Check out our beautiful looking oats crop. In another five or six weeks it will probably be as tall as my chest!
It’s about then we head into it with the mover and cut it all down in rows. Then we leave it to cure (dry out), rake it and start baling.
Haymaking is a time of the year we really hope it doesn’t rain. Rain decreases the quality of the hay and can make it turn mouldy if it rains for too long and the rows of hay stay wet for days on end.
Mouldy hay doesn’t do the stock any good either — in fact, if they do eat it, cows can abort their calves from a nasty bacteria in the mould.
And of course, if you bale wet hay, there’s always the chance of losing your haystack through a fire — wet hay bales have been known to spontaneously combust … a bit like me when I lose my temper!
Check out this cheeky little fella!
I fed some hay out for the bulls who live in this paddock, but they were busy sunning themselves way down the other end and obviously didn’t hear the tractor with the wind that was blowing.
The sheep took full advantage of not having to muscle their way in around the big guys, risk being stepped on, or bunted out of the way!
They hooked into to the hay before the bulls realised what was going on.
Remember back at the beginning of December we were spreading fertiliser on our sorghum crop and I said it was going to grow fast and furiously? Well, it did!
We’ve put our weaned calves onto it and some of the plants are eight foot tall! Can you see the cattle in amongst it? It must be like us going into a chocolate factory – we wouldn’t know where to start eating! I think the calves must feel like this!
The best thing about this crop is that it can be eaten down, the stock taken out of the paddock and we let the sorghum re-grow.
Then we can put stock back in again! So throughout the summer there will always be some green feed.
Well, guess what? there’s been more rain! Another 30 or so mm’s… really not sure what is going on with the season: at times it’s disheartening. But there’s always silver linings and this one is one of them!
We planted this sorghum crop about eight weeks ago and it has had the best start imaginable.
Harvest has been held up and today is a great time to make the most of the showery weather and spread some urea. That’s a fertiliser which is going to make this fodder crop grow fast and furiously.
Sorghum can be harvested as a summer crop, but as Anthony and my main interest is stock, with a little cropping on the side, we are growing it for food for the animals and sometime soon, we’ll put some stock into it.
They’ll now be able to enjoy green grass during the dry of summer.
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