What’s Up With Jane
December 2011.
Jane is nineteen months old and four months pregnant. Wow, how did that happen so fast? Before I know it, I’ll be milking again. While I sell grass fed beef and don’t grain my beef cattle, I do think a little grain as a dietary supplement for a dairy cow is sometimes in order. It’s a hard lesson to learn that it is easier to keep condition on an animal than it is to let the animal get too thin and run down and then try to bring them back. A healthy animal gives healthy milk and provides healthy meat, and unhealthy animal gives…well, I think you can figure it out. Being grassfed only does not guarantee health, it only guarantees that the meat and milk is grassfed. Grassfed is good, and you can even buy beef right now in winter that is being sold as grassfed. Just check Craigslist. Somehow the old “butcher after cold weather time because there is no refrigeration” has been translated to just plain old butcher time in November, December, January. What the heck! A word to all you Weston Price advocates (I’m are one) you want the grass fat on the beef you’re buying, and you’re not going to get your Omega 3′s in the winter, when the stock is trying to keep warm and are using their accumulated body fat to keep warm, or to sugar coat it, losing weight. If you’re a farmer selling nutrient dense meat, plan for summer harvest (when the grass is growing) and if you’re a consumer looking for the health benefits of grassfed beef, look for summer harvest.
So this is what Jane is getting for dinner along with free choice grass hay. A pound of COB with molasses, and about 3 pounds of assorted roots and greens. She probably could squeak by without all this, but why risk it? Her coat is in good shape and her rumen is full. She’s growing, she’s pregnant and she didn’t get the best start in life.
It seems with my milk cows, I make a step forward and then a step or two backward, it’s a long drawn out process. I’m starting all over again with Jane. I’m judging her life force to be somewhere between her grand dam and her dam in scheme of things.
For winter, Jane is stabled at night, and grazes during the day. My best guess is that she is eating about 20 pounds of hay and about 30 pounds of grass. If we were out of grass, she could probably polish off a 50 pound small square in addition to her energy boost pictured above.
Only time and her condition as a lactating milk cow will tell me what I need to feed, until then this is the program.
Food Renegade
Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op
I love what you are feeding her. Back in the day, another life ago, we used to feed our homestead cow squash and carrots and other tasty delights. Nowadays it’s haylage and commercial grain, but I liked feeding that way. Seemed right somehow.
TC, I wouldn’t be feeding like this on any scale that’s for sure, one or two is pretty easy to manage. If my other cows knew how Jane was being spoiled I would be in the doghouse
Thank you for sharing your insight into Jane’s needs. We have an older ram that we gets winter treats of carrots and winter squash to give him a little extra energy boost. Looking forward to more of Jane’s story.
Sheeps & Peeps, you’re welcome. Winter is a pretty bleak time feed-wise, sometimes it takes just a little to make a difference.
Wow – Jane’s dinner looks better than mine : )
I’m really looking forward to reading about your milking…
AMF, sometimes that is what I think too, gee, maybe I should bring this to the house and cook it instead!
I’m looking forward to milking again and having a baby in the barn. I miss it, Jane is a big girl now, all business like.
My girls stay pretty playful – I am surprised. But seems like my steer are all business once they get over eight months. But once it gets really cold, nobody is any fun anymore. Too much work to do shoveling it in.
Happy New Year
AMF, I about died laughing the other day, I wore rain gear to move the cows, and they just wouldn’t leave me alone, when I finally got the new paddock ready, they bucked and kicked and wanted me to play with them. I have no idea what was so silly about rain pants!
Our cows are fed inside, much like yours and for the same reasons. So far, we’ve not seen the pregnant cows lose condition over the winter. And we just feed hay. Ours will go through a whole bale a piece a day also.
We did butcher in those months, because we did need the cold. But having built the cold room for hanging, we hope to butcher in October from now on. That way we avoid the cold and the flies, and the cow will have come straight from pasture.
But in the past, we did have a good amount of very yellow fat on our beef, having butchered at late as January. So perhaps it’s the quality of the feed, that some grass fed beef lose condition? Or the breeding? Or perhaps colder winters than ours (we get down to -25F for some spells)?
But what I liked most about this post is the actual quantities and content of the supplemental feeding. It gives me some idea of what to plan for, if we should decide to go this route.
Pam, I don’t see that my cows lose condition in the winter, but once you have seen the difference between summer butchering fat and late fall, you’d be surprised. There have been quite a few good articles in Stockman Grassfarmer about the differences and timing of butchering. And no it doesn’t get that cold here. Do you cut and wrap your meat for your customers or do you have to take it somewhere after you have aged it in your chill room?
