Teresa & Mike CHS - Our journal

[CntryBoy777]

Yeh, he'll remember that the rest of his life, too I bet...
Just a bit more and ya will be able to stop your gathering of grass for feed....I know ya will be Glad when ya finally turn them out.
I was wondering if that neighbor's son comes with "Traveling Papers"....

 

[Mike CHS]

They don't let him get too far from home but he is a good worker. Every young man we have met around here is the same though. It's a pleasant change from what we saw in Charleston.

 

[Baymule]

I have always allowed our grand daughter and her friends chase and catch the hens. Sometimes I figured those poor hens would suck their eggs backwards up somewhere behind their eyeballs. But they endured being lugged around, hugged and squeezed, put in the horse trailer, and any number of things that kids could do to chickens (but never anything mean) and those hens never missed a beat. They laid like it was a normal day for them.

Now I have one pen with a rooster. He hates me and I hate him. He is on my short list. Unless a rooster was VERY calm and non aggressive, I'll never have one free ranging with the hens. I want the grand daughters and any other kids that visit to enjoy the hens, gather eggs and hug the hens all they want to.

 

[Mike CHS]

We did abuse the company and had the son help me hang the last of the gates. I loaded all the tools and the generator that had not been started since Hurricane Ivan in Pensacola and we got it all done.

We started the electric on top of the fence today and got almost 300' done. That fence I hope someday to not need but it keeps Maisy in and hope to someday not need it. We hope to finish most of it tomorrow but we need to rewire our new (old) trailer to fit the receiver on our truck to get our ram and new ewe. We are pushing it with her since she is due in about 10 days.

I will take a couple of pictures of how we did some almost solid rock fencing and we have to follow up with some concrete.

 

[CntryBoy777]

Hopefully, it'll be an easy transport on her and she'll settle in okay. I know ya will be happy to tie-up those loose strings. So, when's the "Ribbon Cutting" on the paddocks?

 

[Mike CHS]

We are hoping to finish the electric today or tomorrow. We got the last of the gauze out of the #6 lamb yesterday so he and his mom are back with the flock. I'm glad that was it since he was getting hard to catch. As soon as he saw the shepherds hook he got all tensed up to run. The first two days I could walk right up to him but that changed pretty quickly.

 

[Mike CHS]

We did about half of the electric wire and hopefully will finish tomorrow. I know I said the same thing yesterday.

I was going to spray part of the new pasture to kill the weeds but I cut and bagged about 200 pounds of it to see what the sheep would do with it and they pigged out so I guess I'm not going to spray. I'm not sure what they won't eat but so far everything I have cut has been used.

 

[CntryBoy777]

I find the same thing happens to me, too Mike...
With them eating it, it sure makes pasture management fairly easy, doesn't it? Does the orchard grass grow all year? If not, then what replaces it in the summer?

 

[Baymule]

I was going to spray part of the new pasture to kill the weeds but I cut and bagged about 200 pounds of it to see what the sheep would do with it and they pigged out so I guess I'm not going to spray. I'm not sure what they won't eat but so far everything I have cut has been used.

Horrors!!!! (shudder) Sheep feed 101: SHEEP LOVE WEEDS!!! Weeds are your new best friends. Sheep will eat things that cows and horses will turn their noses up at. I let the sheep out one afternoon and saw with dismay that they were in my pitiful daylily bed. But they ignored the daylilies and ate the weeds! No need to "clean" up the pasture for the sheep!

 

[Mike CHS]

@Baymule What I'm cutting now is more ragweed than grass but it does have a lot of some kind of clover.

Fred, I am not sure what our grass is and can't find anybody that really knows. We have a cool season grass that starts getting thick around November and then a lot of Bermuda that takes over in summer. Cutting 17 acres of pasture with a riding mower can be done but I'm thinking we need more sheep if I'm going to get anything else done this summer.