Is your livestock feedout system making the most of your hay?
Traditional bale processors pulverize the hay and hay rings waste a lot of each bale while causing destructive soil compaction.
Long stem hay retains more nutrition and helps develop your calves’ rumens. When distributed in long, thin windrows, it helps regenerate your soil. The soil is not compacted, the manure is spread over long distances and the pastures are naturally re-seeded. Your entire herd – even the most vulnerable – gets equal access to the feed, and best of all it can save up to 40% of your hay.
Farmers from around the world have discovered New Zealand’s best kept secret, Hustler Equipment. Hustler Equipment started in a small farming town on the east coast of New Zealand back in 1961, and for over six decades they’ve been continually innovating new ways to help farmers make the most of their time, energy and resources.
See all the ways you can improve your livestock feeding routine below.
DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE CATTLE FEEDING GUIDE
Get your copy of over 30,000 hours of research into comparing every system for feeding bales to cattle. Inside you’ll find the complete comparison of how each system performs on the 23 issues ranchers face.
- Chainless bale feeder
- Chain / slat bale feeder (Cradle feeder)
- Bale unroller
- Bale bed / Bale deck
- Hay ring / Hay trailer
- Bale Processor
- Bale splitter
- TMR Mixer
Farming sustainably is at the heart of everything we do.
Our belief in sustainable farming practices, in particular natural pasture grass-feeding, underpins our range of world-leading livestock feeding solutions.
The benefits of natural grass-fed livestock are many – from happier, healthier animals and naturally fertilized paddocks through to better-tasting meat and dairy.
Benefits of feeding long-stem hay especially when weaning calves
Like a car with a bad engine, an animal with poor gut health is going to struggle to make it, let alone be a profitable investment for the ranch. This is true with any animal but especially in weaned calves. One of the key tools you have on your ranch that can really be the launching pad to great gut health is long-stem hay.
The art of sustainable hay feeding in a tough economy
Livestock feed represents the largest single cost – often up to 60 percent of the total operation spending. Maybe now is the time to rethink your feeding methods.
Does it really make sense to ground-feed onto mud?
There’s a common misconception that hay fed out directly on the ground is fine only as long as the ground is frozen, but that hay fed onto mud causes hay waste. In fact, as long as you feed in long, thin windrows, feeding onto the ground can reduce wastage from nearly 40% down to just 2-3%!
4 tips to maintain a healthy herd through calving season
Among the challenges of the calving season, the question of maintaining herd health is essential. Let’s explore four tips that could help you get through the calving season without a hitch.
Make the best of your hay resources by limiting access to feed
A common way to feed cows or heifers is to allow 24/7 access to bales of hay, often arranged in hay feeder rings, or sometimes just dropped off in the middle of the paddock. At first, this sounds like a perfect, low-management method, but think again. Ultimately, with 24/7 access to feed, the cows are in charge of how much hay is used while the owner loses control of how much hay the cows get.
Ways to minimize the impact of hay feeding
Though minimizing wasted forage and being cost-effective is a key concern, it is far from the only worry. For most livestock farms/ranches, the main reason for allowing unlimited access to hay is the time and convenience. So today, we’ll be comparing different methods of feeding out hay, and you’ll see that the fastest method isn’t always the one you’d think.
Improve your pasture for free with your bale feeding routine
Feeding in a new part of the pasture every day not only means you reseed your pasture in the process, it means manure is spread in the pasture evenly and you don’t have to waste time and machinery costs to haul manure from a confinement area, plus, you minimize the risk of pasture damage and disease caused by concentrated hoof and manure.
A lesson about sustainable dairy farming in Louisiana
Ted and Melissa Miller with their four children own and operate Delta Dairy LLC on the Mississippi River Delta in Baskin, Louisiana. The operation consists of approximately 450 milk cows and 600 head of replacements and bulls, rotationally grazed on 1,200 acres of pasture. This 14-minute documentary is a story about how the family produces milk in an environmentally and economically sustainable fashion.
The #LongStemHay System
The Experts of #LongStemHay
Lance Paskewitz
Business Development Manager & Territory Manager – North America
Jordan Symington
Territory Manager – North America
