Fresh Forage

One edge of the pasture has really started to grow, and I put the ewes there this afternoon. There probably is only 2-3 days of grazing available there, and then they will be back on hay (unless the rest of the pasture picks up the pace a little).

The girls were very excited to get something green to eat. I had almost forgotten how relaxing it can be to watch and listen to grazing sheep.

Frost Seeding

Last fall, I tore up part of a pasture to lay a drainage pipe. There is a spring that drains down a slope across the field. The water spreads out and formed a wide, marshy area. The 100 foot drainage pipe appears to have solved the problem.

I was left with a wide swath of mud this spring. Soon after the snow cleared, I seeded with a pasture mix (various grasses, clover, etc.). Now that it is warming up, there has been serious germination. It looks like "frost seeding" works!

Hopefully, this area will be ready for grazing before too long.

Where Did the Fences Go?

So we had another snow storm this past Sunday. The forecast was for 6-12" - at our location we usually are at the top end of the range because we are at a little higher altitude than average around here. This is a pretty typical forecast for our area.

The flurries started around 2:00 PM on Sunday afternoon. I finished cutting up and hauling a couple of dead trees from the woods near the outdoor wood boiler (we are running low on firewood due to the crazy cold winter we have been having), and headed in for some lunch. The flurries continued until around sunset, and then the skies opened.

All evening it snowed incredibly hard and the wind picked up (gusts to 35 mph). From where I was sitting in the living room, I can see the road, and I only saw the plow once all evening. It turns out that the plow made several trips down our road - I just couldn't see because the snow was piled up halfway up the window! Our satellite TV went out around 11 PM as the snow interrupted the line-of-sight between the dish and the satellite. I stepped outside before bed around midnight, and it looked like we had 18" on the ground and it was still snowing like crazy.

By 7 AM the snow had stopped. Although we had lost power during the night, it was back on by then. Our neighbor has a sheltered spot, and she measured 27" of new snow. Around our yard, we had 2-5' of new snow everywhere -- have you ever tried to use a snow blower to clear 5' of snow?. The satellite dishes on the roof were completely covered (the roof had been spotless before the storm). The tree limbs were bending (and breaking) under the weight. It took me and Catherine about 4 hours to clear the edge of the roof (and dishes), driveways and paths to the animals. We got to the sheep last.

The sheep were under their cover, and pretty much stuck there. The biggest of them could look up and over the snow, but none had ventured out into it - the snow was above their backs.

When I built the pens, I built the gates to open into the pen. This is a major problem when there is 3-4' of fresh snow behind the gate. I was able to snow-blow the outside, but ended up climbing over the fence and falling in head-first (wife and kids thought that was pretty funny). The kids and I shoveled out the pens enough that the sheep have room to move around, get to the hay, water bucket and minerals. Unfortunately, the snow is up to the top of the fence outside the pen. Hopefully all the hungry predators (and my dogs) are too heavy to walk on top of the snow and right into the pen! I feel like I ought to blow a path around the pens, but it is just too freakin' deep! And I am strongly considering flipping the hinges on the gates around so they open outward.

The Meadows

It is still the middle of winter, but my mind is on spring. Because I want happy, healthy, fast-growing sheep, I need to grow a lot of really good forage. Currently, we have only a couple of good acres of pasture (and even that needs some more work). Starting in the spring, we will begin the work of renovating, reinvigorating and rediscovering the "meadows."

Nate, our next door neighbor, recently moved back into the house where he was raised. He tells us that our property used to have big, beautiful meadows. That was 40 years ago. Now we have a lot of "new" forest characterized by 3-8 inch diameter trees and a lot of undergrowth (mostly 1-2 inch diameter beech trees). There are very few mature trees (2+ feet in diameter), and actually most of those are dead. Around many parts of our property, you can tell when you cross the boundary because you step into a much more mature forest.

This is going to be a multi-year effort. In order to get off on the right foot, we have purchased some of the necessary tools, including a brush hog and a stump grinder. These will be delivered in the second half of March. I already have a chain saw and a small chipper (up to 3.5 inch branches). We are also taking about a tractor - might go shopping for that next weekend.

Ram-Proof Fence?

My Bluefaced Leicesters (BFLs) are currently in two pens that share a section of fence. Each pen has a ram and 3-4 ewes. The pen has 4x4 treated posts sunk into the ground as deep as I could dig before I hit a boulder (generally 18-30 inches - New Hampshire is the "granite state" and the glaciers dropped rocks everywhere). The posts are connected by horizontal 2x4s at 6" and 48" above the ground. I stapled 47" woven wire sheep fencing to whole thing. This wire is heavy, sturdy and a pain to work with. But it is strong and I figured there was no way any sheep was going to get out, and no canine was going to get in - if there was going to be a problem, it was going to be something jumping over. My sheep can easily clear a 42" fence when they want to. And snow buildup makes the fence shorter every storm (got another 4" today).

It turns out I had it all wrong.

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed the fence was dented and deformed between the pens. Today I noticed one of the rams was kinda bloody around his neck and shoulder. I couldn't catch him, so I am not sure where exactly he got cut, but he seems to be ok. While I was trying to corner him, I noticed that the woven wire fence between the pens is broken in multiple places and bent all out of shape. The holes are big enough that one of the yearlying ewes could squeeze through if she wanted to. Fortunately, everyone was still in the right pen.

I still cannot believe that they managed to do this much damage to the fence "bare handed." I know I couldn't have done it without my bolt cutters.

Lesson: Don't underestimate the strength of a motivated ram.

I had some steel panels in the barn, and reinforced the fence that divides the pen. Hopefully that will convince them to stay in their own pens.