My daily rhythms with the sheep are now all about grazing rotations — how big an area to give them, how often to move the fence, worrying whether I’m doing it right. The big picture is that sheep consume pasture most efficiently if they’re a little crowded and hungry, so they’re less likely to be picky and instead eat a bit from all of the available plants. Pasture is most productive if it’s grazed uniformly for a short time (ideally before it goes to seed) and then left to recover. The grass is also happier if the sheep don’t eat too much — 6-8″ of remaining leaf height allows it to continue to photosynthesize efficiently and grow back quickly.
My flock of 65 sheep is constant*, but the quality of pasture varies across the farm — some areas support much more plant density than others. So every time I set up a grazing area, I’m trying to figure out how much sheep food it contains and how long the sheep should stay so that they eat just enough but not too much. My goal is to move them twice a day, the sweet spot between efficient grazing and shepherd insanity, according to Bill Fosher. I’m starting to get better at all the necessary guesstimates, but I still sometimes let the sheep overgraze (too much time for the available forage, so they chew the plants down too far for quick pasture recovery) or undergraze (too much area for the number of sheep, so that they start to eat selectively, overgrazing their favorites and ignoring the plants they like less, the all ice cream and no broccoli approach).
This morning, I erred a bit on the side of overgrazing, leaving the sheep a few hours longer in their overnight section than I should have. Aside from a few mature grass stems that they disdain, they had eaten everything down to about 4 inches.
They get very antsy as they sense that I’m about to let them move to the new section. I have the electricity turned off to the fence at this point so I can open a section without getting zapped, and I’m afraid that the sheep are starting to figure out when the fence is electrified and not. I worry that one day they’ll just push their way to freedom if I don’t move them quickly enough. Bravo and Cleo were leading the charge this afternoon.
And once the sheep are in the new grass, all the tension disappears.
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*While the number of sheep is constant, their consumption of forage really isn’t. As the lambs grow, their rumens start to develop and they start eating grass in addition to milk. And the ewes’ lactation volume changes as the lambs grow (peaking around 45-60 days after birth), so their nutritional needs change accordingly. All the variables are in flux.