>1. What is your grazing rotation length right now, next month and
>your balance date when supply = demand?
Right now zero <G> We're still in winter corrals feeding hay.
Chickens and geese finally got out on pasture at least during the day
but they are skilled at picking out the first few green things and
don't compact the soil much.
When we are in grazing I run a 14-30 day rotation.
>2. How much on avg do you grow a year in DM of grass, what % do you
>utilize and what equation do you use on your plate meter during the
>season?
I don't have or have access to a plate meter. And I am not skilled in
calculating pounds of forage on a DM basis on my pastures. What I
have done is track grazing days for my sheep which are smaller than
the average breed. We lamb in May and June and don't count lambs as
adults until 1 September. History of grazing for us over the last few
years has been:
2001 1 May-12 Oct 11,273 days
2002 10 April-29 June 3,135 days
2003 24 April-10 Oct 12,098 days
2004 10 April-29 Sept 12,203 days
2005 12 April-2 Nov 14,418 days
2006 15 April-22 Oct 16,563 days
2007 27 March-3 Nov 19,135 days
We did play with lambing dates before settling on the ones we use
based on spring grass growth. That is part of why the different start
dates. 2002 was a major drought year for us with very little water
and we basically ran out of irrigation by July other than just enough
to keep everything alive but no grazing.
If it helps I feed out between 3-3.25 pounds of grass hay per sheep
per day in winter and sometimes have to put them on a diet as that
can make them too fat.
>3. What kind of protein %, ME ,ADF and NDF do you see during the year.
Protein levels go as low as 10% and as high as 15%. Typically we stay
about the same at about 13% because we're irrigated pasture and it
doesn't vary that much.
>4. What are your post and pre-grazing heights that you try to achieve?
Post grazing about 2-3 inches max otherwise I lose the clovers. Entry
heights no more than about 9 inches max prefer about 6 or the sheep
don't eat it.
>3. What is you stocking rate and how did you come to this and why?
60 adult ewes plus lambs (we lamb at 145-150% right now, target is to
get to 175%) on a pasture segment of about 1 acre lasts between 2-4
days. An adult ewe is about 100 pounds average weight. The range for
our sheep is adult ewes from 75 pounds to 130 pounds. Flock average
for ADG of lambs is just over half a pound a day. We do not feed any
creep grains or grain to ewes except in very special circumstances.
Last year we had 2 bottle babies and several sets of triplets so I
did keep them separate and feed grain to that small batch of sheep.
In hindsight I could have left the triplets on pasture but the bottle
lambs did need supplemental feed. We'd never had triplets before and
I was not sure the ewes could milk enough to feed three successfully.
However, the ewes nursing 3 got so fat I had to put them on a diet
before breeding as they were way over conditioned. We typically have
the ewes come off pasture at condition score 3-4 with a handful,
maybe 4-6 at condition score 2.5 and about 10-15 that are condition
score 5+. I make up a diet pen of the fat ewes and try to slim them
down before putting them back on a gaining diet just before breeding.
So far there is no correlation between twins, ADG of the lambs and
fatness of mom at the end of grazing. I have some ewes who single or
have lambs with poorer ADG's who get fat and some raising twins with
great ADGs who get fat. I do favor the daughters of fat ewes who
raised fat twins for my replacements though.
We also feed out our slaughter sheep to about 18 months and raise our
own replacement ewes which are not bred the year in which they are
born. They are included in the grazing days above but are usually in
separate pasture segments from the lambing ewes.
The number of sheep is fixed by how many lambs we can sell over the
year and our winter hay storage and feeding facilities. The size of
the paddocks are determined by sheep behavior, when we pen them
tighter we have fence breakouts even though there is plenty of feed
because our sheep do not like to flock or be crowded together. 1 acre
gives them enough room to spread out but not so much they can pick
and choose the forage easily.
--
Eugenie (Oogie) McGuire - oogiem@desertweyr.com
Desert Weyr - CMK Arabian Horses, Black Welsh Mountain Sheep and Pilgrim Geese
http://www.desertweyr.com/
Paonia, CO USA
