Teresa & Mike CHS - Our journal

Sure glad ya got the hay took care of and the rain held off for ya....I wouldn't be too hard on yourself.....it is all a part of gaining "Experience", and there aren't any in the "Herd" that hasn't stood in those "Shoes".....there are always adjustments to make with any set-ups....yours is on a bit larger scale than most....and that magnifies the weakness of the plan, but with all ya have done already there will always be "Fine Tuning" the plan and system....

Some people think wealth is precious metals, stocks, all the accumulated things of a lifetime. But I tell you, they have no idea of the true feeling of wealth when you look at hay stacked in the barn, a full freezer, a pantry with glass jars full of your garden produce.... don't we feel sorry for them!

Mike CHS said:

e worked our sheep in the catch pen this morning and I have a lot of lessons learned. I planned the layout really wrong so that will change this week. I made the pen too big and the corners needed to be rounded out. For those who have really tame sheep that may not make much sense. We started with sheep to train ours and others dogs so they are left on the wild side. I gave the sheep too many corners and sheep being sheep, they get into a corner and just stop.

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1. I've yet to see a single working pen for any species of livestock that worked as was originally envisioned. (Mine included..I re-built it several times and still needs some tweaking)
2. Non-Rounded corners. This, is the biggest mistake people make when designing a working pen. We tend to think animals use their vision just like we do, but Most livestock as well as non livestock animals have a more enhanced peripheral vision than humans, so their brains process what they see differently than we do. 90 deg corners present problems for them. Tho better, you don't have to form true radius, but any break from 90 deg will do the trick.

Been my experience, that livestock 'want' to go back in the direction from where they started. They were safe there, not bothered, then we start trying to move them, and they do good till they come to a sharp angle and they are unsure just what to do. A radius or bend seems to make them think they are turning back from whence they came and they deal with that radius so much easier and much more calmly.

greybeard said:

Been my experience, that livestock 'want' to go back in the direction from where they started.

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That is the basis of Dr. Temple Grandin's method of getting animals into a trailer. Make a U shaped chute so they head out then as they continue they feel like they are returning from whence they came. All calm and content.

A 'just because' picture - as in I love the views on our place but this spot is my favorite.

We wound up with between 145 and 155 square bales (lost count) and the neighbor wound up with 18 large round bales. We are only cutting right at 9 acres so the grass was decent.

I can see why that's your favorite view! It's beautiful.

frustratedearthmother said:

I can see why that's your favorite view! It's beautiful.

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That would have been a good spot to build a house except that is is solid slab stone going down nobody knows how much.

Mike CHS said:

Today was grass cutting and weed whacking as with all of this rain the grass is getting ahead of me. Yesterday we ran 4 strands of electric poly rope for about 300' to divide part of one paddock in half. Partly to let the grass fill in some there but more to see if the sheep will respect it so we can use that part when we separate all of the lambs. We are a month behind where we wanted to be as far as breeding goes but it is what it is. Our sorting pen is about 500' from the paddock we will be taking the lambs to so we are back to giving them some grain for a few days to make sure they will follow me down the hill.

The only sheep that has seen the rope is the spotted ewe from her previous home. She did not respect it but they were only running two strand and a fairly low voltage charger. We read almost 11k volts going through the rope.

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Ok, so quick question. Month behind on breeding pushes you further into the Spring for Lambing, right? Guess it's no big deal, but just used to March/April here.

The charged rope is made from what material? Just curious. Not used to it, so sounds interesting.

The market here for meat sheep has been fairly consistent and it doesn't seem to vary very much. We have done some direct sales and used a local processor so it works for us. We prefer a winter lambing because of parasites but we have other issues this year (daughters wedding) so we had to adjust our schedule. I don't know what the material is for the rope but what we got came from Premier1.