Although I know several hundred dairy farmers, I don't know of any who
irrigate unless you call those spray rigs which creep along spraying out
water as irrigation. Usually, the water source would be underground wells.
I really don't know what irrigation is. When we went to Montana several
years back was the first time I remember seeing irrigation rigs in
operation, although I may have seen them years before in Alabama,
Mississippi, etc. and not realized what I was seeing.
Most dairy farmers around here raise very little of their own feed crops,
preferring to buy them rather than hire non-existant labor. We raised hay
and silage but bought grain and additional hay. We relied on rain and if it
was a drought year, we bought more.
Putting our cattle out to pasture was mostly for their exercise. There was
very little grazing available. The size of dairy farms here is not much. We
were renting one which was less than 300 acres for 250 head.
>To resolve the question is easy. Are eastern dairy farms usually
irrigated? Ours are all irrigated here, in this part of the "Pacific
Northwest". That's because there's no forage otherwise after June.
Bill
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