Posted by john in la on January 30, 2010 at 05:09:04 from (66.157.50.121):
In Reply to: Grazing- Who does it? posted by Don-Wi on January 29, 2010 at 19:44:29:
It is always nice to read how different areas farm especially since I do not understand how you guys turn a profit having cows that live in a building 24/7 and with herd sizes of 30 to 50 cows.
While it will do you no good since I live in a different climate zone; this is how we did it back in the 70's when I was a teen on a dairy farm.
We had 100 milking cows on 80 acres so we really milked about 83 head a day. You were a class A fluid drinking milk dairy or you did not milk. No cheese around here.
We had 3 structures on site. A roof to store machines and hay under; A grain bin and mixer to store corn and soybean meal in; and a building that had a milk tank a double 4 stall herringbone. 4 milkers and 8 stalls.
Everything was trucked in. Corn; soybean meal; alfalfa hay. The only thing we grew was grass. We had a summer grass; usually Bahia and about 1/2 (50 acres) was disked in the fall and planted to winter rye grass.
Our cows were grazed 24/7 365 days a year. The only time they went inside was at milking time. They were brought onto a concrete holding pad waiting their turn to be milked. They were feed a grain mix while being milked and then moved to a different pad where they were allowed access to water and alfalfa hay. Then it was back on the pasture for another 12 hrs.
This was very typical of all the dairies in the area.
Today the only thing that has changed is they do not truck in hay; and the size has gotten bigger. Typical size is now about 300 cows and they bale Bahia off the field for hay. They also added some more soybean meal to the ration to composite for the protein loss in the hay.
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Today's Featured Article - Grain Threshing in the Early 40's - by Jerry D. Coleman. How many of you can sit there and say that you have plowed with a mule? Well I would say not many, but maybe a few. This story is about the day my Grandfather Brown (true name) decided along with my parents to purchase a new Ford tractor. It wasn't really new except to us. The year was about 1967 and my father found a good used Ford 601 tractor to use on the farm instead of "Bob", our old mule. Now my grandfather had had this mule since the mid 40's and he was getting some age on him. S
... [Read Article]
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