Ridgetop
Herd Master
God dog!
Teresa & Mike CHS - Our journal
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Mike CHS
Herd Master
I was reading @Baymule thread trying to figure out why I'm so lazy but I was smiling the whole time knowing what she is capable of.
I need to top the grass in a few of our paddocks but so far the rotation is keeping most of the grass evenly grazed. I seem to be spending more time trying to get rid of Perilla Mint than anything else. I'm still trying to pull small amounts of growth but in several places, it is coming in as large numbers of plants. I still don't know where this stuff came from as we had none until two years ago and all of a sudden it was here.
We are going to bring in all of the sheep that have lambed along with the young ones tomorrow and check them out and decide who might need to be culled along with the lambs going to market. My #5 ewe (Sadie) almost made the list because of her age (6) but she is the last of our first year lambs so she isn't going anywhere. Plus she is sweet enough that she will probably die here. Besides that, she makes me laugh every time she comes up knowing I'm going to scratch her back and she just zones out while I'm doing it.
I need to top the grass in a few of our paddocks but so far the rotation is keeping most of the grass evenly grazed. I seem to be spending more time trying to get rid of Perilla Mint than anything else. I'm still trying to pull small amounts of growth but in several places, it is coming in as large numbers of plants. I still don't know where this stuff came from as we had none until two years ago and all of a sudden it was here.
We are going to bring in all of the sheep that have lambed along with the young ones tomorrow and check them out and decide who might need to be culled along with the lambs going to market. My #5 ewe (Sadie) almost made the list because of her age (6) but she is the last of our first year lambs so she isn't going anywhere. Plus she is sweet enough that she will probably die here. Besides that, she makes me laugh every time she comes up knowing I'm going to scratch her back and she just zones out while I'm doing it.
Baymule
Herd Master
Glad my escapades make you smile! You can go ahead and laugh, I don’t mind. I’m well aware that I’m an idiot! Hahaha!
I pulled up a small patch of Perilla Mint. This place has all kinds of nasty invasive. 2 kinds of nightshades, Carolina Horse Nettle, which is also a nightshade, pigweed, but the sheep eat that, bitterweed, hemlock is taking over, Chinese lantern, creeping buttercup (toxic) thistle, and some others. Previous owner mowed the fields and that’s just not good enough. There are good forbs, I hate to, but I’m going to totally spray the back field with Grazon. I’ll lose a lot of clover and desirable plants but the nasties are taking over. I’ll try spot spraying the front field and the field they are in. I’ve discussed it with my son and decided to make the back field a hay field. Clean it up, keep it clean and then I won’t be bringing in any more invasive nasties in bought hay. It will be awhile before I can rebuild the fence in the back field, so might as well put the work in, and hay it. 3 generations have over used this land, taking and not putting back. I know it will take years for the fields to match the picture in my mind, but what else do I have to do?
Oh! I know!! ROOF THE DAMNED HOUSE!!!
I pulled up a small patch of Perilla Mint. This place has all kinds of nasty invasive. 2 kinds of nightshades, Carolina Horse Nettle, which is also a nightshade, pigweed, but the sheep eat that, bitterweed, hemlock is taking over, Chinese lantern, creeping buttercup (toxic) thistle, and some others. Previous owner mowed the fields and that’s just not good enough. There are good forbs, I hate to, but I’m going to totally spray the back field with Grazon. I’ll lose a lot of clover and desirable plants but the nasties are taking over. I’ll try spot spraying the front field and the field they are in. I’ve discussed it with my son and decided to make the back field a hay field. Clean it up, keep it clean and then I won’t be bringing in any more invasive nasties in bought hay. It will be awhile before I can rebuild the fence in the back field, so might as well put the work in, and hay it. 3 generations have over used this land, taking and not putting back. I know it will take years for the fields to match the picture in my mind, but what else do I have to do?
Oh! I know!! ROOF THE DAMNED HOUSE!!!
Ridgetop
Herd Master
Good idea to save one field for hay. If you can find someone to bale it on shares you are ahead of the game. So lucy that Cody wants to do that with my 30 acre field. Weather is not cooperating, but better it rains before the hay is cut. LOL (lessons learned from Farmerjan 
)
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Mike CHS
Herd Master
We are going to work the sheep again tomorrow since we only did half of them yesterday and we wanted to see what the fecals can tell us. We have over 65 head right now counting the lambs and that is over the limit. We will start early since it's going to be a record breaking heat tomorrow. I cut grass today for almost three hours so I don't have to catch up on that. The 12 ewes out with Oshi are doing well and just getting bigger. I still find it ironic that we have over 40 ewes, and 12 ewes are with the ram that has our next generation of replacement ewes waiting on him.
Baymule
Herd Master
It is so rewarding to run fecal tests. Thanks to Teresa teaching me, I eliminated chronically wormy ewes, except for two. The only reason I keep them is because, bred to Ringo, they produced worm resistant offspring. Both ewes were sired by that poor quality Dorper ram I had as my first ram. Both ewes have really nice lambs, usually rams, but I now have 2 Ringo daughters out of one and 1 Ringo daughter out of the other. On my last test, many of my ewes had a zero count, several showed ONE or TWO barber pole eggs. Only ONE young ewe was wormy with barber pole. 3 had tapeworms. I thought results were amazing. Running fecals is a vital component to raising healthy worm resistant sheep.
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Mike CHS
Herd Master
We were really lucky getting Ringo as our first ram since we were just getting started and didn't know what we didn't know. 
Ridgetop
Herd Master
Amazing how you can't decide what to let go once you start producing really good sheep. Congratulations!
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- #10,729
Mike CHS
Herd Master
We finished up checking the sheep this morning. We startedaround 9:30 before it got too hot and finished up fairly quickly. We just about have our market list narrowed down but we will run them in one more time to double check. Two of the ram lambs are going to be big boys, weighing in at 57 and 59 pounds at two months old yesterday.
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Mike CHS
Herd Master
The forecast temperature for the next several days means more trips to fill water troughs. When we get the high temp days, Maisy likes to sit in the water to cool off and she managed to teach Mel how good it feels. They both do enough rolling to make sure they get brushed enough that the water gets pretty dirty.
