Bruce
Herd Master
They look like they are really enjoying the new bale.
Teresa & Mike CHS - Our journal
- Thread starter Mike CHS
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Baymule
Herd Master
How do you have your round bale set up? I have cow panels around mine. But they can only stick their heads in so far, then I have to pull the hay closer to the sides of the cow panels so they can reach it. Ringo's big head wont fit through a cow panel hole, so I always pull hay through the holes for his dining pleasure. They don't eat the stemmy pieces either. It can look like they have a lot of hay, but they have eaten all that they can reach. They eat tunnels in it. LOL
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- #9,733
Mike CHS
Herd Master
Ours do the tunnel thing also but the hay we get doesn't get much better and they love it. We have cow and sheep/goat panels around ours also but I cut out enough of the slats enough that they can reach in pretty far. We have to work it once it gets down to about a third of the bale but they can pretty much take care of getting it until them.
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- #9,734
Mike CHS
Herd Master
Teresa and I got a dump truck load of good creek bottom top soil brought in today to use to fill in some areas but mostly to replenish the soil in some of our garden beds. We have 10 raised beds that are a little over 6'x10' plus one bed that is 12'x20' that we expanded today by adding an extension to both sides that are 7'x20'. Our entire yard area is on a slope so we have dug all of the beds into the hill to avoid erosion and we did the same with the two extensions this afternoon. What we had worked but we needed a bit more bed space to give us more latitude in rotating and using a cover crop without running out of garden space.
Baymule
Herd Master
Y’all have been busy! All that digging sure keeps you in good physical shape. You get a workout and you get something accomplished. Beats going to a gym.
- Thread starter
- #9,736
Mike CHS
Herd Master
Teresa took some pictures of the added beds (or at least one side of it framed. We will do the other side hopefully today if we can get the sheep worked and ready for the sale on Monday. This part of our 'yard' has the least amount of slope but it is also on slab rock where we have from 4 to 6 inches of soil. We solve the lack of soil by setting boxes leveled into the slope to make for less erosion. You can see some of the other smaller beds in the upper left. There are six beds in that location and another 4 at the top of the hill. Our Asparagus bed is getting root bound so we are going to double the size of that one also.
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Ridgetop
Herd Master
Looks great. But thinking about lugging all that produce uphill makes me tired! After 35 years on our "hill" I am done with slopes except for barn drainage.
Ridgetop
Herd Master
New place is nice and flat with flat area for vegetable garden next to house. 
- Thread starter
- #9,739
Mike CHS
Herd Master
We will see how bad our breeding schedule turns out this summer. I looked out in the pastures about 5:00 just as the football game started and saw that about half of the ewes were on the wrong side of the fence and in with the rams. Turns out that one of the gate latches is needing adjustment and it was wide open. I got the girls back where they belonged without a whole lot of trouble but stopping Cooper from running through the gate took a bit of effort as he is a little over 275 pounds.
Ridgetop
Herd Master
How many rams? 
Write down the date and breeding date if any bred now. Then if you have a couple of lambs arrive you can do DNA typing on those. Otherwise, cross your fingers that they just wanted to visit! 
Write down the date and breeding date if any bred now. Then if you have a couple of lambs arrive you can do DNA typing on those. Otherwise, cross your fingers that they just wanted to visit! 
