Remember that large bale of hay I had gotten for the cattle? And my hopes and plans it would last nine or ten days? It lasted exactly four days. Holy Crap! The cattle mowed right through the bale just like it was candy. I am glad I bought three bales and not my planned two bales. Dan helped me roll another bale into the corral. I've been working on fences and, while I could move the bale by myself, I wasn't up to rolling a 1400 lb bale by myself all the way across the corral.
When we got the bales they had been stacked two high over Winter. My previous bale was a top bale. This "new" bale was a bottom bale. Dan said one of the bales he fed his cattle had 20% rotted. The other bales he got were fine. His cattle are not going though the hay as fast as my cattle did. So far I think this bale is fine though the bottom on which it rested is dirty. The cattle are not going though this bale as fast. So perhaps the cattle were "catching up" on their food when eating the first big bale.
Before getting the big bales I fed the cattle three 60 lb bales a day. They could have eaten another bale a day but I was trying to make my hay last. 180 lb divided by 11 cattle (I am counting Baby as a full animal and not a half) is 16.4 lb of hay a day for each animal. A rule of thumb is cattle need 2% of their weight each day. 600 lb cattle would then need at least 12 lbs of hay a day.
1400 lb divided by 11 cattle divided by 4 days equals 31.8 lbs of hay for each animal each day. Whoa! No wonder the cattle look fatter.
Hopefully the cattle will back off a bit from the amount they are eating. Otherwise my three big bales won't last until the end of the month.
Lastly, I put three pocket gopher traps out in the hayfield. This morning as I rode my bicycle past where I trapped the last pocket gopher of last year I noticed a fresh new mound of dirt. I should have carried all the traps out but I only felt like carrying three and it didn't take long to find three areas to set traps.
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