life... on the farm: Hay

Monday, November 26, 2012

Hay

Hay is a big thing on our farm. A couple weekends ago we all worked hard to haul 200 bales of hay from the hay farm to our alpaca farm. Our truck and trailer only carried 50 bales at a time so this meant 4 trips back and forth. My kids are the best to help out with minimal complaints (I have to admit I had a complaint or two myself). It's a long afternoon and busy one that wears you out! But our hay tent is full again.

Alpacas can be picky eaters and if they have a chance will dig to the bottom of the hay bin and dump hay on the ground. Often times this hay is stomped on and wasted. To minimize waste, we use grates on top of the hay bins. We had several of these metal ones:

And J made this wooden one:

This has helped a lot!!

You can see my handy hay wagon in these photos. A full bale of hay fits in there, so I can easily haul hay to each of our alpaca's hay bins. I'm all for making things as easy as possible.

1 comment:

Kathryn Ray said...: hay is always in the back of my mind. We need to buy more... soon.

I've started checking prices again. I don't think they've really gone down since August, but at least it doesn't look like they've gone up. whew.

We use a similar sort of hay trap.; November 27, 2012 at 8:42 PM

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The Adventure of a Lifetime

Our farming adventure began with the purchase of 3 alpacas in the fall of 2007. This eventually grew to an alpaca farm that birthed 23 cria. While we averaged 20 alpacas on a farm at any given time, we hit a peek of over 30 alpacas. We were involved in every aspect of alpaca farming: from breeding decisions, birthing, to attending alpaca shows, and shearing our own alpacas along with making product from their luscious fiber (hand spinning yarn and knitting product). We participated in 24 alpaca shows, and became very involved in the alpaca community.

In 2013 we added hair sheep to our farm.

Throughout this process we continued to tweak and revise our business plan. Our business plan evolved over time, and in 2013 it became clear that our goal was to raise grass fed animals for human consumption. While the initial plan was for this to go along side of alpaca farming, we slowly came to the conclusion our adventure was going to take us somewhere else.

In 2013 we began to sell off our alpaca herd to begin our new adventure with grass fed sheep and cattle.

Our adventure is still unfolding, so please, join us in our adventure of a lifetime as our journey unfolds.