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My horses eat the bark off of trees too. Alfalfa is probably considered the best around here but you can't big bale it and free feed it to horses or you have problems with founder. The horse hobby people with one horse at home like the small bales they can feed daily. Those with very many and/or also run cattle prefer the big bales. Those that trailer their horses around like to keep some squares handy. Since we keep them at the in-law's 12 miles out of town, don't get to feed everyday. I got a couple mustangs and last year went up to your direction at elm creek, NE and adopted a couple burros. I put out 2 bale feeders and just let them free feed. They are all fat and sassy. Winter before, I supplemented with a protein tub but didn't this winter. We give them a 3# coffee can of sweet feed two or three times a week. I keep some squares on hand for road trips or in case it is too muddy to move big bales which is hit or miss during the winter. We are in good shape, hay rich and horse poor, which is the opposite of most. We have about 15 or 20 big bales left from last summer yet. But Allan, I always thought cattle would eat anything. Last couple years, they started cutting and baling milo stalks around here for feed for cattle. Any self respecting horse would thumb it nose and starve before eating milo stalks. I'll keep an eye on the brome this year. Where I put the horses one section of the pasture, the brome is tall and leafy like fescue. If I remember correctly, as the brome begins to form seed heads (which they say is the time to cut it), it then becomes more stem. Go too long and it gets real stemmy. Correct me if I'm wrong but now that I think about it, it probably transforms from grass to stem just like wheat. Nothing prettier than a field of wheat in the grass stage. I suppose that is the joint stage when the stem emerges? In high school I spent 3 years driving combine on harvest from Texas to Montana. Probably never learned much about green wheat though. Farmers always wanted me to cut their seed wheat and their down wheat cause I tended to cut lower than others. For downed stuff, I'd cut dirt sometimes. When the boss was gone and we were done, I also won the 1/4 miles drag races through the field in road gear. Back then we used a header trailer and loaded the 410, 510, C, & G combines on the bed of a truck. Can you imagine today telling a 14 year old kid to drive a truck with combine on the back up to the next stop, back it into a road ditch, back the combine off into a field, hook up the header all by yourself and then wait till the farmer comes and tells you where to go? They did it to me without mishap.
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