Tag: hayfield

Moving Around

Sheeps & Peeps2 Comments

A little late this year, but we finally moved the ewes to the hayfield pasture on Saturday.  Mid-summer was rainy so hay was made later this year.  Then it seemed to take the grass a little longer than usual to re-grow to pasture length.  The move went quite smoothly, and even Luke and Willet cooperated.  The ewes are very happy in their new pasture, and will remain there (with some paddock moving) until breeding preparations begin.

Yesterday

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422 bales of hay from the graveyard field yesterday!  It is the field where we run the lambs after weaning and winter the hoggets.  This was a very good yeild and much better than our first day of hay making. 
We’re back at it today, as we’ve already got the old barn field down.  But first we’re off to bring the ewes and lambs in from pasture for a health check and second round of CDT shots.  Maybe we better get a little breakfast first. 😉

If you haven’t already, be sure to comment on Wednesday’s post – it’s a give-away!

Almost Summer

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After weeks of seeing relatively few deer, mostly bucks and yearlings, they are back out in full force and new life seems to be everywhere. During the last week, our family has come upon a fawn hidden between fence rows, ran over one with the hay mower which miraculously was unhurt except for a very small cut on its leg, carried a very shaky newborn out of the road and up a bank and almost hit one while brush-hogging. When a mama deer tells her fawn to stay put… it stays put! We are so glad all these encounters had happy endings.

In other news, our haymaking season has begun.  Saturday was a beautiful day to get the first 215 bales in the barn.  The two frosts and snow we had in April really set the broad-leaved plants back and our yield was significantly lower than last year.  We’re hoping for some good grass-growing summer weather and a thick second cutting.  We are so thankful for family that helped… from the mowing, tedding, raking, baling, stacking, unloading and more stacking…all the way down to the littles who cut up tomatoes and mushrooms for the meal that Mom and Lena had ready when the field work was finished.  We are blessed.

Musical Pastures

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In our never ending quest for better flock health, we’ve been busy playing musical pastures.  The ewes have finally made it to the hayfield by the old barn.  This involves putting up more than 1/2 mile of temporary net fencing, which will be moved several times in the coming weeks.  They are brought back in to the permanent pine grove pasture in the evening to protect them from predators.  This has worked out very well.  The ewes are on new pasture in preparation for breeding season, and the hayfield is being weeded and fertilized.

In an effort to avoid another scandal like the one last year involving the young Maebh, we decided to separate the ram lambs from the ewe lambs following FAMACHA scoring on Saturday.  The ram lambs are now in the granddaddy green pasture, and the ewe lambs were moved back to the graveyard pasture.  We were really excited to score 19 ‘ones’ and 0 ‘fours’ this time.  We did have to treat about a dozen ‘threes’, but that is less than 25%.  The cooler weather is probably helping.  All the lambs are out of the barn and out on pasture.  Time to start planning for fall shearing.