Blog

This past weekend I lost a heifer to bloat. My first reaction was to keep this to myself, as this was a painful and embarrassing experience, especially considering that my professional title is “Grazing Coordinator” and I sometimes even get called “Grazing Specialist”. But after further reflection, I decided to share my experiences, in the hope that someone else can learn from my bad experience, or that I might get some good advice from others.

I only have seven animals, all heifers of various breeds and crosses, what I hope will be the start of my milking herd. I keep these animals on a pasture at my in-laws’ farm, about a fifteen-minute drive from our house.

Svanhild and Kevin this September

The heifer who died was named Svanhild. I bought her, along with her half sister Gunnhild last year when they were about six months old. I am currently in the process of having them bred; Svanhild was due to come into heat this coming Friday. She was raised on a nurse cow, so she was always on the wild side, but had just learned to enjoy some scratching in the last few weeks.

I started grazing them on alfalfa last Monday. I knew this was potentially risky, but I had grazed the same field of alfalfa last year, and I was easing them into it slowly. I wanted to graze the alfalfa now while it is still good quality forage, saving my remaining grass pastures for grazing later in the fall or hopefully even into winter. I started by giving them a strip that was only about 20% alfalfa, since a lot of it drowned out in 2008. They still had access to a portion of the perennial grass pasture as well. I gave them a new strip of the alfalfa every day, with the percentage of alfalfa in the strips gradually increasing. By Friday, the new strip they got was probably over 90% alfalfa (Actually, on Friday they got out of the fence minutes before I arrived in the morning, and I fenced around them so they were no longer “out”. Polywire and step-in posts are great!).

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