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| Paddock Rotation Archives:07-31-05: 5pm, Moved cattle to Paddock 3. We removed the cross fence between Paddock 3 and Paddock 4. Paddock 4 was a small paddock and we needed the fence to cross-fence another area. We also removed the cross fence between Paddock 5 and Paddock 6. Paddock 5 was a small Paddock with shorter grass. 07-30-05: 2pm, Moved cattle to Paddock 2. Most areas are holding up well. The canary grass is really hanging in there. It hasn't rained for about three weeks. Some areas are a little too short. Will mow this field in early fall. Next year I will mow it at the same time I mow Paddock 1. The timing on mowing is very important. Too late to mow it this summer. Moved Lambs in Washougal to Paddock 1 in that pasture. This is a strip of grass between canal and the main pasture. 07-28-05: 6pm, Moved cattle to Paddock 1. This paddock was mowed and the grass is green and about 6-8" high. Moved the lambs in the Washougal Pasture to Paddock 2 in that pasture. Moved the ewes with lambs (late lambing group) from Robbie's paddock (2-3acres) over to the Hockinson sheep pasture. The lambs are doing really well. There are 7 ewes with lambs. Robbie still has 7 dry ewes (bred for fall lambing) on his place. He is train a couple young dogs on them. 07-27-05: 6pm, Moved cattle to Paddock 7. The canary grass is responding well to the heat. 07-26-05: 2pm, Moved cattle to Paddock 6. Grass is doing well since this is a lower spot in the pasture and the water level should be higher. 07-25-05: 6pm, Moved cattle to Paddock 5. The grass is strong on this paddock but it is higher in elevation so the grass will start to brown on it soon. I don't expect too much more rain between now and Sept. Our summer draught should have started a few weeks ago and so I was surprised to get the rain we have gotten to date. We still have 27 acres of pasture we have yet to graze. I am hoping to get another week or so out of the pasture I have been rotating on and then move them onto the stockpiled pasture. With a little luck the stockpiled pasture will take us through the draught. 07-24-05: 10am, Moved the Rams back over to the Battle Ground Pasture. No Llama in this pasture, will have to resolve this issue soon. Moved the ewes (the ones I fence-line weaned yesterday) off the Washougal Pasture leaving their lambs behind and onto the new Hockinson sheep pasture we just finished fencing. This Pasture is only 5.6acres but has a ton of feed on it since it is a very low pasture. The ewes all have HUGE bags on them since they didn't nurse in the last 24 hours. Found one possible case of mastitis. 6pm: Moved Cattle to Paddock 4. I fenced off their access to the stream. This was good since the bull and several Heifers headed right where the hole was at one time. Even though they were still in the perimeter fence, I wanted to insure they didn't have access to stand in the stream. It has been really hot the last couple days 85-90degrees. 07-23-05: 10am, Fence-line weaned lambs today. Sioux did an excellent job helping me sort lambs from their ewe today. We went out first thing in the morning to get it done before the heat set in. We were done before lunch and the lambs were grazing near the fence (next to their mothers) when we left. We put the ewes in paddock 1 in Washougal and the lambs in Paddock 3. We have woven wire fence in between the lambs and their mothers. Weaning is always a difficult time for the lambs, ewes and myself. We work hard to keep the stress level very low for the lambs and ewes alike. I also spread saline solution on the weeds in Paddock 1 trying to keep the ewes eating back the Canadian thistle and black-berry. In hind-sight I whish I would have mowed the Washougal pasture before putting the sheep on it or moved the sheep back to it earlier. It seems the grass is so tall the sheep end up stomping most of it down, rather then eating it. 3pm, Moved the cattle to Paddock 3. Since we got a nice rain-storm on Thurs. night the grass is responding with fresh shoots. Paddock 2 was a little over-grazed since I left them on it for two days last weekend. In hind-sight I whish I would have skip it on this rotation. 07-21-05: 2pm, Moved cattle all the way back to Paddock 1. The grass is coming back well after being mowed and very lush. Few weeds are still trying to go to seed. They did a very good job of cleaning up the gate area and pen. Found a piece of hose I was missing. Amazing what is hidden under the grass. 