our forage is not very good and maintaing their condition is top of the list.

Don't ket your cows get fat. Very, very hard to get it off again and will lead to all sorts of problems.

For truly grass-fed steers, hay doesn't do anything much at all in that respect. The steers need as much green living grass/clover that they can get when you can, put hay out for them as well if you like/can. Try to finish the steers on green grass later in the year, if you can obviously, for the perfect grass-fed beef.



Edited By Broomcroft on 1258453523

[Saffy]

The size of your shed and yard area sound OK.

However it would be much easier to answer the questions if you were a little more specific.

Does the shelter have a floor? If it has just an earth floor and so does the small yard area, this will also poach quickly and they will be standing knee deep in mud all winter unless you use large quantities of bedding.

The amount of hay or silage will depend to a great extent how much you let them out to eat the grass and browse. Also if you use hay how heavy the hay bales are! ( I am not very stong these days so when we make our own hay I get it baled quite light, what we bought in was actually much heavier.)

At the moment 2 of my cows and calves, plus an 18 month steer are spending the night on a patch of ground with little grass and a shed to run back into. They are eating a third of a bale of hay at night and another third of a bale in the morning before I turn them back onto the grass grass and clover field for the day. I would guess that they would eat another bale otherwise. to stay in good condition. So if your cows have nothing. I would say allow one to two bales, depending whether they are light or heavy bales but really how long is a piece of string?

If they clear up every scrap and are looking for more - and look empty it wasn't enough, if they are leaving it and wasting it - it was too much! I find they don't like seeing the food there for more than 24 hours and will reject it, so I don't put too much at a time.

A round feeder is fine, you may need to put the food near the sides. Also if hay is fed outside it needs to be fed more often as they are picky with hay that has been wet for a long time.

Stephanie



Edited By Saffy on 1258453572

[Broomcroft]

Correction to my haylage calculation. A pen of 12 of my dexter cows would have a new large round bale of haylage/silage every other day. Something like that.

[Saffy]

Not sure I gave that enough thought - maybe 2 to 3 small bales as the 8 month old calves will eat a fair bit if there is nothing else.

Stephanie

[Broomcroft]

PS. We also are in the HLS scheme and converted arable back to grassland. The cost of the latter came as a big surprise because of how much damage the arable had done to the soil. It was totally drained. W're now in year five and still paying out and coaxing the land back to life.

[Saffy]

It is shocking what too much arable and not using proper crop rotation etc can do to the land. We recently took a small field back from our tenant as our Dexter herd has grown. I farmed it myself until about 10 years ago so they haven't had that long to over use/over arable the land, so I was surprised when I took this field back at the sorry state of the soil.

We have had the field back now about 18 months and it has improved greatly for having cattle on it but has a long way to go to be what it was 10 years ago.

Stephanie

[Minnie]

Hi Roger,

We're geographically in an entirely different space but... with your question:

If I put eg a round bale in a feeder, does it need to be under cover or is outside OK?

Our experience has been if the cattle take about a week to eat the bale (our do) and it rains heavily it can ruin the hay. We've lost several large round bales to rain, so now if it's looking like 'heavy' rain and they're due a new bale we roll it under cover.

The hay is 'rhodes' hay, not lucerne so possibly lucerne or another type of hay may act differently?

Vicki

[Broomcroft]

It is shocking what too much arable and not using proper crop rotation etc can do to the land. We recently took a small field back from our tenant as our Dexter herd has grown. I farmed it myself until about 10 years ago so they haven't had that long to over use/over arable the land, so I was surprised when I took this field back at the sorry state of the soil.

We have had the field back now about 18 months and it has improved greatly for having cattle on it but has a long way to go to be what it was 10 years ago.

