The Nourishing Homestead by Ben Hewitt

Author:Ben Hewitt [Hewitt, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Published: 2015-01-01T22:00:00+00:00

Winter Feed

Cows thrive on hay. We feed a mix of first- and second-cut square bales and some second-cut baleage (see the section “Hay,” on page 215). We do not feed any grain to any of our ruminants. Ruminants simply aren’t meant to eat grain; it interferes with proper digestion and is detrimental to the health of the animal, resulting in diminished quality of milk and meat. Grain is to your ruminant animal as high-fructose corn syrup is to you: a high-octane source of concentrated calories that might taste good and provide a short-term energy boost but is extremely detrimental to your health.

Grain: A Cautionary Tale

When we embarked on our early milking adventures with our first cow, Lily, we fed a small amount of grain at milking time. Many homesteaders do the same, since a treat of grain is a sure way to seduce your cow into following you to the barn. I can’t say whether or not Lily actually needed this grain to maintain her condition; at the time, we were not knowledgeable enough to discern such things, and in all honesty, we didn’t really consider that we could choose not to do it.

One winter’s night Lily broke into the fenced-off bin where we kept her grain and gorged herself on somewhere in the range of 40 pounds of high-protein concentrate. When I came out to the barn for morning milking, I found her stumbling around the paddock as if she were drunk. Because, in fact, she was. The grain had fermented in her stomach, and the result was enough alcohol to bring a 1,000-pound Jersey to her knees.

Actually, it was worse than that, because after four days of vet visits and constant tending by Penny, myself, and Melvin, our kind and generous dairy-farming neighbor, it became clear that Lily would not recover. The fermented grain had wiped out her liver. I put her down with a .22, and it remains the single most difficult thing I’ve done on this piece of land, because I flat-out loved that cow. And there was no way around it: Her death was our fault.

It’s important to note that if a cow does manage to gorge on grain, there are things that can be done. It’s possible that if we had realized how serious Lily’s situation was in time, we could have saved her, though 40 pounds of grain is a lot of grain. It’s also important to note that grain isn’t the only substance that can be damaging to bovines; you also need to exercise caution with apple drops in the fall. We have one prolific apple tree in our pasture; come autumn, we keep careful watch to be sure the cows don’t have unlimited access to its bounty. Generally, this means “creep-feeding” them around its base, allowing them, via a strand of temporary fencing, access to only a portion of the drops per day so they can’t eat enough to develop issues.

It’s painful to tell the story of Lily’s death, particularly because it was entirely preventable.

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