We have a snowy start to the new year and the cattle are getting a full ration of grass hay. The top picture show the cow herd including the coming two year old bred heifers (#77 is one) eating hay from one of the old feeding barns on our place. Our property used to be one of the larger dairy farms in the Rogue Valley a few decades ago. It is nice to have this old barn to store our hay and feed during muddy conditions. The bottom picture shows the 9 and 10 month old weaned calves eating hay out on pasture. They are still able to graze some to supplement their hay. If you look right over the top of the calves in the distance, you can see the cows in their paddock loafing after filling up on hay at the barn. Our cattle do quite well in these snowy conditions as they are adapted to cold weather with their winter hair coats and fleshy condition with their fat cover providing good insulation from the freezing temperatures.
Here are our weaned calves still grazing in December. We are feeding some high quality hay to them each day, but still allowing them to graze areas of fresh pasture each day. It would take much more snow than what we got today to keep them from utilizing this high quality forage.
We are planning on weaning our spring born calves next week when we get a break in the weather. It has been a very productive grazing season and you can see that we still have a nice supply of forage available for our cows and calves. The 4+ inches of rain we received in the middle of October was wonderful for our non-irrigated fields and hopefully sets us up for a good water year.
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