We have three "horse pastures," one of which - the lower pasture where the sheep have been - is our sacrifice area. The three horses in the top pasture have pretty well grazed it down, so in order not to damage it with overgrazing, they need to be moved to the lower pasture. This will encourage Russell to graze the area of the middle pasture where he hasn't spent as much time. Since I don't trust two cutting-bred horses and a pony with my sheep, that means the ewe flock needs to move into the wooded lot, and the "boys' club" needs to go elsewhere. We have a small wooded lot between the arena and the Ram-ada Inn that we've used for sheep (shown above), but one side's fencing was put up as a temporary barricade and needed replacing to be secure. Yesterday we got that done.
It was a warm day, although comfortable enough in the shade with the breeze blowing. While the humans worked, the animals enjoyed siestas:
Okay, siestas AND dust baths.
This is about as close to a siesta as Jackson takes. He is almost always alert - you never know when someone might sit down and need a dog to love.
The boys gladly gave up their siestas for some fresh maple leaves, however, courtesy of the fencing project:
Now we just need to build a new hay feeder for the ewe flock and we can switch everyone around.
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10 comments:
Nice transitions Michelle! It is so much like parenting, this farming thing. Everything is such a tango.
Looks like you have lots of nice shade for everyone! Animals are the best helpers when the owners are working away for them:)
Hey Cynthia, did you recognize FirthofFifth Barish in this post?
Yes Kristi, we ARE blessed with shade in all the animal areas - and the sheep and deer keep everything nicely "limbed up"!
Yesterday, the sheep here were enjoying maple limbs from trimming, also. Progress.........
I so enjoy your blog.. It has been very hot and humid and also rainy here in Iowa. Hard to get something done outside. Rain gauge says "4 inches".. so far.. It rained 3" yesterday (sunday) and so far we have 1 inche today. The corn is so tall... Thanks for making my day everyday I read your posts. It's refreshing. I loved the video's earlier with the baby lambs..
Thanks, Tiggeriffic! You should put this comment in yesterday's post so you'll be entered in my drawings!
I'm tired just reading about all the work lol. I wish I had more shade here for my sheep but my fields are mostly just open pasture. Great pictures of your dust bathing chickens, they looked very put out to be photographed.
Sounds like a busy day :-) On a technical note - did you change something up with your blog that the pop up window for comments no longer pops up? Or is it something in my settings? Any idea?
Yes Adrienne, I changed the comment window to this embedded one because I like it better -- you can scroll up and down to refer to the post or other comments this way.
We are getting ready for the big switcheroo here as well. And I've been running all the sheep together...and Hank has been hanging out with the four new kids :-D.
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