We started feeding our cattle a few weeks ago while I was gone to Australia and New Zealand.  I returned from the southern hemisphere’s warm and sunny summer to cold Nevada.  I guess I can’t really call it cold, it’s been warmer than usual this week, but it still feels cold to me coming from hot weather.  We have been feeding our stocker calves dried distiller’s grains (DDG) since December.  In early January we split the group into two herds, the heaviest 59 calves continued receiving a maintenance diet of DDG and winter pasture while the lightest 117 went on an alfalfa diet as hay is very cheap at this time.  Our spring calvers eat stockpiled summer forage until a week before we start calving and then get fed a little cow hay every other day. 

There’s not much else to say about feeding hay except I’m always happy when we are finished even though we feed a lot less hay than just about everybody else around here.  A cow here gets about $40 of supplemental feeding (this includes fuel and labor costs) each year.

It was a cloudy when I loaded the hay on our 1964 GMC 5000 in preparation for feeding.  It started snowing while my sister Leslie was feeding the light stockers.  By the time we made it over to the first calf heifers large wet flakes were really coming down.  Yesterday afternoon I was on

cow checking duty and brought in a first calf heifer that needed a little help.  I pulled my first calf of the season last night and I’m thankful all we had was a little rain for weather at the time.