The hay. What can I say? Diesel prices are up- the parts are hard to come by. You have to make it yourself to feed your livestock. Once you knock the hay down and start the process of storage you can’t afford any hinderances in the assembly line. You have this window of time – once you start this process – it’s like a ship that’s coming in – it doesn’t just stop right away. You can get into trouble real quick if there’s a problem. Once it gets wet you start losing the quality of the hay, so people aren’t going to buy it. Same thing if it looks like it’s been sun-bleached, or if it’s been rained on, or it gets mold in there.
This process requires help – which is tough to come by these days. If you can’t find help you have to put all those square bales away yourself. And you have to keep it dry – really you need like a couple people to unload it and get it to the barn. I mean now-a-days you can’t even get people to work at a restaurant. In the years past I would say to kids – hey why don’t you come over – it’s $10/hr. You would get people no problem, but I heard about a busboy up in Pine Plains and they’re making like $28/hr! So now some restaurants are open like 3 days a week because their labor costs have gone up so high. So they have nothing to work within the food margin. Labor is really tough to come by lately – not sure why.
Putting hay away is a dirty, dusty, hot job — and its back breaking. I mean there’s been some motivated people here and there – but that’s why I started doing the round bales. When I go to feed the cows I just dump a round bale in their area and they’re feeding for a couple days and I’m not touching anything at that point but the tractor and fork to grab and lift it out. I don’t have to go up there and hump these square bales out of there.
Square bales – a kicker — throws them into the wagon, but it’s going to be more money – but you’re going to have more customers too. Down here you have a lot of horse people – cows aren’t so picky – horses are very picky – your hay has to be good quality. Most of the horse people buy the squares. So if I’m making a round bale – who am I selling it to? I would have to find a market. So I’m just making them for myself. I try to make everything for myself. If you go to buy it now…hay has doubled [in price]. I had 14 cows this winter – and on a cold day they’re going to eat more – if I put the round bale out – and I come out later in the afternoon — it’s basically devoured. It’s cold and they want to stay warm. If you use squares – you’ll have to throw a bunch of squares in there – which is a lot more work and money. Squares are good for goats. 1 square will feed 5 of your goats. Then the squares make sense. Storage-wise you can stack them up – which is great if they’re on the ground floor. The round bales take up a lot of room. You can lay them down and stack them that way but then you need a bale grabber – hydraulics – which is more money – I just stuff them in the barn which isn’t that great to look at.
Watering my guys in the winter is pretty basic – I put the water in a big tub. In the winter every night it freezes – every morning I go out with a sledgehammer and I knock off the top – there always seems to be water that isn’t frozen – and the animals drink that. When you have them fenced in – there’s not really any stream or pond for them to go to – you’re the only source for their water. Sometimes you need the hose to get the water kind of loosened up – but sometimes on really cold nights, now the water in the hose is frozen! This can be a real issue if it’s an unusually cold winter.
In the winter they need a lot of water – but in the summer when they’re eating the grass – a lot of times its moist or wet from rain so it’s not such a big deal.
There’s a few things new farmers need to understand. One of the biggest mistakes that I’ve made in the past is that these guys can’t change their diet very quickly. If they get into something that they shouldn’t have eaten – it will totally mess up their biome. I was feeding pigs in a different penned in area and there was a lot of grain material – they pushed the fence down and ate what was on the ground. I didn’t think it was any big deal, but then I come out one morning and all the cows are scattered – nobody’s with each other – and I said to myself – “oh my gosh…there’s a problem”. Here I am coming out to feed them and nobody is coming up to meet me out by the fence line like they usually do. I was panicking – and I look over – and sure enough I see they got into the grain.
The cows got into all the grain that was in the fenced-in area the pigs knocked down. If they overindulge in it – they look like they’re drunk – they were stumbling. Grain is high in carbohydrates and starts to ferment in the stomach lining as opposed to being properly digested. The natural flora of their digestive systems then gets completely disrupted.
What ends up happening is they start having nerve problems – walking, etc. One of them wasn’t getting up. He was getting what we call the bloat – its gases from in the stomach. So here I am in the field at dusk – it got dark and now I’m out there with a flashlights and car lights – and the vet comes out – and now we’re incubating the cow and sticking this tube into the cow to let the gas out. The smell was horrific! We thought we saved it but the next day but sure enough he had passed. All this Herculean effort and we couldn’t get it done. At the same time there is death – that same morning – I went down with the forklift and picked up the cow – and all the cows were standing around watching me – it was like a procession – it just needed pipes and drums – like a firefighter funeral – it was sad. But I look in the woods – I drive down – one of the cows I didn’t think was pregnant was delivering a baby! It was a low and a high at the same time. And farming is like that – you may be down one day, but then all of a sudden something good comes about and surprises you.
- Tom Bonanno & Heather Wentworth
This is Part 2 of a series of articles. Once a month I will be writing on the trials and tribulations, and humorous times of To Have and Have Not Farm.
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