The price of hay.....

Some thoughts and worries about hay and feeding the cows through the winter on what little is available..... With the lack of rain for almost a full month now, the price of grassy hay is higher even than last year ($4.50 so far this year), and I just paid $8 a bale for alfalfa. (Less than half an inch of rain the other morning.  It was wonderful to wake up to the sound of cars on the wet pavement, smell the wetness in the air, the big cracks in the lawn and pasture swelled shut for just a little while.....but it dried up so quickly and just got humid.  Things did green up just a tiny bit.) The price of alfalfa is what worries me.  For good milk production, Bessie needs alfalfa with each milking, and should probably have more.  At $8 a bale, I only got a dozen bales for almost $100!!!!  Yikes! The cows go through a bale of grassy hay between the two of them each day.  Grassy hay doesn't provide enough nutrition for Bessie, who needs alfalfa to produce the best milk.  A bale of hay is getting up towards $5 now, and that's from our "hay guy" Dan (who works on his own timetable....), who is potentially selling me his last 87 bales of grassy hay from the first cutting.  He's not usually sold out even by the end of the season, but this year I was lucky to be the one to buy the last of what he has.  If we don't get rain soon, what should be the third cutting will be in danger.  The second cutting didn't happen for a lot of hay/alfalfa fields around here.  Dan said that McHenry county is in danger of needing to truck hay in from other areas of the country, like Texas had to do last year.  So let's compute the necessary hay for the winter and next spring: I have 24 bales in the barn.  That takes us through possibly to mid-August.  The 87 grass bales will give less nutrition but will still be food, in case there is no third cutting and the prices sky-rocket some more for trucked-in hay.  Approximately 3 more months taken care of, if I figure in a flake or two of alfalfa for Bess to supplement her dried-grass intake.  That's only until mid-November.  Not nearly enough to get us through to next spring and the first cutting of hay (in May, I think).  Scary..... I could have the mill mix up a supplement with grain, alfalfa meal or pellets, and other stuff to compensate for the lack of nutritious hay, but I don't think it would be cost-effective in the long run. It puts a bit of reality in what we've decided to do here.  We know we don't have enough land to support even the grazing needs of even one cow, let alone the hay we'll need to supplement that very scant fresh grazing.  We knew it when we made the decision to try having a milk cow and a young heifer back in December.  We now have 2 adult cows (although the one-year old heifer still doesn't eat QUITE as much as Bessie the milk-machine) plus a baby who will be eating hay soon.  We said from the beginning that 2 cows would be the maximum number that we would keep.  The general consensus is that, if we can't afford the hay or can't buy enough, Lucy (the heifer) will need to be listed on Craigslist or BestFarmBuys.  It's a hard call in some ways, easy in others.  Bessie is the older cow, and at 8 is still producing milk but certainly doesn't have the years ahead of her that Lucy does.   Bess is a proven milk-producer, and now she's proved that she can easily have a calf and care for it, plus providing almost a gallon a day for the family in addition to what Ruby is drinking.  She'll give more as Ruby needs less, and as I continue to milk her regularly, up to 5 or 6 gallons a day (if I want to do that much milking, which I don't)  If we want to try for the Dutch Belted "breeding up" program, (where with each new calf's breeding at the age of 1 1/2 or 2 the percentage of Dutch Belt genetics get closer to 99% and can be registered as such) Bess is the one to keep.  She has official papers that document that she is 75% Dutch Belt.  But the idea would be we keep her until her next calf is able to have an even higher percent DB calf, and then Bessie is sold and we keep the calf.  (Ruby is half Holstein, so that concept doesn't work quite so well for keeping her). Lucy is younger but is almost ready to be bred.  She is still untamed to a certain extent but certainly is accustomed to being around people.  She just doesn't like to be handled unless it involves brushing.  She is trying to establish dominance now.  Nothing major, but I don't like Bessie the boss cow being challenged by Lucy the young upstart.  Lucy is not bred yet, and not producing milk.  She's not tried-and-true....yet.  Lucy's value is OK now (I think!), but could possibly be better if we could advertise her as a "bred heifer" in a few months, maybe even better if she could be sold as a family milk cow a year from now, but we might not have the time to wait for her to get to that point.  (These are all based on my inexperienced guesses.) Lucy would come with the advice to a potential new owner "You'll have to work with her if you want her to become a good family cow" (I'd have to do a lot of research and ask a lot of questions so that we could get her to that point, too).  And Lucy is half Dutch Belt, but doesn't have any papers or registration, so in the breeding up program, she would be considered the same as any non-Dutch-Belt cow--starting at square one. Ruby might sell more quickly, because she's so young, and she could be bought for less (better value for a farmer, maybe?).  A bottle-fed 2 week old heifer calf was just listed on Craigslist for $200.  No telling if that's what it will really sell for. Someone might be interested in buying Ruby for a 4-H project, or to raise as a dairy cow, or to even try to put on their own milk-cow to be raised by another cow-mom.  Maybe she's already too old for that last one.  A lot of these are guesses on my part, too, having never been through needing to sell one of our cows. We all agree that out of the three, Bess is the most important to us right now, because our milk source is with her.  Lucy has more value than Ruby at this point, because of how much closer she is to being bred, and having a calf, and possibly being a milking cow or even a family cow.  Being bred and being fed until she has a calf involve more hay and more money than we have to work with at the moment. Ruby, though, is the cutest by far, gets along with Bessie, is eating far less food than Lucy, and has the potential of being trained by us to be the kind of cow we would like to have eventually (or the kind of cow we'd be happy to eventually pass on to another family).  Ruby's pedigree is less-than-stellar if we're looking for good Dutch Belted genetics, though.  Bess the mom is 75%, but the bull father was Holstein (I'm pretty sure), so Ruby is less than half Dutch Belt.  Not a problem if she becomes a wonderful milk-cow in 2 years or so, but we really like the idea of breeding towards that higher and higher percentage as we go.  Keeping Ruby for that purpose puts us back at square 1 instead of working with Bessie's genetics of 75%. One other twist:  We bought Lucy and Bessie together, because, if we were needing to A.I. (artificially inseminate) in the future and not bring the cows to a bull, cows would indicate quite obviously when each other is in heat.  So if we sell Lucy too soon, then it will be more difficult to determine when to have the vet come out for Bessie's pregnancy deposit. Sigh....too much to think about.  The price of hay may decide it.  If friends or family still want the extra milk, the donations from what they pick up here on the farm may help the costs a bit and give us more money to put towards hay (again, assuming that there is hay to buy!).  It's a bunch of kind of random thoughts to try to figure out what to do and how to go about it.  Sorry if it's confusing--it's kind of confusing to keep it all straight in my own head, too! Reality seems to be what we knew from the start--we simply can't afford or support more than 2 cows, and that's really stretching it as it is.  We don't have the grazing land for even one.  We will always have to buy hay and grain unless the land around us comes available at a time when God provides the money we would need to rent or purchase more acres. It will be hard to say goodbye to any of the 3 ladies, no matter when or how.  Maybe we list Lucy on Craigslist, go ahead with A.I. breeding plans when we have the money and when it's time, and keep listing her until a buyer steps forward......We'll see how things fall into place, I guess! Sad, but necessary, and out of the 3 cows back behind the barn right now, Lucy is the best candidate to move on to another farm so that we can feed the remaining 2, unless I'm missing something. Sigh!   Reality.....!  And I guess on a real farm, the inevitable turnover of types of crops and of animals and everything else is just part of life as you deal with successful years and not-so-successful growing periods.