I read a great piece by Dr. Roy Burris, a University of Kentucky agricultural extension professor on how to extend your grazing period to cope with hay shortages and high hay prices over the winter. (That link is a Microsoft Word document, so you’ll need Word in order to be able to read it – but I’ll hit the high points here.) Between the freezes over Easter and the dry weather since then, a lot of stockowners in the east are worried as hay prices go up, up, up – and the late-cut hay this year is looking to be a pretty sorry lot, so these are tips that can move a lot of numbers around on your balance sheet.

The first step is the obvious one – don’t feed your animals hay! You can shrink the hay feeding period by extending your grazing season; there are three good options that you can try.

The first option is to have your stock graze corn stalks. Ranchers in the west have been doing this for years, especially for cows that have dried up after their calves are weaned. Fencing and water are the issues here – you obviously need to control your herd and keep them well-watered while they’re nibbling out there. Temporary electric fencing and trucked-in water are inconveniences but they will buy up to forty days of additional grazing. Fields that yield 150 bushels of corn an acre will feed about 40 cow-days per acre; adjust that figure for the yield, since more corn leaves more stalks.

If we get decent moisture next month, then you can apply nitrogen on your empty fields and let fescue accumulate through mid-November – conveniently, that’s about the same time as the corn residue will run out. Nitrogen is pricey, but so is hay! You have to be a little bit careful about letting the animals eat – Dr. Burris recommends strip-grazing to control the rate at which the cows feed. You’ll need between an acre and an acre and a half per animal, and that will get you through to early February. With a little bit of luck on the weather, that means we’ve gotten two-thirds of the way through the winter with minimal use of hay – not a bad return for moving some fencing in and laying down N.

Finally, this might be the year to experiment with winter annuals like ryegrass. If we have a hard winter, they will have very limited growth, so don’t bet the ranch on this working out. Still, if you want to try some cold-tolerant winter annuals, that can take you through February, leaving only about 60 days of hay feeding.

One important note if you’re buying late-cut hay this year. That hay will need some supplements, and I join Dr. Burris in recommending a nutrient analysis for the hay you buy. As Dr. Burris says, poor quality hay in big bales is the most expensive feed there is. One warning – don’t supplement your hay with anhydrous ammonia treatment. That does boost protein yield, but you run the risk of the ammonia forming a compound, 4-methyl immidazole, which causes “crazy cow” syndrome like a lot of stockholders saw in the 1980s. If all you can get is low quality hay, then make the best of it, limit quantity and provide supplements, and keep a close eye on the animals’ body condition. Remember that the end goal is having a herd that will support a healthy, high calf yield next year.