Hay, Hay, Hay, Goodbye!

Na, na, na, na. 

Na, na, na, na.

Hay, hay, hay!

Goodbye.

Some of our hay is going goodbye (and not just into our cattle's stomachs).

For the first time in the past three years, we have some extra alfalfa hay to sell. After two years of extreme drought, we got enough rain this past summer to raise sufficient hay for our own cattle and then have some left to sell to others.

This year, Randy chose to market the hay through Sunflower Trading, a division of the Kanza Co-op. Randy established the price he wanted for the hay, then he contracted 10 loads of hay with Sunflower. They sold it to a feedlot near Cadillac, Texas. Sunflower arranges to have a truck come to the field to pick it up, and either Jake or Randy load the truck.

After the alfalfa is baled in the summer, the guys stack it in rows near the road. This year, we got three cuttings of hay. The first two were better quality hay than the last cutting. The feedlot was willing to take a mixture of the hay.

Jake picked up two bales at a time and brought them closer to the truck. He then loaded each one on the truck individually. The bales are placed two across on the flat-bed. For the first couple, the truck driver signals him to let him know where to place it. Then, it's kind of like building with Legos. You just keep adding "pieces" to the "design." Unfortunately, there are no handy connective pieces to keep everything stuck together like Legos.

Kinley needed to be here so we could practice counting!

As Jake got to the back of the truck, he pushed the last ones in the row on to "scrunch" them together and keep them on the truck.

After the bottom rows were in place, he added another layer, positioning the upper deck in the "groove" between two bales.

As the bales are added, the truck driver tossed straps over the bales to keep them in place. With a strong south wind the day these bales were loaded, he had some help in sailing the strap over to the other side. (You can see that if you look carefully at the photo below.)

I left before the truck was totally loaded, but you can see that the driver added a sign, "Oversize Load" to the back of the truck (and also to the front).

The driver had weighed the truck at the co-op before he came to the field. After it was loaded, he went back to the co-op and they weighed the truck full before he took off for Texas. Each truck carries around 30 large round bales, weighing about 25 tons (or 50,000 pounds).

He had planned to come back on Monday, but he couldn't get his truck started in the subzero temperatures.

The load I photographed was Load 6 of the 10 we have contracted.  A couple of neighbors also buy a few bales from us to feed their cattle. 

Randy says it's nice to have enough hay that we're able to sell some extra this year. That "hay, hay, hay, goodbye" is kind of a happy anthem for my Kansas farmer - even if it does get stuck in my head!

Ballet for the Bovines

Click on the photo for a closer look at the "choreography."

It might not be Swan Lake, but there's some fancy choreography in this Ballet for the Bovines. A bright morning sun lit the scene instead of a stage's spotlights. Rather than tiny, light-footed ballerinas in a choreographed dance, three mammoth tractors lumbered in pirouetting perfection. Two rainbows of gold provided the special effects. The audience included several thousand bovines who just might have been licking their lips in anticipation of a visit to the "concession stand" at intermission.

Last week, we hauled several loads of higher-moisture corn to the Haw Ranch Feedlot near Turon. While traditional co-op elevators want moisture content at around 16 or below, the feedlot wanted grain at 24 to 32 percent moisture.

In fact, if the corn was too dry, you got docked. If the moisture dropped below 24 percent, there was a 1.2 percent per point dockage. If it was too wet (above 32), the shrinkage was 1.5 percent per point.

The feedlot is around 15 miles from our farm. When we got to the feedlot, Randy unrolled the tarp covering the truck bed. 

Meanwhile, cowboys had herded some cattle onto the scales, weighing them to determine weight gains after a few weeks of dining on crabgrass pastures. Cowboys and cattle aren't usually part of the scenery when we take a trip to the co-op elevator.

After a moisture test at the scale house, Randy dumped the corn right on to a cement pad. Almost as soon as it was dumped, a big front loader came and pushed the corn into a pile.

Then, they used another front loader to scoop corn into the grinders.

There, the corn was broken down into cattle feed. Augers shot the ground corn into the silo, where the three big John Deere tractors pushed and packed it tight. 

I was glad I went along for the ride when I did because we didn't have to wait very long. Later in the day, Randy was in a line with 30 trucks, mostly semis, waiting to dump. We don't have a semi, so he decided we would quit hauling to the feedlot because of the distance and the downtime.

The big equipment and crew travel from feedlot to feedlot during corn harvest, putting up the corn into silos. The Haw Ranch Feedlot planned to take in approximately 800,000 bushels of higher-moisture corn in about one week's time. In addition, some area farmers sold corn silage to the feedlot. All will be used to feed cattle there at the feedlot, which has a 50,000-head capacity.

 

Ours was not a starring role in the Ballet for the Bovines, but everyone knows that those "bit parts" are important to the overall big picture.