Cows Consuming Calories

Cows consuming calories...say that 3 times fast!

While the humans in the world are trying to stick to New Year's resolutions on how to work off all the extra Thanksgiving and Christmas pounds, the cattle of S&K Farm are eating calories like they are going out of style, trying to grow their calves. The weather may be playing tricks daily on the weatherman, but at least one thing is consistent here on the farm, the cattle have good appetites! This time of year, many fields are down to little grass so farmers are forced to feed their cattle hay. At S&K, we're lucky this year to have several fields which were not grazed all spring and summer, creating stockpiled grass. In other words, instead of feeding hay, our cattle are eating uncut, dried grass. Now you may be asking yourself, what's the big deal? Hay is just dried grass, right? Well, "sort of" is really the answer. Fresh grass is generally considered to be a better feed with the best nutrient value. The same grass, dried and uncut, is still full of nutrients, plus it saves the farmer the expense of having the harvest the grass by letting the cows harvest as they eat. Cut, dried grass, or hay, assuming it's been stored in the dry, theoretically should maintain the same nutrient value as fresh grass or uncut, dried grass. The downfall to hay is that it takes time, fuel and money to harvest the hay, and then takes more time, fuel and money to actually feed it to the cattle. So, here at S&K farm, for this winter season, we're letting the cows harvest the grass themselves. If old man winter shows up and covers the grass with snow, we'll tap into the hay supply to keep those cows consuming calories and then try out our sleds on the biggest hill we can find!