January | 2017 | Life On A BC Cattle Ranch

From our centre pivot field on our Bateman place, we put up some alfalfa hay from the second cut of the field. We are feeding this to our calves that were weaned off their moms this fall because it is very high in protein and good to help them grow. It is stored in our hay barn there, so we have to bring it home to where the mouths are. We usually do this job with our 5 tonne truck but it is inoperable so we are pushing the bales into our stock trailer. It works fairly well to push them in with the bale unroller, good thing the bales are round and roll.

Our hay barn that protects the hay bales from rain and snow.

It is lovely feeding hay that has been covered like this, and NOT so lovely feeding our bales that were outside. Round bales can be stored outside because they shed the rain/snow. Although, we got about 3 inches of rain in October and the bales that were outside grew a pelt of green grass on top of them (like a chia pet). Then they froze, so feeding them was a real pain. My husband equated it to dunking a roll of toilet paper into the toilet, throwing it in the freezer, and then trying to get it to unroll! It was very difficult!!

Two bales are grabbed by the grapple and front end loader and one by the bale unroller on the 3 point hitch. Each bale weighs about 1300 pounds.

We can fit 4 bales into this hay haling machine.

After we are loaded, we start the trek out to the highway, then it is 5 km down the highway to our home place.

Starting the climb out of the ravine.

Stuck!

Being that it was -20, I thought that we would have had enough traction to get up out of there but we didn’t! On the last corner I spun out. So we had to hook up to the tractor for a tug.

Back in the home yard.

One of our Kelpies.

The great thing about living on a side hill is that all we have to do is open the door and let ’em fly.

Although to divert disaster we park the tractor to ‘catch’ them as they roll out. If they really started going, they could do some damage and even end up down on or past the highway taking out fences and anything else it came in contact with!