Flat Aggie Visits the Farm

Flat Aggie has been visiting a beef cattle and hay farm in Mississippi over the past few days.

Winters here in Mississippi are pretty mild and we rarely see snow. This winter has been warmer than usual but coming off a long drought (no rain for months) this past summer and fall it has actually been nice. With the drought we started having to feed hay to our cows in early October due to the fact that all of the grass was basically dead and our fall/early winter grasses didn’t get a chance to grow due to lack of moisture.

January and February are calving season for us here on the farm. We typically check on the cows twice a day, but sometimes more often if one is calving. When they are calving we check them every couple of hours to make sure they are doing OK and then after calving to make sure they are taking care of their new baby.

Some of the cows are curious like this one named Clover. They like to get close to you to see what you are doing and see if you happen to have any range cubes (cow feed made into a cube). They also don’t mind having their picture made.

Flat Aggie decided to hang out in one of the hay bales that the cows had been eating while we finished checking the herd. She was a little nervous after her close encounter with Clover.

On our farm we stockpile (allow to grow without cutting) grass in certain pastures during the fall so that our cows will have plenty of grass to eat during the winter. We turn them into the stockpile pastures February 1 so that the moms will have lots of grazing.

In February we wait until a day when the wind is blowing very slowly and the ground has the right amount of moisture then we will do a prescribed burn on our fields as part of getting our hay fields ready for spring and summer. Doing prescribed burns means that it only burns the areas we want it to and we are very careful not to let it spread. Burning off the fields allows us to improve the health of our fields by removing the dead winter grass so that the new spring and summer grasses can get plenty of sunlight that they need to grow.

Check out this short video I did on the farm while we were burning hay fields.

One thing we love at our farm, whether in the pasture or in the hay field are the beautiful sunsets we get to enjoy. I think Flat Aggie has had a great time at our farm and we sure enjoyed having her around.