When the snow melts, the ground will be fertilized by a mix of wasted hay and manure.

      Hay

      When pasture is dormant due to drought or cold, your cattle will need hay, and beef cattle don’t need top-quality hay. Ideally, the hay should be a mix of grass and legumes cut before they go to seed and baled after they’ve dried thoroughly. As long as the hay isn’t moldy or nothing but stems with no leaves, it’ll do for beef cows. Pure, high-quality alfalfa or clover hay, which is high in milk-producing protein and low in body-heat-producing carbohydrates, can be harder on beef cows than old, coarse hay, but you might want to use it if you’re fattening steers during the winter. Knowing when to buy or harvest hay saves you money, time, and labor.

      When to Buy or Harvest

      If you’re buying hay for cows and calves, you don’t need the expensive stuff. During the growing season, keep a close eye on the weather in your region. Dry seasons quickly create hay shortages, driving prices sky-high. Buying early and in quantity during good years and storing the excess is generally your best bet. In covered storage, hay will last for years, and even round bales stored outside will last two or three years if the bales are tight and kept on dry ground. Don’t pay for any hay until you’ve dug into a few bales and checked for mold, weeds, and stem content.

      If you’re having hay made for you on your land or making it yourself, don’t be in too much of a hurry. Waiting a little longer into the season to make your first cutting of hay gives you several advantages: The hay will be taller, giving you more volume. It will be higher in carbohydrates and lower in protein, which is good for keeping cattle warm in the winter. The weather in most areas will be more settled, with less likelihood of a surprise rainstorm ruining the cutting. In addition, grassland nesting birds will have a better chance of getting their babies fledged and out of the nest before the hay mower comes through.

      Our local dairy farmers like to take three or four cuttings off their hayfields each year, but I take two—I’d rather have the cows harvest it by grazing a couple times than to haul out the tractor and Haybine again. This extends the grazing season and cuts my out-of-pocket feed costs. As an added benefit, the cattle fertilize as they graze.

      Winter Hay Feeding

      How you winter-feed your cattle depends on your setup and preferences. If you have just a few head of cattle and are using small square bales, it’s easy to construct a wooden hay feeder or buy a metal feed bunker. If you’re feeding round bales, you’ll need round bale feeders sized for the bales you have. These are widely available at farm stores, and the pieces can be hauled or even delivered in a small trailer for assembly at home.

      If you’ve got a shed for the cattle, you can feed hay inside. This is nice in foul weather, but it greatly increases the volume of manure you’ll have to clean up next spring because cattle like to stick close to the hay in winter. If you feed outside, you can either feed in the same spot every day or keep moving the hay feeder to a new location.

      If you’re feeding in the same location every day, the happiest situation is having the hay feeders on a cement pad. This eliminates the mud and simplifies cleanup in the spring. If you don’t have a cement pad, your dirt feeding area will become a “sacrifice area,” so churned up by the cattle that it’s unlikely you’ll have anything growing there for a long time. In either case, plan on scraping the feeding area or the shed clean in the spring and spreading the moist mix of manure and old hay on your pasture or hayfields with a manure spreader. This typically requires a Bobcat with a bucket, a tractor, and a manure spreader. If you don’t clean up the area, chances are you’ll have a terrific infestation of stable flies because the manure-hay mixture is optimal for their breeding.

      The other option for winter hay feeding is “outwintering,” or feeding hay on pasture away from the barn. You move the feeders each time they’re emptied; because the manure and wasted hay is spread as the cattle are feeding, there’s not much spring cleanup. Be aware, however, that in areas where winters are wet and the ground doesn’t freeze, this system will quickly make a huge muddy mess in pastures. Where the ground freezes, it’s a terrific way to renovate poor spots in pastures: because it’s frozen, the sod won’t be badly cut up by the cattle, and, in the spring, the ground will be covered with a layer of manure mixed with hay, the best fertilizer there is.

      With outwintering, you can either haul hay out to the feeders a few times a week, or you can set all of your bales out during the fall and not have to start a tractor all winter. In October, I calculate how many bales I think I’ll need for the number of cattle I’m carrying through the winter and for the length of time I think the ground will be frozen. With a tractor and hayfork, I set out the round bales in three or four rows, spaced 15–20 feet apart on all sides. When the bales are in place, I cut and pull off all of the twine (or netting wrap) by hand. I build a three-strand electric fence around three sides of the rows, leaving one side open. I roll the round-bale feeders out of storage and pop them over the bales at the head of the rows on the side that I left open. Then I stick plastic step-in posts into the next row of bales and run two strands of electric wire across them to keep the cows from the rest of the hay.

      Constructing this “hay corral” takes me 20–30 hours, but it’s pleasant work in moderate weather, and it means I won’t have to start the tractor on cold mornings or fight with twine or round bales frozen to the ground. Instead, once or twice a week, I unplug the electric fence, walk out to the hay corral, move the portable electric wire back one row, tip the feeders on their sides, roll them over to the new row of bales, then walk back and plug in the fence again. This takes all of fifteen minutes. What’s left of the old bales is bedding for the cows, keeping them clean and out of the snow. In the spring, what was a poor area of pasture will be fertilized, and, by late summer, the pasture will be deep green and growing taller and lusher than anywhere else.

      Grain

      Cattle love grain. It brings them running when we want them, and it can produce tender, tasty beef from even mediocre animals. Although the most common grain fed to cattle is field corn, they will eat a wide variety of other offerings. For the small operator, corn is usually the cheapest, most available, and easiest grain to buy in small quantities (under a ton). Corn should be ground or rolled so the cattle can digest it better.

      Talk to your feed store about other feed options in your area or additional additives, especially if you are fattening a steer for slaughter. Corn alone isn’t high enough in protein to satisfactorily fatten an animal during a short period. Corn and good pasture will do the job, but if you don’t have lush pasture or high-quality legume hay during the finishing period, you should talk to your feed dealer about formulating a finishing ration. In addition, in some regions, there are cheaper alternatives to corn, making it worth your while to inquire.

      Beef cows whose purpose is to produce calves, not meat, don’t need grain if they’re on good pasture in summer and adequate hay in the winter. But I give them a little anyway, as do most beef producers I know. It’s called “training grain.” A small amount—a pound or less for each cow—brings them running every morning when I call, and getting them in when I need to work with them is never a problem. As a bonus, the cows teach their new calves about grain each year, so when it’s time to start the calves on grain, they know exactly what to do.

      You should start calves on grain no later than when you wean them. If you want to start them before weaning, set up a “creep feeder” that will keep the cows out of the calves’ grain. A creep feeder is a pen or shed with an opening too narrow for cows but wide enough for calves. Inside is a bunker feeder for the calves. I generally put a board over the opening as well to make it too low for a cow to squeeze under. If you have an old shed not being used for anything else, it might work well for a creep feeder.

      Until you put weaned calves on a finishing ration,