They were very happy to give me the hay as it saved them time and effort to haul the hay to the dump to get rid of it. I was very happy as the cattle will eat the hay, and this extra hay will now enable me to get the cattle through the rest of this month on hay and allow the grass to get a head start before I let the cattle loose on the pastures. With my hay and Jim's hay I only had enough hay to get to Memorial Day - a week short of June. The cattle are eating more and more hay lately.
Fed cattle are happy cattle and happy cattle don't get into trouble and cause problems.
The hay originally was from the same batch as Jim's hay. And the same happened to this hay: not really covered against the elements. Actually it was better covered as it originally was covered, but some of the tarps tore and became useless and other tarps were moved to other better hay they had bought. Even when 'new' the horses turned up their noses at this hay because it was dusty. Overall this hay was in better condition than Jim's hay which was never covered. But it still had plenty of wet, black, or moldy spots.
In addition to the three miniature horses, their kids each were raising pigs for 4-H this year and they had four pigs. To keep the animals in place they strung an electric wire on their short two strand fence. I could easily step or reach over the fence to load the hay but I still turned the electric wire off when loading the hay as I didn't want to accidentally touch the live wire.
The hay stack was closer to the pigs than the horses which was annoying as pigs smell, and these smelled strong (and bad). *p-yew!*
Their son Cody raised a calf for 4-H last year and with the profits from the calf he bought a used pickup. He is 14 years old and mature for his age. He loves animals and wants to be a vet or be a rancher when he grows up.
I brought two full loads of hay home tonight and I have one more load to get tomorrow of miscellaneous bales and broken string bales.
While unloading the first load I turned on the water to top off one water trough. My memory is going as I forgot to turn the water off before I left to get the second load. I returned to a lake at my fence gate. *augh!*
This makes two nights in a row I have done this. Last night I had the water running when I got the idea of going over to talk with Jim to ask if his son-in-law still had the hay he wanted to get rid of. I had a lake when I returned home.
From the first load I gave the cattle several bales of hay to eat. They had it all eaten by the time I returned with the second load. When feeding them more hay from the second load I noticed five heifers did not come to eat and were standing at the fence near the hay I had unloaded already. Then I saw that the cattle had gotten off one board of the fence and now were able to get their heads through the fence and they were eating the hay from the stack. *argh!*
So I had a challenge of re-nailing the board back on the fence, keeping the cattle away, and navigating the 'lake' as I went in and out of the gate. I also found a large sheet of wood and placed it between the fence and the hay stack to reduce the enticement to the cattle to try to get the fence board off the fence again.
Tomorrow I will unload the second load of hay from the pickup and then get the rest of the hay.
While I had stacked the hay well, I decided to be on the safe side and tied the stack down somewhat.
The cattle were waiting for me to give them hay from the first load.
On the right side is the fence they got one board off of.
On the right side is the fence they got one board off of.
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