Caryl spied me picking away at the hay stacks yesterday. I had 8 year old Rose with me, who was my color picker. She would point out the greenest ton bales of alfalfa grass hay, then I would pull some sample sprigs out from them and we would sniff them together. Anything smelling of sweet grass or with that robust alfalfa green bean fragrance I would mentally mark for our finish cattle—the ones closest to the end.
Spring grass is on the way. A shade of green colors the pastures, and I am not the only one who sees it: those yearling beeves look hard and long for any edible size blade that they may place on their tongues, like many a woman and dark chocolate. It makes it real hard to feed them. They become very discriminating now, and if you do not hand them the very best, they would rather hunt for that grass blade and actually lose weight! Kind of counterintuitive for spring, you would think.
And then there is that tobacco hay. That’s what we call hay that may be the very best maturity, but was put up just a little too green. Smells kind of like tobacco. Cows love it, even in the spring. I had been feeding it once for about 2 weeks several years ago when a store called me.
“Your beef smells musty.”
Musty. It took awhile to figure out, but it was tobacco hay. That strong flavor ended up in the meat. Never do that again. Another good reason to smell test that hay. They are what they eat, after all!
Leave a Reply