Hay shortage

[Augustus McCrae]

Here we go again..another drought cept this time it is larger scale and good horse hay is nearly impossible to find. If you have to feed weedy, sage grass, saw briars ect. hay here is a trick that will make any horse eat it. Crunch up about 3 or 4 cups of mineral block and mix with 3 gallons of water then pour it all over the flat side of a round bale and supplement with sweet feed and your horse will be just fine.

[Wolfgang]

Interesting . . . . no hay shortage here . . . but the people I know with horses need bank loans each month to buy the stuff. . . .    :)

[Augustus McCrae]

This also works for 2-3 year old hay.

[Dave McGowan]

We have some great hay in the Peace Country; probably the best we've had in 3 years. We've had some volume in past years but it was put up so late you would have to ram it into a cow with a broom stick and then it wouldn't do much good. This year it was put up while it still had lots of leaf and very little was rained on before it was bailed. Cows and horses will gain weight on this stuff.

Sorry it doesn't do you folks down there much good!

[Sue Cauhape]

Dave, I see a marketing opportunity here.

Meanwhile (family story alert) my grandfather-in-law and his father had a ranch in California. Texas and California both had droughts, but usually at different times. In the early 1900s, Francois and Victor bought some drought-stressed cattle from a Texas rancher and told him they had grass but it dries out in summer. The Texan exclaimed "Don't spoil 'em. They've been on brush so long, they wouldn't know what to do with grass."

Riding back to California with their new herd, Vic and Francois's train was robbed by Pancho Villa. Somehow they managed to disguise the fact they were French and survived without losing more than a little gold, which for a Cauhape is rankling at best.

[Dave McGowan]

Sue;

Perhaps for someone but I haven't put up hay or had any to sell for more than 10 years. And since I've been driving a tanker truck for 12 I don't have a truck handy to haul it. I'm selling novels now and not by the bale.

[Sue Cauhape]

Same here, Dave. Not by the bale, or even the bushel.