Feeding Hay

Daniel loading the trailer. We can fit fifteen bales on one load.

A lot of what fills our time in mid-winter is feeding out hay. We have most of the cattle in a big group, about 750 head, on one of the rental farms.
The hay comes from big stacks that we made last July. The bales are loaded onto a flat bed trailer and then hauled out to the herd. One person works on the trailer cutting  strings off the bales and pushing the flakes, or patties as we call them, off the trailer while the other person drives up and down the field.  Right now we are feeding about thirty-two bales a day with each bale weighing 600lbs. On Monday and Wednesday we put out enough feed for two days and on Friday we put out enough for three days so that we don't have to feed on Sunday.

The big stack of hay.

 Sorry some of these pics. are blurry, I took them with my phone. Also, these shots were taken on one of the two days we had snow this winter. We have had some pretty mild weather this season.