My education in the vagaries of the hay business and feeding goats continues. We started off the winter by feeding the goats with square bales from a local farmer.
However, we found out late in the season that hay has become something of a hot commodity around here and prices are going up quickly. The reason? The drought in Texas. Apparently, the prices have gotten so high that it's become cost effective to send the hay there, so now there's none here and the people that do have it are holding on tightly.
We were also getting tired of having to go down every couple of days to feed them. The animals plow through the small square bales pretty quickly, so we were looking for new ideas.
Luckily we found a guy in Spring Hill that was selling the giant 5x5 netted bales at really reasonable price. Each roll has enough hay to feed the animals for a month (or possibly more).
I also found out that the netting is superior to string tied rolls because the strings cause pinch points that allow water to pool and seep in. Water and hay don't mix. When it's netted, the top layer gets moist, but the insides stay dry.
I was happy to find a cost effective alternative, so I had the farmer load us up a couple rolls.
I was a little worried the trailer wouldn't handle it, but it performed admirably and we were able to haul them with no problems.
Sawyer was an excellent helper and had a great time climbing around on the rolls.
We ran into a problem when we arrived at the prop. How do we get these monsters off the trailer without a tractor? We decided to string a rope between the trees and then pull forward.
It worked pretty well. The roll came right off the end.
Once it was off the trailer, we were able to muscle it into the corral. Sadie was very happy with her new endless food supply.
I decided to take advantage of the nice weather and took a day off work, as a Christmas present to myself. Since there was no wind and we had a couple days with no rain, I decided it would be a good time to burn one of the big brush piles. It's hard to see how big the pile is from this picture. It's about 7-8 feet high and 20-25 yards long.
The dry cedar burns better than gas! I just put a cup full of diesel on it and lit a napkin and we were off to the races.
The pile burned down to a smoldering pile. The only thing left was the stumps. That's then next problem I have to figure out. How to remove the dirt from the stumps so they'll burn? I've tried rolling them and beating them up with the bulldozer but that dirt is tenacious. I can bang the smaller stumps against the ground and clear them but, obviously that won't work on the big ones. The experiment continues ....
