One day, there is a luxurious green meadow tasseled with wild flowers. The next day, after the tractor has gone, everything is neatly shorn. Wildness replaced by a playing field.

And  at the edge of the field, you might see neat 1,200-pound round bales of hay wrapped in white plastic. It’s as if, my daughter once noted, a giant has strewn about a bag of huge marshmallows.

Hay—basically dried grasses and plants—is the single most important source of nutrition for animals in the winter months, or when access to good pasture grass is limited. A dairy farmer, for example, needs an acre of pasture per cow. If she is running a hundred head in New England, it may be hard to find that much pasture in one spot. Hay to the rescue.

In the winter, cattle stay out in the open and are exposed to a wide range of temperatures and conditions. In fact, cows will calve in all conditions.  But as the temperature drops below freezing, a cow burns more energy just to maintain body heat.  Ranchers use about one-half to three-quarters of ton of hay to fatten out a single steer. Horses, meanwhile, consume as much as 2.5% of their body weight in dry matter daily, or about 22- to 24 pounds of hay daily for a 1,000-pound horse.  That’s about a half- small rectangular bale of hay per day.  Horses might get the smaller bales of hay, but cows are getting the giant marshmallows. They round bales are easier to move about by machine rather than muscle.

For Robin and Allen Cockerline of Whippoorwill Farm in Lakeville, Connecticut, their cows are grass fed, grass finished. No grain for these guys, even though some will insist that corn is necessary to fatten a cow to our American taste.

There are health benefits, too, from sticking with grass and plants. According to Eat Wild, cows raised on pasture have less total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and fewer calories. Grass-fed beef also has more vitamin E, beta-carotene, vitamin C, and a number of health-promoting fats, including omega-3 fatty acids and “conjugated linoleic acid,” or CLA.

Alfafa’s Not Just a Friend of Spanky’s

Hay falls into a number of categories including grass, legume, mixed (grass and legume), and cereal grain straw (such as oat hay). The names of grasses have a certain beauty: brome, bluegrass, fescue, orchard, redtop, reed canary grass, ryegrass, Sudan, and timothy. Alfalfa, a legume and the “standard by which all other hay is judged,” provides more energy, protein and calcium than most grass hays. But alfalfa is worth it—with “twice as much digestible protein per acre as mixed clover-timothy hay, and over three times as much as corn. It is also richer in vitamins and minerals.” Alfalfa also tastes better for horses that turn up their noses at other hay.  Cows tend to be less finicky.

Is It Time to Hay?

If it finally stops raining after a week, and the grass is dry and high, don’t expect to have your farmer friend over for dinner that day. He will be out putting up hay. About once a month from June to August, farmers are looking at a crop that can mean the difference between making it through the winter months or going into debt.  A good supply of hay stored indoors under good conditions will reduce winter feed costs. Your herbivores will thank you, too.