We spent the majority of last week in the hayfield. If you remember the hayfield that we planted in millet around 6 weeks ago, this is it. At that time I proposed doing a financial analysis of this hay crop. We went through the costs associated with planting and establishment. I will be completing that analysis in next week's email. For now, I just wanted to show the fruits of the labor that we put into that field. We were able to harvest and preserve the entire 44 acres without getting rained on. We pushed through to the finish line on Saturday, and it started raining less than an hour after I finished baleing. The quality of this crop is fantastic. It got a nice rain just after planting and then hit several afternoon showers throughout the next few weeks. I don't have an exact count yet, but it looks like total production was around 230 rolls. Each roll will weigh around 1000 lbs. However, we did put this crop up as a baleage (baled silage). For that process, we bale the crop at around 50% moisture. Therefore, out of a 1000-pound bale, we will be feeding 500 pounds of "dry matter". Dry matter is how we calculate feeding requirements for cattle. Basically, it's just a calculation to back the water content of the feedstuff out of the equation. On average a cow will eat about 35 lbs of forage dry matter per day. Of course, that varies depending on temperature, size, and what we are asking that animal to do, lactate, grow, or maintain. So on average 1 cow will need approximately 2 of these bales for each month that we intend to feed hay. I'll have more calculations and analyses next week as we determine the cost of each bale. Lastly though, notice that we did leave a handful of strips unharvested. I chose to do this because the migrating mourning doves love millet. They are just starting to show up and will be coming through in September. By early September the seedheads should be fully open and the birds will be able to feed here.
