Hay Days Are Money Days: How to Shorten the Winter Feeding Stretch

If you run cows, winter is hay, and hay is the biggest line in your budget. How many days you feed it matters as much as what it costs. You will hear a lot of folks quote an average number of hay days. I could not find a national figure I trust, so I will give you what I can verify and then how to figure your own.

What a real survey says

A survey of Tennessee beef producers, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics (read it on Cambridge Core), got 1,772 responses from fescue country. Winter, January through March, averaged about 82 days on hay, and 85 percent of producers fed 80 days or more. Spring averaged 11 days, summer 2, fall 48. The authors noted winter supplemental feed can run over half of a cow-calf operation's annual costs in that region. That is one state in one year. Up north or in a drought, you can be at 120 days or more, which is the winter an extension economist used for planning in a recent Drovers piece.

Count your own days

Pull out your records. How many days did you feed in each of the last three winters? Average them and add a cushion. That is your planning number, and it is worth more than any national average. Our hay math guide shows how to turn days into bales.

Do the hay math

Missouri Extension's cow nutrition guide plans on about 33 pounds of hay per cow per day with 15 percent waste, so a cow eats about 25.5 pounds. A 1,000-pound bale feeds roughly 30 cows for a day. Multiply by cows and days. Add a reserve. Compare it to the stack.

Waste is where the money goes

The Drovers piece ran the numbers on a 1,300-pound cow eating 2.25 percent of body weight, a little over 29 pounds. At $100 a ton, cutting waste from 35 percent to 25 percent saved about 30 cents per cow per day. On 50 cows over 120 days that came to about $1,800. That is modeled, not measured on a ranch, but the size of it should get your attention. Use a feeder or ring, store bales off the ground and under cover, and feed what the cows will clean up. Missouri says daily feeding wastes less than dumping several days at once.

Shorten the stretch with grass

The Tennessee study also looked at what cut hay days. Interseeding a cool-season annual trimmed about 4.5 days in spring. More cattle per acre added days: about 3.5 in spring and 3.0 in fall for each extra animal unit per acre. Mixed cool- and warm-season grass was linked to fewer winter hay days. Those are survey associations, not trials, but they tell you where to look.

Missouri says stockpiled fescue can carry lactating cows without hay or supplement when intake is not limited, though keep mineral out. It depends on deferring fall grazing and on rain, and August nitrogen near 40 pounds per acre can help. If grass is under about 4 inches, cows cannot fill up. Farm.fm's page on managing grazing patterns is a useful read, and our rotational grazing piece shows how to stretch grass.

Put hay where it earns

• Late gestation and lactating cows: best hay. Missouri cites TDN targets of 60 and 65 percent.
• Pregnant cows in middle gestation: 55 percent TDN will do.
• Thin cows and young heifers: good hay and sorted out from the herd.
• Mature cows in good flesh: they can eat the rough bales.

Utah State Extension says mid-gestation is the cheapest time to put weight on a thin cow because her demand is lowest.

When winter runs long

If the cold drags on or fall grazing fails, you have to act. Buy hay early, since prices tend to climb through winter in short years. Cull open and poor cows. Use supplement carefully, priced by the pound of nutrient. Do not wait until February to find out you are short.

Keep a hay log

The best tool for this is a notebook in the truck. Write down the first and last day you fed hay each season, how many bales went out, what the hay tested and what the cows looked like in March. After three or four years you know your own place better than any survey does. You will see which winters you ran short, which pastures let you off early and which bales did not earn their keep. It costs nothing, and it makes every decision after it easier, from how much hay to put up in July to when to start asking about cows that are not paying their way.

It also helps with the banker and the landlord. Numbers from your own place carry more weight than numbers from a magazine, and they give you something to point to when you want to try a change.

Checklist

1. Average your last three winters of hay days.
2. Test the hay.
3. Write the hay budget with waste and a reserve.
4. Fix feeders and storage.
5. Look for more grazing days: stockpile, interseed, adjust stocking.
6. Score body condition three times over the winter.

Find your extension office through agriculture.directory. Prices and weather change every year, so check your own numbers against local advice.