Seasonal Hay Feeding for Cattle Production in the Fescue Belt

Abstract

We determined how pasture and grazing management practices affected the number of days hay was fed to cattle by season. Data were collected from a survey of Tennessee cattle producers. Days of cattle on hay varied across seasons because of variations in forage production and weather. The number of days hay was fed to cattle varied with pasture-animal management practices such as rotating pastures, forage mixtures, and weed management strategies. Having mixtures of cool- and warm-season grasses reduced the number of days on hay in the winter, spring, and summer months indicating benefits from diversified forages.

Why has the adoption of rotational grazing declined in parts of the United States?

“…Instead, some used survey data collected within a narrow geographic region. These include studies in Tennessee [22][23][24] ; Connecticut 25 ; Louisiana [19][20] ; Wisconsin 26 ; California and Wyoming 27 ; and North Dakota, South Dakota, and Texas. 9 , 17 This latter issue implies the findings could be attributable to regionalspecific attributes (e.g., climate or soil characteristics) that do not occur elsewhere.…”

Profitability, risk and cash flow deficit for beginning cow–calf producers

“…Production costs include pasture production, hay purchases, supplemental feed, veterinary and medical, reproduction, labor and land rent. Hay and supplement feed costs were assumed from previous work on spring calving cows in the southern US (Henry et al, 2016;Boyer et al, 2020b). Heifer development costs included higher supplemental feed, veterinary and medical costs.…”

“…The model assumes 1.5 acres per head for pasture b The model assumes 0.82 ton consumption per cow. In particular, a cow needs 20 pound per day (Henry et al, 2016) during 82 days (Boyer et al, 2020b). This results in 1,640 lb total, equivalent to 0.82 ton per cow c Following Griffith and Bowling (2020), a salt and mineral consumption of 91 lb per head is assumed d 8 h of labor per cow is assumed as in Griffith and Bowling (2020) e A total of 45 acres assumed: 1.5 acres per head times the desired herd size, 30…”