Moving Sheep

This morning I moved the ewes with their lambs from the east bahia field, where they were finished with the chicory, to the middle field with prime bahiagrass. 

A video showing the sheep moving is on LongleafSheepTV at the following link:

Moving Sheep

This is the URL to the video:

https://youtu.be/HArMtL7yhfQ

Sunset

A sunset with a tremendous amount of color last night.  The trees look like they are on fire.

Fall Grazing

This fall, for forage, we have a combination of late season bahiagrass, cowpeas, and some ground covering weeds, primarily chamber bitter that grew in to cover the ground where the cowpeas did not take very well.  To ration and direct the grazing we partition areas for the sheep with temporary, but quickly erected, electric net fence.

The first day in the area they ate all the cowpeas,  now they are working on the chamber bitter, which is a horrible weed in Joy's garden,  but here a fairly reasonable forage for the sheep to eat.  

Aurora continues to guard the flock.

Lambing is almost done this season.   We had a late set of twins yesterday.  The larger one was quite mobile, the smaller one tended to be sleepy and kept getting left behind,  so Jackie took it as an orphan. 

We plan to bring all of to the barn tomorrow to deworm the lambs and any ewes that need it.  Also there are a few ewes limping that need to be treated.   After that, the flock will go on a field of chicory, which also has parasite treating properties. 

Trailer Decking

We are almost finished getting the decking on Jeffrey's refurbished hay/equipment trailer.   These are two-inch thick oak planks that we cut on the sawmill from a large oaktree that blew over.  For hauling the hay earlier,  we did not need all the planks in place.

Hero and Heidi are inspecting the job.  Our other trailer is on the right.  All in the arch barn. 

Spoiled Sheep

This morning the sheep had finished with the cowpeas in the middle beaver field and were ready to move on.  I took them into the neighboring west bahia field with prime bahiagrass.   The sheep were not pleased.   Here I am trying to get the gates closed on the far side of the field from where we came in.  They thought I should be taking them on to more cowpeas. 

They eventually turned around and started grazing. 

Then settled down for cud chewing. 

On the down side, looks like we lost a lamb to a coyote last night, even with Aurora in the middle of the flock.

Aurora and sheep

Aurora is guarding the ewes and their lambs in the middle beaver field.   They are eating down the cowpeas that have been growing all summer, building nitrogen in the soil.  The sheep will be finished in a couple days, then I mow the field to cut down what the sheep won't eat and plant a fall mixture of seeds: Cosaque black Oats, winter peas, vetch, and Nitro radish.