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.