Balancing Act
March 31, 2015
March 29, 2015
As much as I would love to turn Jane out to graze at will 24/7, the early spring grass just doesn’t have enough nutrition to sustain her and her milk production. Besides the obvious short grass that tells me, Jane tells me she wants some long-stemmed fiber by coming down from the pasture and waiting at the gate at evening chore time.
So for now, Jane has free-choice pasture by day, and I put her in at night and give her free-choice grass hay.
Goodnight Jane, see you in the morning.
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Throwback at Trapper Creek 
Sounds like Jane has the best of both worlds!!
Maid service!
We do spoil our girls, don’t we? Maybelle is 2 1/2 weeks into her dry period and delighted to be back out with her milk cow buddies. But she’s ticked that the rations no longer include alfalfa hay and extra grain. I keep telling her that she’d be even more ticked if her bag was so big she had to walk spraddle-legged…
I know, the beef cows are a little miffed too, since they can see Jane out. If they only knew the half of it! There is a enough grass for her production to inch up even at OAD.
That reminds me that I meant to ask you — do you keep giving her supplemental roots in the summertime, or does summer pasture keep her happy? This is my first year milking (our goat) and I’m not sure if we should be easing back on the concentrates in a month or two once the pastures are in tip-top shape or not.
I don’t, in fact she’s just about done or actually the roots are, I usually plan for hopefully enough until we see some green. I do give her rolled barley though in addition to roots, pasture and hay. She needs a little bit of carbs to keep some condition, so you should play it by ear with your girl, Jane’s mama didn’t need much in the way of supplements once the grass came on, she was an easy keeper. I’m hoping Jane’s daughter when she has one will be the same as her gramma.
A girl knows what a girl wants! 🙂
Are those flies on Janes face? It seems early to have them out already.
Good eye! It warmed up fast last weekend – I counted about a dozen or so, but now with the rain they’re hiding out again.