He also advises starting cattle out on high-quality hay. “It will take calves two to three days to get adjusted to eating from the bunk,” Lancaster said.

Target refusals by pen as follows: Fresh cows 3-5%, high pen 1 - 4%, low pen, 0.5 - 3%. Remove refusals at least once a day to minimize heating of the fresh feed.

It’s no secret that cattle require sufficient amounts of minerals as part of their diets to ensure they are productive ...

Harvesting corn fodder for hay is hard on equipment and the nutritive value of this hay is low, but with current hay prices being three times what they would normally be, if cows will eat it, bale it.

Different hay feeders use different designs to keep hay off the ground, encouraging picky cows to eat every last morsel. Miles Smith Farm has three different models.

"The cows eat the hay, and a few days later, they die from bleeding internally, because their blood doesn't clot," says Walters. The lab the farmer showed up at belonged to a chemist named Karl ...

The blood thinner warfarin, which prevents blood clots, owes its existence to some cows who got very sick after eating spoiled hay — and to a chemist who spent years trying to figure out why.

The blood came from a cow that had eaten sweet clover hay that had some mold growing in it. The farmer said quite a few of his cows had eaten the moldy hay and had fallen ill with what became known as ...