I like to have cows. They’re really big yet they’re so gentle. In all the time Ive had cows Ive never had a bad moment with them. They aren;t aggressive and they are even tame enough so that my kids can pat them a little, though they don’t like being patted a whole lot, they tend to pull back when you pat them.
Just pull back a little that’s all. Nothing more.
The best time to pat them is when you feed them hay. They just love hay, and when the grass growth is getting slow because winter is coming you need to supplement their feed with hay or something else. I have hay so that’s what I feed my cows.
Now of course if you are feeding the cows hay you’re committed to feeding them every single day. Every day even if you’re not feeling like it, or maybe it’s raining. If you don’t feed the cows they starve which isn’t good. And if you are feeding them hay that’s the time to pat them. My cows love hay.
I feed them the hay myself. I like my holidays though so when you go away you have to have something to do so that the cows are fed. I do this all by myself. You have to take care of your cows.
I have various paddocks each fenced off with good fences. 6 in total. So when I have plenty of grass in the paddocks I lock one up and leave it with the long grass in it. Then when I go away I open the gate to that one and the cows discover that the gate is open and head in there. It lets me go away from time to time.
And when I open the gate to the paddock with the grass they’re in there as fast as they can, because they’ve seen all that grass when they look through the gate. Cows aren’t stupid you know.
Then when I come back I shoo them out of that paddock and back into the one with no grass and I start feeding them the hay again. And pat them.
Right after breakfast I feed them their nice hay. They get about 2 1/2 bales of hay every day but if it’s too cold I give them 3 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. They know.
In fact this morning I gave them 4 bales. But it’s getting warmer soon and the grass is beginning to grow and that’s good because I don’t have a lot of hay left. But that’s ok because I’ve got more grass coming so I’ll have more hay soon, so 4 today. (more…)