The first day of May brought stormy weather through Minnesota. On our farm we were pelted with golf ball size hail.
Hail on our front yard
Our toddler thought it was fun to scoop up all the hail with his toy skid loader.
Scooping up hail
Nick however, spent most of the evening and the next morning assessing the damage. The immediate concern was our feed for the cows. The haylage and corn silage piles along with the bag of high moisture corn were covered with thousands of holes from the hail.
Holes made by the hail in the high moisture corn bag
Each of these holes compromise the quality of the feed by allowing oxygen into the fermented feed. (check out how we made and covered the piles last fall here)
The day after the storm, neighbors and friends came over and helped us move all the tires off the plastic cover and add new plastic covers over the piles.
the tires are moved off the corn silage pile, ready for a new piece of plastic to cover it
Then all the tires had to be put back. Hopefully we do not have any more damaging hail this season!
Meyer Dairy 