Jon: 0:00

Welcome to Just Say hey.

Jon: 0:00

The podcast podcast where I talk about the things that matter to small farms. You know why? Because we are a small farm, if you know us. We we run about an 850 acre commercial forage farm, which is a lot. I mean, when we started we were super small. I mean we had like 20 acres and it was all we could do to get that bailed. And so you know, we've grown a little bit and just want to share some of the insights we have from that in this podcast. But here's what I want to talk about today.

Jon: 0:25

I got asked by a customer the other day how much hay do they need to get through the winter? And you know, for me I've been doing this long enough now that it's kind of second nature. I kind of just do the math and move on. But I want to talk a little bit about how to do that math and how to figure out how much you need, talk a little bit about when it's time to diversify your operation. When you start a farm, you're trying to figure out how to make money with it and sometimes you need to focus all of your energy on doing one thing really, really well, but then again, you also need to figure out how do you stabilize that income and sometimes we need to diversify a little bit. I'm going to talk a little bit about why we changed balers I get a lot of flack from some buddies of mine why we changed from a red to a green baler, and then a little bit about maintaining our sanity in the months coming up. So let's get into it.

Jon: 1:13

Welcome to Just Say hey, the podcast where we talk about what matters to small farms, whether it's business, marketing, agronomy, equipment, livestock health. If it matters to small farms, we'll probably talk about it here. So let's get into it. So the other day I had a customer come up to me super good guy, and they're just getting into livestock and they didn't know how much hay they needed to get through the winter. And again, you know, if you've been doing this a while, you sort of know what your hay needs are and you get that taken care of and you move on.

Jon: 1:42

I sort of have my strategy for how much hay I want to have for my horses and then for my cattle. I plan a year and a half's worth of hay by the time we get to this time of year. I want to have a year and a half's worth of hay in my barn for my horses. The reason for that is, if we go into next year and there's a horrible drought, I have six months to figure out where I'm going to get hay. You know, if you, if we're in a bad drought, hay producers will. We won't have anything, and if we do, the price goes up because it's about you know you have a very, very limited supply, so the price generally goes up because it's about you know you have a very, very limited supply, so the price generally goes up quite a bit.

Jon: 2:27

We had this happen before we got into farming our own hay. Had this happened, I want to say it was 2012,. 2007, 2012. We weren't farming our own hay, we were just buying hay for our horses and we were running out of hay and we had a drought, and so it was a real juggle to get enough hay to get us through. So my plan is a year and a half.

Jon: 2:50

But how do you figure out what that year is and how much hay you need? They call it an AU and the whole process was thinking about grazing management, how to figure out how many animals your land can support. But we can use that same calculation to figure out how much hay we need to have on hand. And the formula is really really simple and I got to doing the math today and I think I figured out that it's even simpler than I thought. So an animal unit is considered to be a thousand pound. Mama cow, with or without a calf by her side, and that's an animal unit. And there's I think it was an animal mass unit and then it got abbreviated to just an animal unit and then they have animal unit month. So how much grazing land do you need to support that one animal unit for a month? Well, the easy math for it is let's see if I can do this the right way. Their math says you need 780 pounds of hay, assuming that this animal is going to eat one to two percent of its body weight per day in hay Probably needs a little bit more if you're doing in grain supplement. But you know, just for round math I like to overestimate and say this animal is going to eat or 780 pounds a day, 780 pounds a month. I think it's like 26 pounds a day.

Jon: 4:28

I like to think that that animal is going to need a thousand pounds and the reason for that is in almost every operation that I see mine included we have waste Hay that gets trampled, hay that gets pulled out of the feeder, and then trampled hay that gets left in the feeder. They can't reach it, or whatever the situation is. So I like to figure a thousand pounds of hay per animal unit per month. Well, that's pretty simple. If you have four goats, a cow and a horse, we can add up what the weights are. We're going to say your horse is 1,200 pounds, your cow's 1,000 pounds. That's 2,200 pounds. You got four goats at 200 pounds each. That's 800 pounds. So you're 3,000 pounds. That's how much hay you're going to need for the month. 3,000 pounds of hay, and that gives you a little bit extra for waste. So it's kind of an easy equation to do. It's a equation you add up how many pounds of animal you got and then you multiply that by how many months you're going to be feeding.

Jon: 5:32

Now everybody's feed ration and everybody's feeding strategy is a little bit different. I mean, for our horses, for example, we do stall feeding, so they get fed high quality hay every day, twice a day, but they also have a lower quality hay that's usually put out in a feeder that they can snack on during the day. They're not starving for it, but if they want some grain, it's just. If they want some hay, there's just a free choice hay out there. So that is sort of the way our strategy goes. So we probably put a you know thousand pounds for six horses. We'll put a thousand pounds of hay out a month just for them to snack on, sometimes a little more than that, but then they get a full ration of hay in their stalls morning and night. Now, with our cattle, we free choice feed our cattle hay and we have a specially designed feeder. If you want to see that, check it out on our YouTube channel. Kind of cool. We based it on a University of Kentucky design out of Eden Shale, kind of cool. But again, still, the math still adds up the same. So you know, add your animals up, how much do they all weigh. That's how many pounds of hay you're going to need per month. And this is again a good, just a rule of thumb way to do it. So you know, I thought that might help some people. It's surprising how many times I've gotten asked that question over the years.