07-20-05: 2pm, Rotated cattle to paddock 7. Also opened up the pen and gate area to get that cleared a little. No point in mowing when the cows will eat it. 07-19-05: 1pm, Moved cattle to Paddock 6. Nice re-growth and the canary is doing very well with the 90degree days. The ground has a lot of water in it and the grasses are responding. Should get less water-weight in the grasses that are coming up now. The clovers are able to show themselves now too. Bought a new TM block for lower paddocks. Should be taking the bull out by the end of the month. Hoping he takes it well. He is huge right now, VERY fat and happy. I don't think he will like leaving his lady-friends or the lush pastures for his bull-pen back at the cattle-owner's place. 07-18-05: 5pm, the cattle found their way into the creek so I have moved them to Paddock 5. I will have to extend my fencing to include that entire side of paddocks 4 and 5. 07-18-05: 2pm, Moved the cattle to Paddock 4, skipping paddock three since it was grazed just last week. This is a small paddock with some saplings in it. I am hoping the cattle take out the small saplings as they graze. It also is next to the creek so I am watching to make sure the cattle don't find their way into the creek. It is going to be 90 degrees today. 07-15-05: 5pm, Moved cattle to paddock 2. They will need to be on this paddock until Monday so I wanted to make sure it was big enough not to be over-grazed. This paddock is doing well in productivity. I cut a LOT of black-berry out of it allowing a lot more grass to come through. The Black-berry is coming back up we will just have to keep up with it. Maybe after a few years the grass will win the fight. 07-14-05: 2pm, Moved the cattle to paddock 3. I skipped paddock 2 because I will be rotating them onto it on Fri. evening. They will need to be on this paddock for two days so I wanted to make sure the paddock I put them in on Fri. evening was big enough to ensure they don't over-graze any one spot. The weeds I mowed a couple weeks ago are all staying down accept in a couple small areas. It seems I would have had to cross-cut the paddock after the first pass to get them all. I cannot wait to have this fenced for sheep, they would take care of some of these weeds for me. Changed out both 12v batteries for the fencer and water pumps. It is getting hotter so the pumps are running more often, however I don't think either battery was close to be low. 07-12-05: 2pm, Moved the cattle back up to paddock 1. I mowed this paddock about 10 days ago. It hasn't been grazed since. It has about 4" of re-growth and the heifers went right to grazing it. They were on Canary grass for two days and it was getting a little stemmy. The bull is getting really fat. We should be pulling the bull by late July. The old cow is doing well. The heifers are just about maintaining or gaining 1lb a day. I figured it would take a while to really get them going on grass coming from the feed-lot. They came onto the pasture really heavy. Haven't gotten any real rain this week. It should be hotter (80-85) later in the week. This should help the canary grass come back fast but will slow down my growth in paddocks 1 and 2. I am planning to mow paddock 2 as soon as my loaner tractor comes around again. We figure we are about one month behind on our season. The grass should be burning up by now but with some early summer rain, it is still coming on strong. Starting to plan for fall. I have a dairy friend who is going to hook use up with some seed for over-seeding in the fall. I am also interested in planting some grazable beets and winter annuals. Not sure how cost effective it will be so I will most likely start out with a very small plot of both and see how a test group of sheep does on it. I am a big believer in test-groups. Testing has saved us a lot of time and money when an idea doesn't panout for our grazing setup and management plans. 07-11-05: 7pm. Moved the Sheep in the Washougal Pasture to Paddock 2 from Paddock 3. This pasture is comprised mainly of Canary grass since it is located in a river bottom. Paddock 2 has some mix of clover and orchard grass but is primarily canary grass. it is about 3 acres in size. It hasn't been grazed since early May so the grass is tall and it should take a few days for the sheep to get the tops off the grass. Of course they will most likely try to over-graze the clover and orchard grass. I will move them off before they get too far on those stands of grasses. 