Preparing Winter Food for Livestock

By Jim Link © 2014

Online: July, 2014

James E. (Jim) LinkRecently, while driving along a country road, I watched as a farmer produced round bales of hay, neatly rolled and wrapped in a protective plastic cover ... all done by a machine pulled by an air conditioned tractor. This brought back memories of how as a young boy I watched and later helped my father prepare our livestock's winter food.

One of my earliest memories is as a toddler going with my Mom to the hay field with lunch or cold spring water for my Dad.  I would watch as he mowed grass with a mowing scythe, let the sun cure it, then using a pitchfork load it onto a sled pulled by our horse "ole Charlie" and make a haystack.  This was all very interesting to a young boy and I was anxious to be "big enough" to do the same.

Later, even though I was still very young, I was expected to help.  By then, we had gotten a horse drawn mowing machine, but everything else was the same. After cutting the hay "we" would take a bow saw and cut a long straight sapling, dig a hole and bury its end 2 or 3 feet deep as a "center pole." Then "we" would collect shorter pieces of wood and make a grid around the pole on which to stack the hay, keeping it off the ground. After the hay had dried my Dad would load it onto the sled, then pitch it onto the grid ... my job was to "tromp it down."  This process would continue until the stack was above my Dad's reach ... I was still "tromping."  After the stack reached 6 or 7 feet tall "we" would build a ladder from saplings and nail on rungs, my Dad would then carry the hay up the ladder and pitch it ... I kept "tromping,” being careful to stay away from the pitchfork.  Getting down was the fun part ... sliding off the stack … no ladder for me!

As the hay reached near the top of the "center pole" my Dad would "dress" the stack ... using downward strokes with the pitchfork, removing any loose pieces and forcing the outside of the stack to have a downward texture, which helped shed rain and snow. Then "we" took the loose hay from the sides to the top and "dressed" it.

Haystacks on a farm near Marion, Virginia in 1940. Photo by Marion Post Wolcott. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.The next step was to secure the top.  "We" would find forked tree limbs, cut the straightest fork about 2 or 3 feet long and the other to about 6 or 8 inches, push them deep into the top until the shorter one was buried.  This was done all around the top, about 1 foot apart, which helped hold the hay in place during high winter winds.

The final step was to build a temporary fence around the haystack to keep the livestock away until the winter feeding, at which time the fence was removed and feeding began.

Corn was also raised as winter food for livestock.  The corn was harvested by removing the "ears" and storing (usually in the loft of our barn). Then we would begin the cutting of the stalks ...  with one hand the stalks were cut with a long-handled blade and collected on the other arm until a good sized bundle was cut. We would then take a couple stalks and wrap them around the bundle of stalks ... twist the ends together and tuck the remaining ends under the wrap.

Next, we would stack several bundles in a tepee like shock. This type of construction was good to withstand the winter wind, rain and snow, allowing the blades to Haystacks on a farm near Marion, Virginia in 1940. Photo by Marion Post Wolcott. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.thoroughly dry.  The blades (leaves) were used as feed but the stalks were not good for feed so they were thrown back on the land to rot and become fertilizer.

Usually in late fall or early winter neighbors would gather and the men would have a "corn shucking" (remove the outside covering from the ears) ... this was always a very interesting gathering for young boys ... I learned a lot at these "shuckings!" The shucks would be fed to the livestock and the ears would be run through a corn sheller (a hand operated machine that removed the grain from the cob) by the youngsters.  The grain would be stored for livestock food and the corn cobs, having no nutritional value, would be kept and used later as additional fuel for wood burning stoves (a few were kept for the "outhouse.")

Oats were another crop used to supplement livestock winter foods.  Oats produce a grain at the top of a 2 or 3 foot tall grass.  To harvest oats we would use a grain cradle with a sharp blade. A grain cradle is similar to a mowing scythe except it has several 3 or 4 foot long "fingers" that catch the cut oats.  After cutting the oats and catching them in the cradle we would Corn Shocks on a farm near Marion, Virginia in 1940. Photo by Marion Post Wolcott. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.accumulate enough to make a good sized bundle and use the same procedure as with corn to tie them.  Again using the same procedure as corn we would build shocks.  After building shocks we would then take a few bundles, hold them at the middle and flare out the tops and bottoms, then place these on the shocks as a protective tent top. We would again use the haystack-topping procedure (smaller forked limbs) to hold everything in place. The bundles would later be fed to the livestock; they loved the oat grain as well as the oat straw.

By the time I was old enough to be of real help to my Dad, he had given-up on hillside farming and gone to work in construction!

Corn Shocks on a farm near Marion, Virginia in 1940. Photo by Marion Post Wolcott. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.