Crickhollow Farms

Exploring the pasture
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Hi All,

I'm in the process of acquiring some cattle as a total cow newbie. I have a question about what to feed them in. Specifically these questions:

1) I have a shedrow horse barn that I've converted into loafing stalls. The dairy barn that I volunteered at, and most facilities I've seen, feed their cows on a slanted fence panel with concrete and they just eat off the ground. Great. However I use the deep litter method through the winter and the straw/bedding can end up between 1-3' thick by the end of the winter so that is really not an option for me. I'm going to have a dairy cow in the barn and I'm wondering if anyone out there on the homestead scale uses a different feeding method. A hayrack or a bunk feeder or something that would sit atop the bedding with success? Preferably with minimal hay waste.
2) I'm also looking into getting a couple steers for beef that would live outside in the pasture. Most feed out the round bale feeders. I'm in the very rainy PNW and am wondering if the hay feeder should be covered? I'd hate to pay all that money for hay for it just to go moldy but I've never really seen them covered. Again, I'm only looking to get a couple so I don't think they'd be ripping through big bales very fast. I probably can't even get round bales around me, but even if I feed normal bales should I be figuring out a covered feeding station solution. I'm also planning on rotational grazing so anything I use needs to be easily moved.

Thanks in advance for any tips/tricks!
 

Baymule

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I’ve just moved. I set up temporary cow panel pens for my sheep. I make a square hay feeder with half panels, situated between the pens so both sides can access the round bale. But this is out in the open and will get rained on. So I bowed over a cow panel, put a half panel at the backside and attached a half panel at the front side with carabiner clips. Take front panel off, put round bale in under the hoop. I put a small tarp over the hoop.

Sheep can poke their heads through the cow panel squares, but cows can’t. To keep them from wasting hay, cut a hog panel in half, use front and back. They can reach over it.
 

Alaskan

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The barns I grew up with all had various kinds of feeding troughs, built into the barn.

All though were hay storage barns, and then one edge of the hay storage barn was made into a run in/shelter area for livestock. Hay storage completely segregated from livestock.

But with the above set up, you grab the hay, that is right there, and put the hay, or feed, pellets, whatever, directly into the feed trough.

We only fed on the ground out on the range.... barn feeding was always into a raised trough.

Anyway... the feed trough can be set up however works best for you, and is most convenient.

For feeding in the field....

if they are on pasture, hopefully they wouldn't need feed daily?? In which case, taking out enough for a single feeding would be essiest.

Otherwise, a small building might be nice. We have one small "carriage house" sized barn to store just a bit of hay, but it is at a pasture junction, so is accessed from 2 different pastures. It has extended roof overhangs so a feed trough is tucked up against the building wall and is protected from rain.

(but you could easily make a building that opened onto 4 pastures, or make a building in a central sacrificial pen that also holds water).

Your other option is to have a feeder with roof (because, yes, dry hay is MUCH better and wastes less), that you can move. You can make a feeder on skids, or use a modified trailer.

Here is a commercially available movable feeder with roof:

8800-cattle-feeder.jpg


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