07-10-05: 6pm. Moved cattle to paddock 7, wettest paddock on this side of the pasture. Just trying to keep up with the Canary. Going to get some hot weather at the end of next week so I will try to rotate them back to the top and down again before it gets too hot. Getting some good re-growth on paddock 1 after the mowing a couple weeks ago. Should move the cattle back up there before the hot weather comes. 07-09-05: 2pm, Move cattle to paddock 6, this paddock is mostly Canary grass (long and stemy) I am trying to keep the canary down to about 6-8" in order to keep it grazable. The storm brought some heavy rain and there is some pugging on this paddock. 07-07-05: 2pm, Moved cattle to paddock 5. The rain didn't come last night but it made it here by this afternoon. This Paddock is mostly on high-ground so any mud created should be limited. I found out the cows have learned to cross the creek to the north paddock in a couple places. The creek isn't that low but I guess they got curious. I didn't find any cows in the north paddock but I did find a spot with tracks through the creek. The pasture has barbed wire for the perimeter. The cattle were never out of the pasture just their paddock. Looks like I will be putting up more polywire on the creek side this weekend. 07-07-05: 2pm, Moved cattle to Paddock 4. This is the smallest of all the paddocks. I decided to move the cattle after only one day because it is going to rain some tonight and want to keep up our grazing pace as well as get them back on a little higher ground. This paddock has only a small section of low-ground. It is about 5 acres in size. 07-06-05: 2pm, moved cattle to Paddock 3. The cattle have taken the tops off their favorite grass and we got a little rain last night. I want to keep the tops off the next couple paddocks as the grass continues to grow. This Paddock is about 1/4 the way down the pasture and has some lower spots. They should have two days worth of graze on this paddock. The flies are getting bad too. This paddock has some shrubs that the cattle can tuck into and rub on to help the fly problem. 07-05-05: 12pm, moved cattle to Paddock 2, some really nice re-growth in this paddock and don't want it to get ahead of us again. 07-05-05 SHEEP MOVE: Moved the entire flock minus the 12 ewes we are currently lambing back to our pasture in Washougal, WA. This pasture is only 8 acres in size but we have it divided into four smaller paddocks for MIG grazing of our flock. The grass is primarily Canary and is over my head at this point. We grazed this pasture starting in early March and moved them to the 10 acre pasture in Battle Ground, WA in the middle of May. This is our primary lambing pasture since it is closet to the house and has the best guard Llama in it. We grazed it pretty hard for those two months of lambing and it was winter grazed by our early lambing group (about 15 ewes) so we figured we would rest it during the lush in hopes it would come back strong and be ready for summer grazing, it did and it is. This pasture should carry our flock until Mid August when we will move them to our newly fence 7 acre pasture in Hockinson. We hope to have the north-side of our 70 acres fenced for sheep by fall so we can winter graze our flock on it. It is my goal to not have to feed any hay through the winter. Time will tell if this is possible. 07-02-05: 7pm, Moved cattle back down to paddock 7. The young heifers don't seem to know how to eat shorter grass. The old cow and bull seem to like it just fine. 07-02-05: 10am, Mowed Paddock 1. The weeds were getting way too bad to let is go any more. I moved the cattle back up to this paddock for the day to eat the grass clippings. Really hot today, cattle mostly seeking shade. 06-29-05: 12pm, Moved Cattle to Paddock 7 (lowest paddock, furthest to the West side. This Paddock is primarily Canary Grass. The grass was over six feet tall and that cattle went to work on the tops. 06-26-05: 8am, moved cattle to Paddock 6 (low-side of pasture). Grass is primary canary and about 4 feet tall. Ground it a little too wet, will rotate cattle out as soon at tops are off the grass. |
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