We finally found hay! After looking EVERYWHERE we found some a little ways down the road for $4/bale for a 70 lbs bale. Not too shabby, especially since most of the hay around here has been going for at least $7/bale...AT LEAST. Most of the local, non-out-of-state hay on KSL has been around $8/bale including delivery. I know that's not super high for some areas of the US, but for out here it's high. For us it's high given the number of bales we need to buy for this cow. After googling 'how much hay does a cow eat' I happened across a forum entry from a dairy farmer who used this figure for his cows: 31 lbs hay/cow x _______days. So using that figure we are getting A LOT of hay to not only feed her through the winter/early spring, but also our 3 little sheep. She probably won't be eating it all, and the sheep are very thrifty eaters, but better safe than sorry. The farmer is gonna deliver about 1/4 of our hay order to our barn this Friday and the rest when he bales his next crop, which should be in a couple of weeks. We ended up going with a red clover hay, which (from what I've researched) is just as nutritious as alfalfa hay for cows, but generally just not as popular or as widely available mostly because the stand of clover has to be reseeded every few years. The University of Wisconsin did a study on dairy cattle & red clover and found it was just as good as alfalfa at providing nutrients AND didn't affect the milk production levels at all. Honey is loving our clover patches all over both pastures, so I'm thinking it'll be a hit. Since it's not expensive to buy, I'm thinking we might stick with this hay if we can. It's cheap, will be good for our dairy cow and (hopefully!) this farmer will keep producing it!
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