Fresh Grass! Yum Yum

This is the first day my sheep have been on pasture! I rent about 25 acres of land which is split up into several small permanently fenced pastures, some areas of forest, and two barn spaces. So far my sheep have just been locked in the barn, acclimating to their new location, learning that the feed bucket means food, and becoming a flock of their own.

Tomorrow, the rest of my flock (the remaining 45 ewes that I bought) is coming to the barn so these ladies need to “vacate the premises” ASAP. I will use premier one electric sheep netting to divide the small pastures even further along with solar powered battery energizers to electrify everything. By keeping the flock in a very small area for a few days and then moving them to a new small area I am forcing them to completely eat all the grass in front of them without wasting any or overgrazing specific areas. This is part of the management system my sheep will be in while they live on pasture called “Rotational Grazing”. It is a really cool system that reduces parasite pressure on the animals and builds soil in a way that feed lot management or just open access to the full 25 acres could never do.

We herded the flock out of the barn, through an intermediary pasture, and then finally into their first section for rotational grazing without much issue. Luckily sheep are very good at playing follow the leader, and at this point my girls are quite trained to follow the feed bucket, so it was a simple process. There was also no danger of them escaping since we worked our way through fenced areas to their first section, so even if they ignored the bucket, they wouldn’t have been able to run into the road.

Enjoy the grass and fresh air sheepies!