Hay

Thursday we drove 30 mile south to pick up some crabgrass hay. Crabgrass? I know right? Crabgrass was always a weed my Dad loathed as he pulled it from the lawn, still does. But, after some extensive research, it's great forage for all types of livestock!

If cut at the right time of growth during the early part of the year (June-July) it can yield pretty high protein (16% or so where a good cut of alfalfa is about 18-23% or so.) and is highly digestible! For goats this means more nutrition since their metabolisms are so fast.

These are about 900-1000 lb. bales.




Lucky for me, crabgrass isn't all that popular with the folks who don't know better and so it's a lot cheaper than some of the other hays like brome which I have been buying small square bales. The round bales are much more economical, if you can swing sheltering them/moving them.

Getting the trailer backed up to the barn took a bit of doing. We picked a perfect day to go get it with the 66 degrees we had and a lousy day to unload it after an ice storm. It was snowing while we unloaded, temp was probably hovering in the low teens and there was ice all over.

Moving them was a lot easier than one would think even without a tractor. We just pushed them off with some brute force. The fist one rolled quite nicely into the main barn, the other two we rolled into the south shelter with the brome bales. We had planned to use the trailer ramps which are stored underneath the trailer but realized, after backing up, they were on the side closest to the wall and we couldn't exactly get them out so improvised with a heavy duty pallet that it later ended up sitting on nicely.



So far, everyone seems to like it quite well. I don't think we'll be buying small square bales (65'ish pounds) any longer. We may need one more load of alfalfa before we quit buying hay for quite a while. Spring and summer pasture should cut way down on consumption.