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Ha! Just noticed this post.

We have fairly dry hay. Everything is raked too, so they are never as dense as non raked hay.


We shoot for an 1150 to 1200 pound bale, about 6 feet.

Tried to hook up the unroller.....third link was not correct. Have to dig through the snow to find another.



Getting the new cake/safflower feeder mounted.

Lookin' good Jim!



What are you gonna feed?



I've been chopping as many heavy, high moisture bales as I can. Cows are lickin' up every last bite on clean snow.

I am going to try and feed safflower.

About all I can do is auger it out on the ground and see if they will clean it up. I dont mind being wasteful with it, no one wants to buy the stuff and I have 8000 bushels in the bins.


Figure to try and get them up to 5 pounds.


Hopefully we can ease off on the hay a bit if they take to eating it well.

Safflower makes great grazing and hay.....so I hope they will eat the seeds!


Yep, about the only way you can tell if you fed in a spot the next day is that there is schit on the ground and packed snow. Maybe just a tinge of green.

Cant seem to get these cows filled up this winter. If they were closer I would be putting out straw.

We were feeding 40 pounds of hay, and they were not leaving any of it.

Back down to 30 pounds now since some of the snow is bared off and they can get to the straw and chaff piles again.



I bet they are loving that chopped hay Sam. Any of that wetter dense stuff tobacco cure?

Our cows will not get all the corn silage cleaned up if we feed on the ground, but, I don't think it's for lack of tiring.

Jim, I've never seen safflower seed, is it fairly digestible for a cow?



Major tobacco cure on some of the egg shaped bales that I've been chopping. Cows love it but I've heard that too much 'curing' and you lose feed value.

I think I'd do some research on that seed before feeding much of it. To much of a good thing ain't a good thing.

Safflower looks like a 2/3'rds size sunflower seed, but its all white.

Yes, it is supposed to be very digestible, in fact the old feed book I have did not suggest cracking or rolling it. It has good protein...about as much as cake. Plus good energy and fat.

I was going to send it to Malta and have it made into cake but they would not do it. Too much oil in it.....was supposed to gum up the mill.


We would have liked to graze or hay the safflower crop we had in 2016, but we combined it instead.

Reason we did that was because of all the rain. It was just dry enough to combine at the time, and more rain was coming.

We sent a sample to the lab in Great Falls, but the specialty seed grader was out for two weeks for training. We had no idea of the quality.

So we gambled and combined it, not knowing if it was good quality or not.

It was not good quality! 32 pounds per bushel instead of 38 or 40.

Would have been valuable to us as grazing or hay.......not as loose seed.


Yeah, I have had a tobacco cure go from brown to black. I suppose the real dark stuff is not quite as good feed, but it never seemed to make a difference to the cows.

They would trample the green stuff to get to the tobacco cure.

As long as it was not moldy we never worried about it.

If it was moldy, I would run it through the processor and then the cows ate the hell out of it. Not sure if that was the right thing to do or not, but never seemed to hurt anything.

We sent a sample off to the feed lab Richard. The report came back that it was going to make excellent feed. The local feed Rep said it was good to go.

Well, as long as we did not go over 6 pounds or so with it. I guess the high fat content can mess up the digestion, if you feed too much.

The seed is mostly used as bird seed, or the oil is extracted for cooking oil? The meal then used as feed?

Just thinkin', am I dangerous when I think. Think we all should throw together, and form a cattle company? "The 24hourcampfirelandand cattlecompany". Has a nice ring to it, no?

Who all want to buy in?

Yep, the real bright white seed is popular for bird seed. If it is stained by the rain the birdies dont like it.

Safflower is great cooking oil, and also has some industrial lubricant uses.

The rest gets used as bio diesel.

Yes, after that the meal is fed to cattle and such.

Ours is too light to be worth much, so we are going to feed it whole. Last price they offered was 4 cents a pound!

Haha! We will see how 2018 goes and I will get back to you.

Don't give up on the cattlecompany Jim, we can give a Stenson to each new buyer. We all draw a salary, and if there is any cash left over, we pay a divided.

Back to feeding cows, when soybeans were 5 bucks, and under, we fed some beans. The beans were weighted, and mixed in the ration.

That sounds like good feed Jim.

Bet the cows aren't complaining!



Despite hardly getting a rain all summer we managed to put up some borderline stack burnt alfalfa bales.


No mold though, just a healthy cure on a few.

Safflower.

What is that worth Jim?

Last bid we got was .04 cents a pound Richard.

Gave the calves one pound today. Going to give the cows 2.5 or so tomorrow on the maiden voyage.