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Croswell, Michigan | It's late and I am too tired to check your math but I think if we want to see any amount of beef cows in Michigan it will have to be in some sort of drylot system.
1. We don't have the longer grazing season of our southern neighbors.
2.Fences and pasture ground are gone (at least they are in the thumb, and I didn't see any in your neighborhood either)
3 Many farms are fragmented into many parcels, some quite a ways from home base, Even grazing crop residue becomes hard with out enough contiguous ground.
4. People still grabbing land like $7 corn is right around the corner.
I know MSU's thinking is bring the cow to the grass, not the other way around. Sounds great except that thinking is going to mean that the only beef cows left in the state will be north of U.S. 10 or in small patches of scrub ground in the southern part of the state.
It is going to take out of the box thinking to make beef cows work here but I think it can be done. It will probably involve silage or a bale wrapper to utilize the cover crops as feed, Baling dry feed here in May or much past the 1st. of September is a pipe dream.
Probably some sort of 'modified drylot' system is the answer, drylot during the crop growing season, graze crop residue near the cattle facilities after crops are harvested.
Think about clover frost seeded on your wheat, You will have usable forage quicker than planting a crop after wheat. In a dry summer a crop planted after wheat will be pretty slow in coming.
I see tons of cheap hay on Craigslist right now. Either these people never put the pencil to what it actually cost to produce a bale of hay or it is just a non-money making hobby to them. Keep your eye out for bargins, you can probably buy some feed cheaper than you can grow it plus you are returning 'their' nutrients to your soil.
Last, my goal is to have the better part of two years worth of feed on hand. It puts you in the drivers seat in a drought year when a round bale goes from $20 to $100/bale. | |
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