Summer Annual Forage

This spring we planted a combination of cowpeas, forage soybeans, buckwheat and forage millet for the sheep.  The buckwheat comes in first with white flowers that are supposed to be attractive to bees.  But, we haven't seen very many bees.  This is a photo of the east bahia field. 

The cowpeas and forage soybeans come in next, just under the buckwheat flowers with their big, broad leaves.  The millet comes up last, rapidly over grows the others.  Below, the sheep are in paddock 5 of the south field.  I divided the field into 5 grazing paddocks.  We give them two hours to graze there in the morning, then move them back to a bahiagrass field.   In that time they pretty much graze off the top leaves of the peas and beans, and several inches of the millet.   The paddock is then left to regrow. 

In this photo, several cattle egrets are flying over the sheep.  They walk around in with the sheep seeking bugs.

Opportunistic Feeders

Sheep are opportunistic feeders.  I  eventually put them where they were supposed to go this morning, into a South Field paddock that was ready for grazing.

Zeus is with them again since being in the chick barn during the tropical storm that came through with about 5 inches of rain for us.

The storm caused some big branches to fall out of trees onto the fence.  In this case the breach in the fence led into the east bahia field, which had a good growth of white flowering buckwheat.  However, the peas, beans and millet were not yet mature enough for grazing.  That did not bother the sheep, they went right in and took advantage of the opportunity. 

I called them and they did come out and go where they were supposed to be, although slowly.

We brought the big ewe flock, around 220 sheep, in around the house to help trim the grass and weeds.  They really like the goldenrod in the meadow area, just beyond Joy's flower garden.  Its hard to see, but I put up an electric net fence to control the areas where the sheep were grazing.  We hadn't planted anything in the meadow, it had just grown up and was pretty much taken over by the goldenrod, which grows prolifically around here.  We are curious as to how quickly the golden rod will leaf back out and are wondering if a goldenrod pasture for the sheep would be viable.  We will see.

Additional photos and discussion are at our web page: Around House