Hay Feeder

The hay feeder is also a lounging spot.  And sometimes a cushy dog house.   Kratos seems to enjoy the hay feeder with sheep around him rather than his official house.

Supplemental Grain Feeding Sheep

There are critical times of the year when the ewes sometimes need a little extra help with their feed intake.  Late in their pregnancy is one time.  And then, depending on forage available, while raising the lambs.  At lambing time we like to supplement with molasses based protein lick tubs since it causes less disruption to the flock.  When lambing has ceased and the lambs are about a month old, we switch to a 20% protein, soy hull pellet based feed that is poured out in the troughs shown below.  Here all the troughs are piled onto the tractor loader forks to move from the old feeding area to the next.  As we rotate the flock to new pasture areas, all the feeders need to be moved, which includes:  the feed troughs, the mineral feeder, and the hay feeder.  Water tub and dog house moves also.

The troughs are set up into an area adjacent to the pasture with the sheep.  This feeding area is often contained by putting up some net fencing so the sheep don't start wandering off into the adjacent pasture when they are done eating.  An adjacent pasture must be used so that the feed can be poured out without the sheep pushing in trying to get at it immediately.  The sheep can be, and usually are, very pushy in matters of feed.  They can also be quite irrational, on occasion with smaller groups I feed them in their pasture and often the sheep will follow along trying to get the fresh feed coming out of the bucket or bag instead of eating what is in the trough.  With a large number of sheep pushing in to get at the feed, it becomes quite impossible to pour it out.

Here the flock, ewes and lambs, are waiting impatiently for the gate to open so they can get at the feed.

With the gate open, the sheep crowd through going for the feed.  The livestock guardian dogs are also waiting for their morning feeding.  They crowd right in with the sheep.  Here you see Kratos and Zeus's tail.

Here is Zeus.

All lined up at the troughs, at this time the spring ewe flock consists of 242 ewes and 390 lambs.  With 22 orphan lambs being raised by Jackie, lambing success rate this year is about 170%.  This is quite reasonable for pasture lambing operations.  I am making more feed troughs to allow the sheep to spread out a bit more.  Within a few days we will be weaning the lambs off the ewes.  The lambs will then be on ryegrass pasture with 20% protein feed and the ewes will by drying down the udders for 2 weeks on a hay diet.

Moving To New Pasture

Moved the spring ewe flock from the beaver field to the blueberry fields today.   They came quite readily and the lambs followed along with the flock well.

See the YouTube link:  https://youtu.be/-F1iuw-8Scs

Eastern Gamagrass

2018-04-18

The eastern gamagrass test patch is 10 to 12 inches tall, much further along than the bahia grass at this time in the spring.  That is my hat for a height reference.   Earlier this spring the sheep were in on it and the ryegrass when the gamagrass was 3 to 4 inches.   The sheep cropped it down to the ground and since then it's has grown back this much.  In a day or two I will bring the sheep in here again to graze the ryegrass and this gamagrass test plot.

 

Around 11:00 AM the fall ewe flock moved into this field.  In addition to the small eastern gamagrass plot, there was an abundance of good ryegrass.

 

These next two pictures are at end of day.  The sheep have cropped down the gamagrass quite substantially.

By the following morning the ewes had pretty much finished with the eastern gamagrass.  They seemed to have no problems at all eating eastern gamagrass at this stage of development.  A mature 3 to 5-foot stand of eastern gamagrass may be more problematic. 

2018-05-06 Update 

It is now early May and the eastern gamagrass has grown back quite well since being cropped near to the ground on April 18, that is just about 2 1/2 weeks.  I fenced the eastern gamagrass patch off from the sheep when I brought them in to finish off the ryegrass.  The sheep are in the background on the other side of the electric net fence surrounding the eastern gamagrass.  Again, I use my hat for size reference in the second picture below.

Further updates will follow the development of eastern gamagrass in this test plot.

Tropical Soda Apple

We have a particularly noxious weed coming.  This is the tropical soda apple weed, a particularly nasty, invasive weed that seems to have come out of Florida relatively recently.  I  hoed out a small pile of them,  all that I saw.   You can see the thorns on the leaves and stems, the sheep won't have anything to do with them.  Definitely something to keep an eye out for and not let get started anywhere. 

Pitcher Plant Flowers

Touring the hillside bog area of the Pinelands today we found pitcher plants blooming.  The flowers still had their large petals attached, which they seem to shed after a while leaving just the flower pod.  What I am calling the pod is what we normally think of being the full flower.   Neither of us remembered seeing these large petals before.

Red Chokeberry

Early in the spring Joy and I were touring out in the Pinelands and found a large number brightly flowering shrubs.   After some research Joy determined these were Red Chokeberry.  Today we found them with lots of little berries.