Coffee? Meat and potatoes? Chocolate?
For the cows, it's corn...
In the fall when we combine our corn and beans, we send the shelled grain to a local company that dries, toasts and stores it. Then, they deliver it to the farm as needed throughout the year. Every two weeks, Jim has them deliver around three tons of toasted corn to our corn bin.
They blow the corn through that pipe on the outside of the barn up into the bin. The second pipe is an exhaust, or vent pipe...
It sure makes a dusty mess, but it smells wonderful...kind of like roasted peanuts!
When the corn cart needs to be filled, we pull open the sliding door on the bottom of the bin...
...and we have corn for the cows. They eat it for part of their breakfast, lunch and supper. It's only a small part of their diet, really. (The average cow gets around ten pounds of toasted corn per day)
...but they never get tired of it. If only we were all so easy to please!
