Thursday, October 11, 2012

Contentment...

Remember this field?


That picture was taken on September 22nd.

Here's what it looks like today...


Jim seeded this rye grass with the intention of baling it next spring for the cows. Considering how fast it's grown in the past few weeks, however, he decided to graze the cows on it some this fall, to keep it from getting so high that it lodges (falls over and gets damaged) this winter. The grazing will keep it a bit shorter for now, but will still allow for good regrowth in the spring.

It's a twelve acre field, so it took lots of fence posts to create sections for the cows to graze. The field in the left half of the picture is the old Sudan grass field that the cows grazed on this summer.  Jim mowed it off one final time earlier this week.  The brighter green field to the right is the rye grass...


This morning we left the cows out to graze in the first section. We fed them some dry hay before we put them out, because Jim didn't want them to fill up on that rich grass alone.

They had to walk around behind the barn to find their way into this field. They're still trying to figure it out here...some of them got sidetracked and are eating on the barn hill...


Once they found the grass, however, all heads were down...


If you look closely, you can see Jim sitting on a dirt bike next to the corn crib.  He's ready to do damage control if  "someone" gets a little rowdy and breaks through a wire.  I was supposed to be on a dirt bike too, but couldn't manage to keep it running.  Oh well...luckily they behaved themselves...


After a little while, they had spread out the length of the field and got down to business...


Pure contentment.

9 comments:

  1. Oh I love this there is much contentment to be found in scenes like this. Rye grass is what I think we should plant. They sure do look happy. B

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  2. Your rye grass sure grew fast. We pasture our cows too and my husband has installed some electric fences and so far it has worked beautifully to manage the pasture.

    The pastures are sectioned off and it's just a matter of unhooking the wires to let the cows in the next section.

    Have great weekend Alica.

    JB

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  3. "Gosh, the humans have been holding out on us again. Why weren't we let into this field earlier? Num num num....." :)

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  4. What a beautiful photo. I have entertained the idea of planted rye as a cover crop in my small garden. I just might have to do it.

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  5. Happy, happy cows! That green stuff is pretty awesome. Mine will be going onto the cornfield soon.

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  6. They better not complain about greener grass on the other side of the fence. Looks pretty yummy even to me.

    I was thinking dirt bikes would be less cranky to keep cows in line than horses, but it sounds like they have their moods too.

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  7. My goodness! They look very happy!

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  8. All that rain while I was in PA has resulted in happy cows---yahoo. They look so happy!

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  9. WOW! That looks good enough to eat! Cows sure do look content eating it all up.

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