Archive for

294

Posted on 21 October 2017

When one of my ewes showed reproductive interest in Bravo, Bill suggested that this was a very unusual occurrence, and I chalked it up to one odd ewe. Today a different ewe started giving Bravo breathy suggestions, so I’m starting to think that rather than coincidence, Bravo has some special magnetism for the ladies.

Bravo seems not to be flattered by the attention.

Today was another sheep move, from the Woodbury place to a little hidden farm on the other side of Sullivan. More soon about the new digs.

Categories: Dogs, hunting, sheep

Tagged: any port in a storm, bravo, ewe, inter-species, Katahdin, lookin for love

293

Posted on 21 October 2017

A few days ago, as the sheep were approaching the end of the pasture at the Woodbury place, I was worried that there wouldn’t be enough grass to see them through until moving day. Since then, I’ve panicked repeatedly about both running out of grass and running out of time to finish the grazing, sometimes in the same day. It looks like it’s going to work out.

I moved the flock to this spot in the morning, and this evening I set them to trimming grass right against the house and barn. There’s a little strip of pasture heading toward the trailer-loading spot that they’ll eat in the morning, and I’ll try not to feel overly pleased about getting it all to work. The catch — always a catch — is that the tall grass near the house makes it hard to get the electronet to stay in place, and even when it stays, grass against the fence steals electrons. I’m half expecting to find a mass escape in the morning after 721 pushes his way through the half-assed fence and the rest of the flock decides to follow. A Greek shepherd should well know that hubris breeds tragedy…

Categories: barn, fence, grazing, pasture, sheep

Tagged: barn, finishing, flock, fuschia, hubris, irony, sheep, Woodbury

292

Posted on 19 October 2017

Sometimes a bluebird is just a bluebird, and sometimes it’s a lesson in the physics of electrical conductivity and grounding.

I think these are just bluebirds.

Categories: fence

Tagged: conductivity, Eastern bluebird, electonet, electric charge, fence, grounding, Hot, physics, Sialia sialis

291

Posted on 18 October 2017

I’m grateful to Luc for many things, but lately I’m particularly grateful that he keeps tabs on Cass’s reproductive cycle and lets me know when she is most fertile.

He helps remind me to redouble my efforts to keep suitors at bay. I’m not sure palace eunuchs ever had so much fun at work.

Categories: border collie, Cass, Dogs, Luc

Tagged: Cass, estrus, fertility, fucking, heat, Luc, mounting, receptive

290

Posted on 17 October 2017

I had a nice, crisp 7100-volt charge on the fence this morning when I got to the flock.

Despite that, I found a lamb outside the enclosure again this morning.

The fence was undisturbed, and he seemed completely relaxed (until the border collies noticed him), so I assume he’s continuing to jump over. This time I had the presence of mind to get his ear tag number.

I’m glad to see that he’s a wether,* so his time on the farm will be limited.

__________

* A wether is a castrated male sheep. While I’m building up my flock size, the females all get to stay for at least one breeding cycle, but the boys go to freezer camp when they’re big enough. As I get closer to the right number of ewes, things will get more equitable.

Categories: fence, pasture, sheep

Tagged: ear tag, electronet, escape, escapee, fence, high voltage, lamb, outside, tag number, wether

289

Posted on 16 October 2017

It’s been exactly a month since I moved the flock to the Woodbury place, and for the longest time the pasture felt infinite, a big square field that swallowed up my sheep. It’s still a big field, but the uneaten portion of it is shrinking by the day, and I’m suddenly anxious whether the grass will last until the move on Saturday.

The bit between the flock and the barn in the upper is all that’s left, and I’m hoping we can squeeze five more days of grazing out of it. The grass is very lush in the lower part of the field, but the farmhouse and barn at the end of the pasture look awfully close from the sheeps’ point of view.

The sheep, bless them, are utterly unaware that the gas gauge is close to E, and are as enthusiastic as ever moving to the next grazing area.

Categories: grazing, pasture, sheep

Tagged: almost done, big field, bravo, Cleo, grazing, pasture, running on empty, sheep, shitting bricks, Woodbury

288

Posted on 15 October 2017

Sometimes farming success comes down to having a strong-shouldered helper.

Jered Smith (nephew of Mark the Evangelist) has been helping me out once or twice a week for the last 6 months or so; his good nature and youthful strength have gotten me out of more than one jam. Today he was helping me set T-posts and cattle panels to establish the edge of my new sheep-handling system. My balky shoulder doesn’t like the post pounder much, and the 16-foot cattle panels are hopelessly awkward for one person to move, so I was delighted that Jered was able to make it today.

We got the cattle-panel fenceline up in much less time than I expected, and the new system is pretty much ready for its trial run on Saturday.

Over the course of the summer I’ve realized that off-site grazing will be a major part of my operation, and I needed to make sheep handling and trailer loading more efficient if I wanted to survive beyond my first year of farming. The new system (hopefully) meets a number of needs I discovered this summer:

It gives me a permanent place to load and unload sheep at my farm, rather than trying to make a temporary enclosure each time I move the flock.
It’s centrally located, so I can easily move sheep from other parts of the farm to the handling/loading area, and it’s also next to the barn, so that sorting sheep for shearing next year will be much less of an ordeal.
It combines a loading area with my handling and weighing equipment, so that I can efficiently unload sheep, weigh them, sort them, and get them off to their next appointments.