Jon: 6:55

The other thing we were talking about I mentioned it in the beginning is diversification. You know small farms. You start out with a product you're going to grow or you're trying to grow you're trying to supplement your food. I'm really talking about the people who are doing this, who farming, trying to farm for a living, trying to make this your full-time gig and looking at diversifying. And we started out when we started farming. We started our idea was going to be was cattle. We were going to raise cattle. Cattle market was good.

Jon: 7:28

When we started I was still working a full-time job, so it was a little difficult. But as we moved on we sort of pivoted our farm to a commercial forage farm. That was the land that was available. We had some equipment. It just made a lot of sense for us. Now we still run a small cow-calf operation. In fact I'll be taking calves off in the morning, taking them off for sale. But we still run a small cow-calf operation. Again gives us a little bit of a buffer, gives some extra income to the farm and it doesn't take a whole lot of work. So you know, during calving season there's a lot of work and a couple of days real hard work during weaning, when we're doing the weanings and we're vaccinating and that, but after that it's not too bad and we enjoy it. I enjoy being around the cows and got a good partner over here in Daly who helps me work it. So that was how we decided to diversify.

Jon: 8:28

So when you're looking at diversifying, when you're looking at should you do something else with the farm, you have to make the decision. How much time do you have to apply to it? Because coming up with great ideas is pretty easy, but then you have to. Are you willing to put in that work to be successful at it? If it's a side hustle, and is it, does it detract from your primary goal? And let's say you're raising, you know, let's say you're raising food to supplement your grocery, so you have fresh vegetables and you're canning and you're doing things like that, and then you have this side hustle. Does that take away from your primary focus and determining what's important? And I'm a big fan about money, about equipment, about anything like that Looking at the things that you have that are valuable, and that may be knowledge, it may be equipment, it might be people you know it might be whatever it is and looking at your limitations. For me, like with most people, it's you know my limitations are time and money. So you know where those are my biggest limiting factors. At the end of the day, I'm done. I've already put in a 12 or 14 hour day, and so when I come up with an idea that I think might be interesting to pursue, I have to sit down and really think is this going to take away from my primary focus? If it is, is it going to be financially worth it or emotionally, spiritually worth it to do and then make that decision.

Jon: 10:19

So you know, I was talking to a guy the other day I got asked about, you know, when should you diversify? And that's a difficult question. You have to look at all the variables because everybody's operation is different and everybody's time, input and money, input and output, all of those things are different. But that's sort of how I would think about going about the decision of how do you diversify a farm. You know farming is pretty difficult. So you've got to really be sure, if you want to give your operation the best chance for success, that you have the resources to put toward whatever you're planning to do to diversify, and that's time, money, equipment, space, real estate, whatever it is. So to answer the next question. That was kind of.

Jon: 11:06

I've taken a lot of flack for this because we switched from a Heston baler to a John Deere baler and a lot of guys that I know just think that was a wrong decision to do. And you know and I'm not red and green man this battle has been going on for ages, but the decision wasn't about the manufacturer and this is something that I found. This. I think this is important for everybody. When, if you're trying to farm and do it seriously, for you know a living it's important, or if you're planning to do that, that building a relationship with your dealer is important, and when you get, when you have a relationship that works, no relationship's perfect. Had you know I've had problems, minor problems with it. You know you have minor problems no big deal, they happen but when you have major problems, then it becomes an issue.

Jon: 12:13

And my opinion people would ask what kind of truck do you drive? Well, I drive the truck that I can get service on. What kind of tractor do you drive? You know I drive tractors that fit my needs and tractors I can get service on, and we made the decision to switch. We had I've talked about it before, I don't want to get into it. We've had a really bad relationship with one of our local dealers and they just got purchased by another company. So maybe that'll change in time.

Jon: 12:44

But we had to make a decision based completely on service. It wasn't about price of the equipment, it was about the ability to service. Because in our business, in our farm, when we are bailing that bailer cannot break down, we lose lots of money when that bailer is not running. If the mower breaks down, you know what we can bail. What we have mowed and we're a couple of days late getting our cutting Doesn't really impact the bottom line. As much Rake goes down, you've got other rakes. The baler can't afford to have multiples of those on an operation our size. So when that baler goes down we lose money. So we had to make a decision based on the service. It was not about paint color, it was not about mechanical capabilities, it was about service. So that's the reason we made that decision. So you know the guys quit, quit messing with me. They can quit messing with me about the change in bailers and that. But I'm excited about a lot of the technology that our new bailer comes with that our old bailer didn't have. But that's the reason we changed. So with that I'll jump in.

Jon: 14:02

Here we are, if you listen to this podcast today, when it's released, tomorrow's election day. I encourage everybody go vote. Your vote counts. It's an important thing to do. If you're an American, we vote, so go do that.

Jon: 14:21

But we're coming up on the holidays and this is a stressful time for a lot of people and I just want to give everybody a thought to just relax about the holidays. Just let them happen, enjoy being with your friends and your family and, if you don't have family around, start some traditions of your own to just take stock and think about the things that are going well in your life and the things that are not. Make plans, get help if you need it, ask for help if you need it. I know it's challenging for a lot of people for different reasons Deaths in the family, finances, all of the things that are going on. I know grain prices are getting are really bad, and so you know to the farmers that are struggling, it's okay to ask for help. It really, really is. So with that I will leave you today. Hope you have a blessed day, good luck and God bless.