Polar Vortex

Wintry blast of arctic weather across the entire United States hit north Missouri early Friday (12 Jan 24) and temperatures have continued to plummet. This morning was -14F with a windchill of -34F. Well above any record cold, but mighty uncomfortable at best. Grazed pastures are now well frozen even under the 8-12 inches of snow. 

Although, we have plenty of standing forage for grazing, my husband has been keen to unroll big bales of hay to the cattle. If he wants to do it, that’s fine by me. It looked last summer that there would not be enough grass for winter, so he had baled up and purchased a lot of big bales of hay and since we store most of it outside and directly on the ground, right now is a perfect time to feed it up. No mud and the cows do appreciate it although with the extreme temps, they quickly adapted to it being substitutionary feed vs supplemental feed. Once the weather breaks, though, they’ll go back to grazing that green grass under the snow.

It is good for Allen to get out although he is mask wearing and son, Dallas, goes as well to get the gates and to take off the net wrap. Although he is in remission from his AL Amyloidosis cancer, he is not out of the woods yet and must still limit exposure to dust, dirt, livestock, large groups of people, young children, and pets. 

These young long time weaned calves are experiencing their first harsh winter without their mums. Since i ‘retired’ the pregnant cows were sold mostly last year (2023) and carry over the calves and the remaining cows to sell in January 2024. We’ve had too much income due to drought sales and that Allen sold all his fall calving cows because of his cancer and he has no help to manage it all. I can handle the 350 or so spring calvers, bulls, and replacement heifers, (with some help from my sons) but the task of calving out that many fall calvers with Allen’s weekly trips to KU Med for treatments, then the 2-week hospital stay followed by 2 weeks at Hope Lodge near the hospital (i had to stay with him as well) was just going to be too much. 

Total Grazing Along

Thursday, although only in mid-30s (F), the sun came out brightly and there was no wind, so i braved the temps and went to my farm. I was concerned about the deep cycle 12V battery running my solar energiser getting low on charge. With temps below freezing each night, a battery outside, if flat, can easily be ruint. (my solar panel is currently under renovation)

My last entry described my plan to strip graze south of the timber, so here is an outline. There is a great deal of difference in the amount of forage just south of the timber vs heading on down the hill to the south, so my paddock sizes need to be adjusted to allow for 1 1/2 hours of grazing. Cows really won’t graze longer than that before relaxing and chewing their cud.

In this case, they still have plenty of grazing in the timber, so they were not hungry at all. I will be leaving them for several days here so they will clean up.

How do i make any determination as to how much area to give my cows? Basically, it’s a math problem. The art is training your eye. When i pulled out the polybraid (white lines), i took large steps to estimate the distance, then multiplied that number times 3 feet. In this case, it was right at 300 feet. I step off the bit on ‘y’ axis (purple line), using the second strip for an example because it is straight across to make for simpler explanation. Anyway, it is about 70 feet. So 70 feet times 300 feet equals 21000 square feet. There are 43,560 square feet in an acre, so the area in question is 48%. Obviously, for ease of figuring in my head, i’ll use 1/2 acre. Now, the art part. I estimate in this paddock there to be only 1000 lbs of forage per acre available to total graze, so total is 500 lbs. Using a 70 animal unit figure and knowing they will eat about 30 lbs per day per head. My herd will consume about 2100 lbs total forage per day. If i was on target for giving them 1 1/2 worth of grazing (4 moves per day) or 1/4 of their time grazing, they would need 525 lbs of forage to graze for that time period. Amazingly, or perhaps not so amazingly since i’ve been estimating forage per acres for decades now – you can see that estimates come out extremely close. That’s just pretty cool.

My explanation is probably clear as mud, but it’s not difficult in real practice.

Paddocks will be smaller as i move down the hill since the forage is much heavier – some will be up around 3000 lbs per acre and i will adjust the grazing strip size as needed to accomplish my goals of total grazing.

My cows have learnt to come to the reel end so they will walk behind me as i reel up the polybraid to gain access to their new forage break. This reel, polybraid, and posts will be used to leapfrog ahead to form the next paddock.

Here is the illustration for that next paddock break with cows respecting the electrified polybraid. The polybraid from the former photo is now set up as you can see to the right of the photo.