Teresa & Mike CHS - Our journal

[Baymule]

It is a blessing to have a neighbor to take care of things when you are gone. We have a retired couple that we take care of their dogs when they are gone and he takes care of our animals when we are gone. We don't go often or stay long, but it is wonderful to have that backup.

 

[Mike CHS]

Not a very productive day today other than mowing part of our yard and the hill in front of the shop. I have been having an issue with a tooth that goes from uncomfortable to tears in the eyes pain. Teresa finally got tired of asking me when I was going to the dentist and just made me an appointment this morning to get it checked. The tooth was broke off from the roots so it got pulled and then they went hunting for the roots. It's still sore but is better feeling than it has been for months.

Anyway - we have all of this netting and it only takes about 10 minutes to set it up over the area that takes me the better part of an hour with the weed eater so it was a good trade off in time.

Excuse the construction zone look - we are in the process of having new siding installed but like everything else in Tennessee they will finish it when they 'getroundtoit'

 

[CntryBoy777]

Yeh, definitely gonna have to look into that set-up. I know what ya mean about tooth issues....that's why I don't have any. Glad they were able to give ya relief....and that 1 won't ever bother ya Again.

 

[Bruce]

It was a productive day Mike, we go to see pictures of Maisy and the sheep!

So about that netting. What do you do if the power unit is in the barn but you want to use the netting several hundred feet away? I guess:
a) You don't
b) You get a battery operated power unit

 

[Mike CHS]

We run poly wire (rope) with step in posts when we take the ewes in the dry lot to our neighbors pasture (about 150' of open area. Solar would work but we have hot wire on all of the fences that we want to graze outside of. We set the boys up in a new pen yesterday that is about an acre and a half so it lets us rotational graze without putting permanent fencing in the way. I'm loving it but I have seen many cases where it isn't perfect.

I wouldn't trust the poly wire for anything other than an alley though. The reason we got our spotted ewe is that she would run right through it. We only use it with bribes to get them where we want them. They all (including the spotted ewe) respect the netting.

 

[Bruce]

Ah, hadn't thought of that. Poly wire and step in posts are relatively cheap. If I ever get to needing "temporary pasture" I could attach poly to the nearest strand of top hot wire and run it to the netting. But not an issue at the moment. I need to mow not only the yard around the house but all of the pasture (*) area as well. Spring grass is fast growing and the boys aren't even making a dent in it.

* is it still a pasture if it is only 3/4 acre or is that a paddock?

 

[Mike CHS]

Ah, hadn't thought of that. Poly wire and step in posts are relatively cheap. If I ever get to needing "temporary pasture" I could attach poly to the nearest strand of top hot wire and run it to the netting. But not an issue at the moment. I need to mow not only the yard around the house but all of the pasture (*) area as well. Spring grass is fast growing and the boys aren't even making a dent in it.

* is it still a pasture if it is only 3/4 acre or is that a paddock?

I guess technically they are the same thing but pasture to me is like when I grew up and you had one perimeter fence around your 'pasture' and that was it. We are striving for 'paddocks in size from 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 acres that only get grazed for a couple of weeks. We had random fecals don last week and our parasite load is still really low so it is working so far. We try to keep them out of their night time pens (paddocks) as much as possible during the day so it isn't over grazed.

If we wanted to be more active moving fence we could handle another 20 head with no problem so now we are looking at our base herd number of around 45 after culling this fall. We have 3 ewes that probably should be culled but they aren't going anywhere unless they tell me they want to.

 

[CntryBoy777]

I think it "Is", whatever you "Say" it is....I don't think we've gotten that "technical" here....your amongst Friends....

 

[goatgurl]

glad you got that tooth taken care of. I hate going to the dentist, i'm a major wimp! let that drill start and I crawdad in the chair.
so glad miss maisy is working out for you. it will take time and patience for her to be safe with the lambs and poultry but she'll get there

 

[Mike CHS]

I wasn't going to take anymore pictures of the sheep in the yard but I was there looking out and noticed Lance (our Border Collie). We gets to bring the sheep up from the field but has to go into the kennel after that. I don't know if you can see it well enough or not but I don't think he takes his eyes off the sheep all day and sits there like a wound spring. Masiey now accepts him when he brings the sheep in but she still can't stand the Aussie. We call her up before letting Lance go and she seems to understand she is supposed to stay out of the way.I dug some new post holes so I can add a gate to each of the main paddocks. That way I can just move one leg of the netting and add a half acre to the temp paddock plus that lets us use our sorting chute on level ground. We still have 3 wethers in with the main flock and we are going to send them in with the boys to give the ewes a chance to dry up. Some of these guys are bigger than their moms and still nursing.