Sarah In The World

I live in the country and I’ve done so for some years now and I love it. One of the reasons I live out here is that I like animals and out here I can have my own animals.

I have chickens and I love my chickens, I have about a dozen of them, and I get lots of eggs. But I also have cows.

I really like cows. Theyre so big yet they’re very gentle. In all the time Ive had cows I’ve never had a bad moment with  them. They aren’t aggressive and they are even tame enough so that even my kids can pat them a little bit, though they don’t like being patted all that much, they tend to pull back when you pat them. They just pull back a little thats all.

You won’t get to pat them much unless you’re feeding them their hay. They like hay and when the grass is short and there isn’t a lot because winter is coming and the grass isn’t growing. But I have a good supply of hay in the shed.

Now if you’re feeding hay to your cows then that’s the time to pat them, but it’s also a bit of a chore. You have to feed them every single day, without fail. Even if it’s raining you have to feed the cows their hay or they get grumpy. If you don’t they starve for the day and like me they don’t like starving.

I feed them all myself. I like my holidays though so  when you go away you have to have something to do about feeding the cows. You need a good system.

I  have a number of different fields fenced  off. I have a total of 7 fenced off. And if I have lots of grass in some then I shut the gates to that paddock so the grass doesn’t get eaten and keep it that way, then when I go away I’ve got a great paddock with lots of grass. I can open the gate and let the cows in for a week or so and I’ve got my cows fed properly while I’m away.

And when I open the gate to the paddock with the grass in it they’re in there as fast as they can go, because they’ve seen all that grass when they look through the gate and it’s right in front of them.

Then when I come back I put them out of that paddock and back into the one without grass and I start feeding them the hay  again.

Right after breakfast I feed them their breakfast hay. They get about 2 bales of hay every day but if it’s too cold I give them more bales of hay and they eat the lot. And they’re not silly, they know when feeding time  is, they’re waiting right out the front of the shed for their hay and they moo loudly if you’re late.

In fact this morning I gave them 3 bales of hay. But it’s getting warm soon and the grass is beginning to grow more and that’s good because I don’t have a lot of hay left in the shed now, enough, but not a lot. But that’s ok because I’ve got more grass growing. (more…)