Well my dad and I got three more acres fenced in for the sheep today. Its always a good feeling to get the sheep onto fresh pasture. With all the threatening of rain the last few weeks we still haven't gotten any. Nothing measurable anyway. We haven't really had any rain since the good flooding we got back in March when I was sleeping in the barn watching the AI lambs being born. The ground was still frozen then and needless to say, the water ran away and didn't soak in.
We also got the spotted group of cattle into their pasture at home today. The solid black and solid red girls already went out to pasture a few weeks ago and are loving it out there.
I got the electronet up to section off the 3 acres into three smaller pastures. This now brings my acreage for the sheep up to over 9 acres of rotational grazing for the ewes and 2 acres for the rams. I still do feed hay as they need it but I find they don't really want it. They also have fresh water daily but don't seem to drink it much when they have fresh grass to eat. They must be getting it from grasses and forbs that are filled with water?
We also started cutting first crop hay. If it doesn't rain we won't have any 2nd crop which scares me as this will be our third dry summer in a row and we don't really want to be worrying about hay and pasture when its only the first week of June!
On other weather related news.....we have had temperatures at night hovering around 32 degrees and have had several nights with frost advisories and such. Some neighbors have lost their veggies like green peppers and tomatoes to the cold if they didn't cover them. The extended forecast shows temperatures in the 50s and 60s which is about 20 degrees cooler than average temps. Today's average for our town is 76 degrees. I think it hit 50 today. Not really fun.
Come on summer!
A long time coming!
It has been a long time. Too long in fact. We lost access to our farm website and ebonwald website when WEBS.COM was closed by VistaPrint. ...
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Its always fun to switch it up a bit. I know some of you like to hear about my pigeons and cattle from time to time, as this IS a farm blog,... -
With my work load continuing to pile up, and less time to spend with the sheep, I am offering the following: My entire flock of BlueFaced ...
7 comments:
Frost? Frost? Egad!
We had 2 and 3/4 inches of rain last night and 1/2 on Saturday. We had our dry spell when you were getting rain. We can trade now. You get the rain and we get the sun.
Hopefully you get some rain! We are getting rain all day today and we had rain on Sat. and Sun. too. It is colder that normal here too.
We are much too cold and have been dry until the last two days. I've just order our second round of nematodes and don't know if they can handle the nasty mess our garden has become due to weather. Geesh, what the heck? Thinking of you guy.
Yooohooo Garrett - no replies to my emails.... ;-)
Where the heck do you live, Garrett? I thought you were near the Twin Cities.
It's been raining for days here in the Bluff Country. Cool too. It looks like we're finally going to get some sunshine today. Good for clearing my fence lines!
I find my sheep hardly drink any water when the grass is lush as well.
Why do you have to feed hay to sheep that have 4 acres of pasture???
We've actually had rain here in Northern California when we should be having 90 degree days. Mother nature seems a bit out of sorts. Unfortunately we need it just as much than you do.
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