Sheep on the Move
June 8th, 2013 · 2 Comments · Posted in Blog, farming
Creating a new paddock with portable fence
You can lead sheep to grass, but they won’t necessarily eat it.
That was my experience when I placed our eight ewes in an area with some exceptionally tall greenery in it. The sheep atw all around the edges–right down to soil level, as you can see in the above photo–but as far as that really tall stuff with the thick stems–they’d get up on their hind legs and nip the leaves, but they had no interest in those stems.
The area looks kind of funny now with clumps of long, leave-less stems sticking out of the ground. You half expect to find a baby Moses cached away amongst the bull rushes.
I was afraid if I left the sheep there any longer, they’d turn that paddock into a mud bath. So this morning I admitted defeat and spent about an hour creating a new paddock adjacent to the old one. That’s not terribly difficult with the portable electric fencing you see here. I bought 80-foot lengths, which meant scything a path for three more 80-foot sides, unfolding the fence, pushing posts into the ground, tying off the ends. You just pull the fence back a bit and the sheep walk right into the newly created paddock with all the lush grass in it.
Some farmers prefer to make a path for their fence by running over the grass with a tractor. Another grazier I spoke with recently tamps the grass with his feet. I find it just as easy to mow the grass out of the way with the scythe. All told, erecting the new fence and moving the sheep took about an hour of my time. Other than feeding them a bit of grain every other morning, and and occasionally filling their water tank, my job is done. The sheep do all the work. I get to watch.
All grazing animals have food preferences and actually most of them don’t like to eat the coarse stems of tall grass. They are being (evolutionarily) sensible–there is not much nutrition in those tough stalks of cellulose and a grazing animal has a limited amount of room in its stomach. If it ate too much low-nutrient filler it might get malnourished despite a full stomach.
I’m sure you’ve read The Omnivore’s Dilemma. It has a pretty good layperson’s description of grass farming as part of the visit to the farm in Virginia. That’s why rotation feeds the animals best, they keep eating the nutritious new growth and the grass never gets tall enough to develop unproductive woody stems. But there will always be some tall grass (and thistles and weeds) that they won’t eat.
Thanks, Sarah. Not only have I read “Omnivore’s Dilemma,” but I’ve spent time on the farm you’re referring to–Polyface–Joel Salatin’s farm. I’ve also read just about everything ever written about grass farming and subscribe to “Stockman Grass Farmer” as well as “Acres” magazine. Yet, hope springs eternal. I presented the sheep with tall thick stems, they declined. It’s on to the next paddock and we’ll see what that brings.
Maybe what we need are some goats.