I wrote posts a couple of weeks ago to create a photo diary of our grazing progress as we started grazing the new pasture. As usual I got behind. It’s crazy now to try and document this the way I had intended. Instead I’ll start with this week and see where I go with this.

This is yesterday’s photo. I have numbered all the checks from west to east so I can keep track of what I’ve been doing. They are 30′ wide. We started grazing this spring with the paddocks in the north field. This is the previous post about that before I went on to the first irrigation. When we switched from grazing the north paddocks to the south ones we started with fencing two checks at a time and the idea was to split into smaller areas with cross fencing.

I have to say here that the main challenge here is that we have no permanent fences yet. When this project began (see the first post in October) we had to remove all the interior fences. Dan had knee replacement surgery in April and he wasn’t able to get those fences up before we needed to start grazing that month. I am using electronet fence and that means piecing together lengths of net and moving it as I move the sheep across the field.

This shows the length of fence as I have moved it from one check to another before setting it up.

There is plenty of clover and trefoil, but in some of the areas it has been overshadowed by the annual ryegrass. That is another challenge. Annual rye was NOT part of the seed mix. There were three perennial grasses in the mix, but the ryegrass that was already in the soil took over. Fortunately it is a good feed, but it grew so quickly that it has been a real challenge to manage. This paddock is one that Dan topped with the mower several weeks ago and the clover is more visible here.

So far it seems that I can graze the sheep on each 30′ strip for two days. I could probably add another day but I want to move them across the field to try and keep up with that ryegrass. We also want to make sure that the clover and trefoil get well established before grazing them heavily. It is time consuming to move that length of fence from one check to another every two days, so this last time I moved only one of the fences to the west. There is no fence down the center of this photo. I moved the fence that was on that check to the next check to the west. So the right half of the photo is where the fresh feed is. The sheep can tell where there is fresh feed, and they spent the next two days mostly on that half. They are also able to eat more of the ryegrass that is still on the check once the fence is removed. If this method works then I’ll move one fence every two or three days.

This photo is from a month ago when we moved them to the south field and set the north-south fences up to include two checks. We added east-west fences to have them eat each part more throughly. However, we have no drinking water source out there now so they have to have to be given access to the barn.

You can see how overwhelming the ryegrass is. There is clover there but it is hidden. When the grass is this tall the sheep trample it more than eat is and it has the effect of mulching the field. That is not what we want to encourage the clover and trefoil to grow.

When Dan topped the ryegrass the sheep could move through it more easily and it allowed the other plants to have light.

This view shows how they were able to graze the mowed part.

It’s great to have all this feed now, but I wish that I had more sheep right now to use all that feed.