A funny thing…

[burnt]

Precisely. I sing to them. So long as I sing, they stay put. To move them to a new paddock, I simply stop singing, they get restless and move to the next pasture.

I know exactly what you mean because it's the same here.

When I sing, the cows don't move. As the melodious strains from my throat waft through the air and settle into their long ears, they all squeeze into the furthest corners of the meadows in paralyzed terror.

[Sheepwheat]

I know exactly what you mean because it's the same here.

When I sing, the cows don't move. As the melodious strains from my throat waft through the air and settle into their long ears, they all squeeze into the furthest corners of the meadows in paralyzed terror.

As soon as I pushed submit reply, I knew I was asking for it!

[burnt]

Yes, tight hi tensile field fence they call it is the main fence. I bought a schwack of temporary posts last year and never used them yet, but we will split up big chunks into little chunks with a couple of hot wires, and my hope is to very intensively graze them, Gabe Brown (swearword to some) style. Reason number 53 that centralized water is not on my radar. We only have about 80 acres fenced so far. On good pasture, one should be able to run four ewes per acre. Some of our pastures are that good, but some is not even close, and so priority one is improving the poor pasture areas.

Last fall, the green in the stubble made me sick. The grazing available in the countryside that was simply sprayed out,( why oh why oh why?), was tremendous. Millions of lbs of meat could have been built on that fodder. Anyway, until my land is all properly fenced, I hope to run them on stubble after harvest with my temporary fencing (with more wires).
I have also wondered about avoiding a pre seed burn off operation by hitting fields hard with the sheep post seeding, pre emergence. If all one is after is annuals, why wouldn’t that work?

Sorry, I kind of got off track there. A simple answer went too far!

Had a shepherd neighbor here that made arrangements with crop farmers to graze their stubble in the fall. He used thousands of feet of flock netting to move his ~150 - 200 ewes across their fields.

Basically needed enough to make two paddocks for his flock and would leapfrog one over the next as they worked the new one.

It was remarkable how many days of grazing he would get from a field of wheat stubble. And also how many hours he spent doing it.

He walked miles per day, never had an extra once of fat on him either. It's takes some commitment to your flock to do that.

[Sheepwheat]

Had a shepherd neighbor here that made arrangements with crop farmers to graze their stubble in the fall. He used thousands of feet of flock netting to move his ~150 - 200 ewes across their fields.

Basically needed enough to make two paddocks for his flock and would leapfrog one over the next as they worked the new one.

It was remarkable how many days of grazing he would get from a field of wheat stubble. And also how many hours he spent doing it.

He walked miles per day, never had an extra once of fat on him either. It's takes some commitment to your flock to do that.

I have the body of a taut, pre teen Swedish boy. So that is right up my alley.

[burnt]

I have the body of a taut, pre teen Swedish boy. So that is right up my alley.

No, no! We're not talking about just an alley. He did whole farms!


And he must have been taught well because it was his fences that he kept taut...