Stephanie

After probably 25 years of arable our soil was dead. Can you imagine soil that grass won't grow in!!!! It wasn't soil, it was dark brown/grey lifeless matter, a bit like steaks from some modern breeds.....blotting paper. The grass would turn purple and would be thinner than the hair on the top of my head, all three of them. But if you threw nitrogen at it, you would get a mass of lush green grass. So coaxing it slowly, slowly back into life is taking years, gradually less and less fertiliser and as much muck as the cattle can produce each year. I intensively graze as well by stuffing say 200 ewes and 50 cattle on 12 acres for while, giving it a good manuring. That has worked well and spread the seeds around as well.

I don't understand the save the planet by eating less meat. I do the reverse, and cut out the cornflakes because the damage standard arable does is very considerable I feel. I have worked out what I produce in food / value each year, and it's the same as if I were doing wheat, but very little work takes place and my tractor sits in the garage 90% of the time.



Edited By Broomcroft on 1258662529

[Roger Goy]

PS. We also are in the HLS scheme and converted arable back to grassland. The cost of the latter came as a big surprise because of how much damage the arable had done to the soil. It was totally drained. W're now in year five and still paying out and coaxing the land back to life.

Many thanks for the advice.
I am sure I'll find the same with de-nuded soils, but I can only blame myself, having farmed them in the conventional arable manner for 30 years. Its such a joy to have livestock for the first time and to try to work with nature at last.
Clive, regarding HLS, do you have any rye grass in your grass seed mixes - I've been told this is not likely to be acceptable for the scheme, and I've already seeded a field with a "traditional" mix that includes a small rye grass proportion.
Also, where can I get fodder analysed?
Roger

[Saffy]

Hello Roger,

Ask your crop walker - he can probabaly tell you where to get your fodder analyzed. I had mine done by the local feed merchant but my former crop walker told me where to get it done.

I did used to grow a fair amount of arable and even potatoes but I also rotated with grassland as I had a fair sized dairy herd and grew things like field beans as well from time to time.

The small part of the farm that I use myself is now farmed in a natural way and the dock beetle for instance is flourishing once again, I do enjoy seeing the lace work on the leaves.

I did crack and use spray once on the little field I took back as there was hardly any grass and so much dock, nettle and thistle after is had been in set aside for a couple of years. I decided that there had been that much spray on it for the past ten years that a little more wouldn't make much difference but would help me greatly! I may have to spot spray the worst of it once with a knapsack - fun in 4 acres! It didn't need it last year though so I think I might be OK.

Stephanie

[Broomcroft]

Hi Roger

I'm not sure all HLS schemes are the same. Ours was basically to put fences, hedges and trees back as they were up to about 50 years ago, and to put in corners for wildlife. So there was a high level of capital works. The mix we used was a longterm mix and it included late-heading perenial rye-grass. The supplier has removed the contents list from their website now, so I can't tell you exactly what was in there. It was Oliver Seeds "Fortress" in the main. It worked well. Some of the other mixes we used of other parts of the farm were a total disaster and I have now reseeded (stitched in). I stitch in about 10% of the farm a year.

Our seed supplier did our forage analysis each year.



Edited By Broomcroft on 1258709748

[Bridgehouse]

We are in the HLS scheme, and part of it is raising the water level on a 25 acre field for wading birds, lapwing etc. We were able to claim an extra payment for grazing native cattle on this field. Unfortunately Dexter were not on the list at that time, however a recent post on here said Dexters have been put back under native breeds to assist with conservation grazing, is anyone aware if that includes the HLS scheme? The payment we receive for grazing pedigree beef shorthorn on the field is £70 per hectare per year.

[wagra dexters]

Roger, back to your first posting, from our experience I'd suggest that if you can possibly keep your round bales under cover you will have a lot less waste, and that goes for silage bales or dry hay, be it oaten/rye, pasture, or lucerne.
Our cattle won't eat their bales once they have had heavy rain or snow seeping into them. The stock have probably never been really hungry but will eat tussock & cutty grass in preference to bales that have been soaked through to any degree.
Margaret