Correction....

Well change of plan, the sheep will be staying where they are for another day or so, their fence will be moved and their grazing area decreased in order to get them to nibble some patches they've missed. Lil Boy is up to 95 lbs, Jett is at 42, I need to find a better system of weighing them because a produce scale just isnt cutting it.

Getting ready to Move on Out

Well the sheep have grazed down their current paddock as far as it can go without me worrying whether or not they will have enough to eat. They got a lot of the dandelions down, not so much of the bedstraw, very little plantain, and left the grass that is going to seed. I guess once it gets to a certain age it loses the flavor they like. It looks as though I could keep them there longer if I trained them to eat bedstraw specifically, but at the moment their services are required elsewhere. At some point soon, a chronology of their grazing will be posted detailing the before and after conditions of the pasture, and the conclusions regarding the actual fence row maintenance. Will try to weight them today before moving them to see if they maintained weight in this spot, and also to see if the wormer has helped Lil Boy. His body condition does seem to be improving so that will be a good thing to confirm. Next stop: the area surrounding the hoop house, mostly tall grasses, few weeds.

More food experiments

This morning the lil ones got a taste of alfalfa cubes to test them out on how they handle different textures, and they gobbled it right up! Lil Boy seems determined to make me worry about him as he looks me right in the eye and goes for the buttercups. I think Im going to go through the pasture and rip them all out. Tonight Im going to mix goat grain and alfalfa and see what they think. I am also trying to determine what I can conclude from the plot sample I took.

Voth training under way!

Last night I started my guys on a slightly accelerated Voth training program. They had a tiny bit of sweet feed last night, a little goat feed this morning, and tonight they will get a handful of sweet feed with some dandelion and bedstraw thrown in. If this experiment doesnt work in the next few days (due to a short time frame) It will be tried again during the semester. Lets hope this works, those weeds need to go!

Moveing on......a few feet to the right....

Well my guys are in their new pasture after 10 days in the herb garden. They mowed it down pretty well, but left some dandelion and bedstraw. Their new pasture has the same plants and roughly the same area. Actual measurements will be forth coming with pictures when my computer gets fixed.. Starting tomorrow Ill be looking at training them to eat weeds using some of Kathy Voth's techniques.

Deworming

So Lil Boy and Jett are beginning to eat the dandelions and bedstraw, I may not have to train them to it after all! I did discover that what I thought was rag weed is in fact buttercup, will be watching that one very closely. In other news, I finally weighed Lil Boy and Jett (not fun, must get the formula instead of the scale for next time) and Lil Boy weighs in at 85-90 lbs! Jett is at about 40 lbs. I gave them both their first dose of dewormer today, and I was surprised at how well behaved they were. I was also surprised at the price, $44 for a bottle of wormer, yeesh. Lets hope it works, Lil Boy looks thin and I blame worms, if he stays thin, I may have to start giving him some supplemental feed. We shall see!

Battle of the comfrey!

Well this morning it looks like Jett has lead the charge against the confrey, and  started to devour it. I think this is her way of telling me that dandelions and bedstraw are not what she wants for breakfast. Lil Boy spent 3 minutes rubbing his butt against the metal fence before trying to tackle me so Id scratch it for him. I checked him for ticks and lice, nothing, and no wool break either. Hope it's not scrapie, but i dont think it would be, Im just a paranoid sheep mama lol. Going to weigh and move them today and take pictures of the pastures, probably going to go into the one they were just in and clean it up with a scythe.