Hello,
I'm new to this forum and am hoping to brainstorm some ideas.
I am in Colorado, with mixed grass legume pastures all irrigated. We
have had a severe drought, but this year we have enough water that my
pasture is getting way ahead of my sheep. I graze about 70 ewes under
an old apple orchard on about 7.5 acres. My last paddock was 150 ft
square and 65 sheep were on it for a week and still didn't eat
everything. I have 7 sheep plus lambs on about 3/4 of an acre and
the grass is so high the sheep can't be seen. I really need to move
them every 3-4 days to keep my forages in good shape. My next paddock
will be 150 ft by 60 ft to see if I can get it small enough so they
eat things down appropriately in the time I need them too.
Most MIG info suggests adding more animals to deal with excess
forage, but we are in a federal scrapie program , in year 4 with a
closed flock, so adding sheep or goats is not possible. Cattle are
right out, they destroy the irrigation ditches, we tried that and it
was a complete and utter disaster. Geese might be an option, but we
have no way to get them processed into meat locally once their
grazing time is done. I'm working on that but for now I could pasture
the geese but then have a bunch of geese with no way to get them
butchered easily. Since I'd need 80-100 geese to harvest the excess
grass in a year like this one, that's way more than I can reasonably
do by hand. However, I am ordering 16 geese to see of they would work
and trying to locate a processor for them so that might be a long
term solution.
Pastured pigs are also a possibility, but finding pig genetics that
adapt to outside pasture situations is difficult and never having had
pigs I am really unsure of my ability to use them in this situation.
Stories I hear from people doing it are very mixed.
I can't easily make hay in my extra paddocks in a year like this one
where I have more grass than I can use. The reason is my "paddocks"
are less than an acre so I need to be able to do nearly hand
processing of hay. That's where a small set of equipment would be
great, needs to be able to get in and say cut and bale a 150 ft x 150
ft patch. Sure it won't make much hay, but the goal is to get some
hay (I'd also consider haylage) and keep the pastures in a good
vegetative state for best animal performance. We have to buy in all
our hay, so even a small amount of production , if it stays here, is
a good thing.
It's too early in the season to consider stockpiling forages to
extend my grazing.
Info avail here from the extension service says that just plain
mowing and leaving the clippings on as mulch will hurt pasture
performance so I haven't considered that but maybe I should.
I'm trying to brainstorm possible solutions and getting stymied. What
do other people do or is the small size of my area a unique problem?
BTW after the last few years it's nice to have the problem of too
much grass, last year I got a whole 2 months grazing out of 10 acres
and we had to start winter hay feeding in June!
--
Oogie McGuire - oogiem@desertweyr.com
Weyr Associates - Multimedia and Web Authoring Services & Consulting
Desert Weyr - CMK Arabian horses and Black Welsh Mountain Sheep
http://www.desertweyr.com/
Paonia, CO USA