The system will get its trial run next Saturday when I move the flock from the Woodbury place to Holt Road. With each trailerload of sheep, I’ll need to bring them to my farm, unload them, weight them all, and sort out the lambs from the rest of the group. The lambs will be held aside so I can put them in a weaning pasture (far from mom) while the rest of the flock loads up and goes to Holt Road. As I was previously set up, the sorting and weighing would have taken an entire day by itself, spreading the flock move over 3 days. Now I’m hoping the detour to my farm will only add a couple of hours to the work on moving day.

Categories: sheep

Tagged: cattle panel, efficiency, handling system, Holt Road, Jered Smith, lambs, Mark Smith, sheep, T-post, trailer, weaning, Woodbury

287

Posted on 14 October 2017

I’ve become sufficiently complacent about Bravo and Cleo’s livestock guarding abilities that I imagine all the sheep predators have left Sullivan (or at least our parts of it). So I was surprised this morning when we arrived at the Woodbury place, and Cass and Luc immediately went into their predator-tracking mode, carefully and deliberately following scent trails in the grass. I hadn’t seen this behavior in a while, so I didn’t entirely trust my interpretation, but as we got close to the flock, there was a sign that even I could pick up —

fresh canid scat on a prominent spot in the middle of the pasture. I’ve often seen coyote scat on top of a rock in the middle of a trail, placed for maximum territorial announcement; this was in the right place, but seemed a little small for coyote, so I assume a fox was visiting the flock last night. This is the same rock where sheep had trampled sensitive fern two days earlier, and still very close to the flock.

I’m assuming that a fox would have a hard time killing any of my sheep at this point (expect perhaps the tiny triplet lamb that refuses to grow), but foxes can certainly take newborn lambs. I’m thinking that the big white dogs made quite a ruckus last night, so it’s surprising that the fox got as close as it did.

Cass and Luc were disappointed to be late to the party, but ready to take on any future threats.

Categories: Dogs, pasture, scat

Tagged: border collies, bravo, Cass, Cleo, fox, glacial erratic, livestock guardian dogs, Luc, pasture, predator, scat, scent trail, sheep

286

Posted on 13 October 2017

We’ve had a couple of delicate frosts so far, but this morning it was 29º when I got up, and the frost was a bit more assertive.

The section of the Woodbury fields where the flock is grazing is full of sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis), which tends to grow in wet areas. The sensitivity in its name refers to an extreme intolerance to frost, the whole plant turning brown at the first hint of sub-freezing temperatures. Large swaths of it had already died back, and the sheep have done their best to trample it in search of plants they’d prefer to eat. The frosty ferns in the photo died about a week ago and have since been thoroughly flattened by the flock since they were growing next to a boulder the sheep found irresistible.

Categories: fern, frost

Tagged: B&W, black and white, frost, grazing, macro, Onoclea sensibilis, sensitive fern, trampling, Woodbury

285

Posted on 12 October 2017

Every time I interact with Bill, I feel like I’ve learned enough since our last meeting to absorb a little more of what he’s teaching me. We’ve talked a lot over the past year about how to read grazing — how to know exactly how big a grazing area the sheep need, and for how long. Early on, he showed me how to look at the grass, how much should be left when I move my flock so that I’m not overgrazing the pasture (“When in doubt, leave more.”). At some point last fall, he showed me how to check the body condition of my sheep, feeling the amount of fat cover on their hips and spine, to get an understanding of their overall health and nutritional status. I try to check body condition once a month to know whether they’re gaining on losing condition the way I’m managing their grazing.

At the Woodbury place, the pastures have been hard for me to judge. They’re full of mature grass that the sheep aren’t so keen to eat, plus a mix of other plants, some yummy and some not; it’s not always been obvious to me whether the sheep have eaten as much as they will or whether I should leave them for a little longer. Bill pointed out that you can tell if a sheep’s rumen is full by looking for a little hollow space in front of the hips. Hollow means that the sheep hasn’t eaten as much as she could in the last 12 hours or so, and it’s completely independent from how much fat cover she has.* If the sheep are looking empty after they’ve been in the grazing area for a while, then they likely need access to more grass — I need to give them a bigger grazing area or move them more frequently. Like many of the things Bill explains to me, this was both revelatory and blindingly obvious (in retrospect), now that I knew enough to appreciate the implications.

On that day, several of my Katahdin ewes were looking particularly hollow, but once I increased the size of their grazing areas, they looked consistently full before I moved them to new grass. This morning I left the flock in the area I’d set for them last night, knowing that they would be a little hungry by the time I moved them, but I wanted to make sure that area got well eaten. Here’s what a slightly empty Katahdin ewe looks like.

Another ewe looks a little empty in this image

but quite full in this one,

so it pays to look carefully. It’s also much easier to judge the state of rumen fill with a hair sheep like a Katahdin. With these gals, who were just shorn in July, it’s already tough to judge hollowness under all the wool.

This latest lesson is giving me additional reasons to keep my Katahdins in the flock. They tend to produce small, slow-growing lambs, but they’re awfully helpful to a new shepherd who’s still figuring out the grazing thing.

_____________

* A fat sheep can have an empty rumen. Body condition is a long-term variable, changing slowly over weeks or months, while rumen fill tells you about the last half day.

Categories: grazing, pasture

Tagged: empty, ewes, full, hair sheep, hollow, hungry, Katahdin, pasture, rotational grazing, rumen, sheep, Woodbury, wool sheep

Travels with Musti

Dogs, nature, photography, and the meaning of life, with apologies to J.S.

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