Spreading the benefits

Don and I, as often happens, underestimated the amount of hay we needed to get the livestock through the winter. I don't know why, but we do that a lot. So, late last November, we started looking for more hay to purchase.

But hay tends to sell quickly and can be hard to find off-season. We inquired of our usual sources and learned everything had already sold. Finally, through various means, we connected with a fellow who had oat hay available in 100-lb. bales.

Oat hay. Hmmm. We'd never fed oat hay to our livestock before, but the seller assured us his own cows loved the stuff. So, since the price was decent and (more importantly) he had some available, we ordered four tons.

Now here's the thing: By every metric we were familiar with, 100-lb. bales of hay should be fairly large, but these bales of oat hay were pretty much standard size. But, groan, they were very heavy, to the point where Don and I simply couldn't lift them. At all. The best we could do was push and shove and tip them to move them around, and we had to use the tractor to stack them with any semblance of neatness.We got about half the bales in the barn, and the rest we stacked in the driveway on a series of pallets, which we later tarped.

What made the bales so heavy? In a word, oats. This wasn't oat straw, it was oat hay, harvested with the seed intact. Whenever we moved a bale, a festive layer of oats was left behind.

Okay fine, but would the cows like it?

Oh. My. Yes. The cows stinkin' adore it. They attack it greedily, and prefer it over anything else we've ever fed them. Interestingly, it's boosted Maggie's milk output, too. Due to the natural decline of milk production with an older calf (and the fact that she's pregnant), I had been getting about half a gallon a day, even though I give her some grain every morning in the milking stall. But with the extra boost of nutrition from this oat hay, her output has ramped up to a gallon a day with ease. (I plan to dry her off, i.e. stop milking, in early March. Her calf is due in late June.)

With an eye toward having some hay put aside for next year, we called the seller and asked if he had any more for sale. Sadly, no, he'd sold it all. So we told him to put us on his list for this summer's crop.

Meanwhile, the oat hay is "spreading the benefits" as other animals have discovered it.

The Oregon juncoes, sparrows, and black-capped chickadees descend on the oat hay debris, whether outside in the driveway or inside the barn.

But the biggest beneficiary of this largess are the turkeys.

Turkeys, as I've mentioned before, are nature's Roombas. They wander the landscape, finding everything even remotely edible, and clean it up. They tend to aggregate in enormous flocks during the winter, sometimes in groups as large as fifty or sixty or more birds. Groups of about one to two dozen are most common. Now, it seems, one or more of those groups have found their way into the corral.

On any day of the week, I can creep into the barn, peer through the slats of the feed box, and catch a dozen turkeys inside the barn. They scratch through the cow poop and gobble up any oat seeds they find.

Sometimes they'll scratch around in the mud of the corral, breaking up cow patties and finding the edible bits inside.

Most, however, can be found on the barn waste pile. Turkeys love barn waste any time, but especially now that it's rich in oat seeds. Bonanza!

Such prehistoric-looking creatures, aren't they?

Turkeys perform a highly valuable service for us, since their activities aid in decomposition for the barn waste on its journey to becoming compost.

Eventually, either sated with seeds or spooked by my presence, the turkeys will leave the barn and aggregate in the lower pasture.

Then, with powerful beats of their wings, they'll become airborne long enough to clear fences and land downhill from any perceived danger.

So yes, the oat hay is spreading the benefits. The passerine birds as well as the turkeys get some meals. The cows are getting extra nutrition. I'm getting plenty of milk for making cheese. Not a bad deal.