I should have added that fat paranoid consumers would be great for winter butchered beef, since there is less fat and many people are still on the low-fat lean beef bandwagon.
I’m feeding Jane extra because a dairy cow is a lot different than a beef cow, much like the difference between a laying hen and a meat bird. Same animal, but different requirements.
We built a small butcher shop in addition to the chilling room. It’s not inspected, just for our own use. We do our pig, beef and meat birds each year. Because it’s not inspected, we can’t sell. Anything we want to sell must go to the slaughterhouse alive, and be slaughtered, hung, and packaged there. As we raise mostly for ourselves, we’ve only used the slaughterhouse a couple times for the extra pig. (Pigs being herd animals do better with 2 or more.)
We got a good vacuum sealer and package our own meat and freeze it.
I did catch the milking vs beef thing, as I know milking cows have a greater need for nutrition.
I’m envious of your chill room setup. Our neighbor had a very nice one and when he died his kids tore it out, and sold his equipment on Craiglist. Someone got a good deal.
When you say 30 pounds of grass, is that as grazed or dry matter? I have a hard time figuring how much actual dry matter my horses consume on pasture.
Lucy, that is grazed and I am just guessing, by comparing to how much hay Jane would eat if she had no access to pasture. The picture above shows her rumen to be full and that is after grazing during the day and just before coming in.
Sorry…what’s COB?
PPD, Corn, Oats, & Barley. If I am going to feed grain I prefer it to pellets because of the extrusion process used to make pellets. At least I can see what is in the COB, in pellets you just never know…
Thanks. I found your blog within the last month. I think I’ve read everything twice. We have raised broilers and layers for a couple of years along with goats. Raised pigs over the summer. Bought a couple of Jersey heifers this fall. Everything was easy till I got the heifers. Your site was just in time. Today’s post was just in time. Cut up some root crops in the garden for the girls. They have never seen a root crop before so they thought I was nuts but they nibbled at the tops.
PPD, it does take them a while to get the taste of new things. They’ll come around I’m sure.
I don’t have much garden space or the inclination to grow enough carrots for my cow, but I think she needs a boost in the winter. Is there something you could recommend that I can purchase for her, she has a hard time keeping her condition during her milking period. I don’t want to feed lots of grain.
Carole, you might try Calf Manna, you can feed small amounts and it helps all ages to keep condition. And maybe if you’re feeding high protein hay you might want to back off on that a little and get her more energy. Just a thought.
Another calf! That’s wonderful – for you and for Jane. I love your thoughtful care of your animals. Happy new year, Nita.
Rhondajean, thank you, Happy New Year to your family as well
We have a mill in a nearby town that sells screenings — what’s left over after the grain is ground — it has a fair amount of ground grain, usually corn, but sometimes oats, barley or wheat. Our cows love it and everybody has to have their own feed trough because they fight over it. It’s inexpensive at 14 cents a pound and gives them a little extra boost to go with their mixed grain hay and grazing (although my pastures aren’t nearly as good as yours yet). I think my cows get more out of this than COB. When I fed COB there was such a high percentage of undigested grain that I think the wild turkeys got most of it!
Bee, the grain mills aren’t very close here, that sounds like a good mix. That’s why I feed roots if I can, keeps me off the feed grid a little more. I have to drive 15 miles just to get to the closest retail feed store.
Jane is getting so little, that I don’t see much in the manure, if there is any, the crows get it while their distributing the poop.
Jane is a lucky girl! That looks like a good dinner! Yes, she better not tell what she gets to eat compared to what the other cows get to eat or you will have a mutiny on hand!
Thanks for all the great info as always! We used to feed calf manna to the horses, will get some for my girl.
Hi again, I left a comment earlier but doesn’t look like it got through or maybe got thrown out?
Love what Jane gets for dinner and very interesting about the difference in the meat depending on what time of year it is processed.
Also I was wondering if you have any humane methods of getting rid of moles…sorry, I know, who cares about moles?
Peace, Love and Happiness
Chris, you did, it’s on the previous garden post with my answer
Ooops, thanks…I’ll go look!
I hadn’t thought about that in terms of slaughter times, we usually just organise the butcher when we run out of meat! So far that’s been late autumn, and that sounds like about the right timing, we’ll try to stick to that from now on. I’m going to try to grow some root crops and tree legumes (longer term plan) for Bella, as she is (fingers crossed) pregnant now and will be calving after winter (Australian seasons).