Soggy Cows

Vermont has experienced one of the wettest springs ever. Not only has Lake Champlain risen 6 feet above normal levels, it has been raining, heavy, for the past month! Our farm is located near the lake, with a creek (now it seems like an ocean) running through it. The creek is so flooded, we cannot get to over 150 acres of land. The pasture for our heifers is unreachable, the poor young-ins are yearning to go out to pasture. Also, our pasture for our milkers is so wet, the poor ladies are so uninterested in eating the overgrown grass.

With all this rain, the grass is growing like crazy. We cannot get tractors onto our hayfields to cut it. Farmers all over the state usually start their first cut of hay around time time of year. Unless we have a long stretch of drying, much of our feed (grass) will go to waste.

Normally, we let our cows out to graze on grass that is about 6-8" tall. This is an ideal height, because it is easier for the cows to eat younger grass. Cows eat grass by taking their tongues and wrapping it around a clump of grass, then they pull it up to put it in their mouths. Once the grass gets beyond 8" tall, it gets annoying to the cows to eat. It pokes them in the eyes and they have a harder time actually ripping the grass out of the ground. This causes the cows to search around for shorter grass- as they do this, they trample on the grass and knock it down. The result is ruined grass that the cows will not eat and will also not grow back right without some pasture management by a tractor. We cannot get the tractors onto the fields. It is a soggy soggy mess.

Because we are an organic farm, there is a pasture requirement. All organic cows must get 30% of their dry matter intake from pasture. This requirement forces organic farmers to pasture their cows as much as possible during the entire growing season. This rule is a good thing because it requires an organic farmer to have available pasture for the amount of cows on his or her farm.

Exemptions apply, in serous weather events, we can keep our cows at the barn. This is ok to do once in a while, we just put some extra feed (which is the food we grew last season to make it through the winter when pasture isn't available) down for the cows and they can eat all day.

Because we are getting all this rain, we are so far behind in planting our field crops. We are also running out of feed from last year. So we are stuck in this inbetween while mother nature continues to fall from the sky. Because of the rain, our cows can't eat the grass that is growing, we also cant harvest that grass because the ground is so wet, we are running out of feed from last year to feed our cows. We are in an absolutely sticky situation and we really hope it dries out really soon.

So please, whoever is praying for rain, stop!