I miscounted the amount of hay bales I had left and also forgot that the one stack in the back was straw and not hay. And the new cattle are a bit heavier and eat more hay. So I was going to run out of hay before the end of the month.
Dan has lots of hay but this year he was worried about running out of hay too. He has a number of contacts and said he could find a large bale of hay for me. But that turned out to be a problem as other people were getting short of hay and it is harder to find this Spring. Dan found a couple of prospects but one admitted his hay wasn't that good and the other wanted $65 for a 700 lb bale. That comes out to be $185 a ton. Wow. A cattleman can't make money with so expensive of hay. Dan put an ad in the paper to buy hay but after a day he had no calls.
My neighbor looked to have 20 bales but when I asked him he said two bales were hay and the rest were straw. He needed those two hay bales.
Another absentee landowner down the road had a half dozen or more bales in a field. I tracked him down and asked if I could buy a couple of those bales. He told me he sold them the other week. But he had some hay at his place south of town. He had a few 1400 lb bales at $100 a bale. That is about $143 a ton. More than I am used to paying but cheaper than the other prospects.
I needed a way to transport the hay as I do not have a flatbed trailer. Dan has a trailer and is looking for hay so Saturday morning we went and got the hay. The rancher had a dozen bales and they looked to be good hay. I planned on buying two bales as I felt with my remaining bales I had enough hay until June 1. But since he had a dozen bales I bought three bales and Dan bought the other nine. So now I should have enough hay.
Dan's trailer held three bales and his flatbed truck one bale. After hauling the first eight bales to his place we hauled three to my place. The bales are packed tight and are heavy. It took both Dan and I to roll the bales off his trailer. Two in the NE pasture and one in the corral. I have no tractor to move the hay bale so the challenge will be to roll the next bale into the corral once the cattle need it.
The cattle ate and ate the hay. Between 1 pm when they got the hay and late afternoon in the second photo that is how much hay they ate.
The cattle slowed down after the first day and their hay consumption has slowed down. Now to see how long this bale will last.
Here is a video when the cattle started eating the hay. The video also shows Daisy in the corral with the cattle.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbTIk3jrZOQ
When I was previewing the video Daisy was sleeping in the chair next to me. When she heard the cattle banging on the feeder she woke up with a start, looked at the computer and me, and when the cattle banged again Daisy jumped off the chair and ran into the other room. After a bit she returned and then walked around the computer and table checking all around and also looking out the window near the computer. Then she climbed back into the chair and went to sleep.
Sorry Daisy.
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