Category: Hay and Forage
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Disking the Field
Our front-west field is being disked now to prepare it for planting. We don’t have a big enough tractor or disk to do this sort of work, so we hire the job out to custom farmers in our area. We’re going to put it back to permanent irrigated pasture. We’ll be planting a mix of… Continue reading
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On Pasture
The pregnant ewes went out on pasture today. As you can see, the grass is still thin, so we preloaded hay into the pasture. Some ewes were eating it after testing the grasses. From the looks of these udders, this is none too soon. I expect lambs anytime now. Continue reading
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Sheep Dewormer
The pregnant ewes got their dewormer yesterday. One of the ways we reduce the parasite load in the pastures is by deworming the ewes 24-48 hours before they go out in summer. That, combined with our hard winters, means that we rarely have to deworm lambs until late summer. That’s when we start to get… Continue reading
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Lawnmowers
We got the ewe yearlings out to graze the bits of grass coming up around the guesthouse. Why use a lawnmower when you have sheep? The grass must be too young still – it doesn’t taste good yet, and they didn’t like it much. They did have a grand time racing all over and checking… Continue reading
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Spring, Then Winter Again
Animal Husbandry, Farm Life, Gardening and Harvesting, Hay and Forage, Other Animals, Sheep, WeatherWell, we thought spring was coming. The snow had melted, and things were starting to green up. The grass was just getting going, and the guard dogs looked ready to start their lamb-protection work. Then, we got this! More snow, which led to more mud when it melted the next day. Last year, we had… Continue reading
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Winter Storm
On Monday, the construction crew got the joists up on the roof, but today they had to quit due to the snow. Ken’s been up top clearing snow off to try and keep it safe for when they have time to work on it. Our fencing crew couldn’t make it up the hill, so the… Continue reading
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Back on Pasture and Why Labels Are Misleading
The early snow has pretty much all melted, and we got one batch of ram lambs back out on our triticale pasture regrowth. We made sure they were all pretty full of hay before putting them out, and we made an aisle of electric fencing to prevent too much plugging of the permanent pastures. We’ll… Continue reading
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Hay, Rain, and Sheep Selection
We’ve been busy! We just got a huge shipment of hay in – fortunately, it was right before over an inch of rainfall. Last year, our entire second cutting was destroyed by rain. We buy hay from a neighbor, and we’d already contracted for it, so we were out the entire cost. This year, we… Continue reading
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Nitrates and Grazing
Typical farming news today. We planted oats in a new pasture to provide some grazing during the summer slump. We repeated that in the early fall for our sheep to enjoy as temperatures started to fall. We always do testing on our forages to balance the minerals we give our sheep. Before grazing the pasture,… Continue reading