80 More Hooves

We made a large acquisition last week. We added twenty mature Barbados blackbelly ewes. This will bring us to over 35 ewes of various varieties of hair sheep.  The Barbados ewes have a strong flock instinct and stay together very well. We combined all of our cattle and sheep herds into one herd last week and are continuing to rotate them about every 36 hours. One of the new ewes won itself a Darwin award so we are down to 19, but the rest are doing well and learning electric fences and how to actually graze (they were in a dry lot before).

Barbados blackbelly ewes  in a tight flock

Existing sheep flock resting in the shade while the new gals graze

In the combined herd, the calves think they are sheep

Also in the pasture is our first batch of 175 broiler chickens. They are doing very well and appear to be gaining weight nicely. They certainly are eating quite a bit. The second batch is ready to move outside this weekend as well. 

Broilers on pasture

175 birds in chicken tractors

In other news, the water wagon is about ready to roll out to the pasture, the feed wagon lid was ripped off in a storm and needs repair, and fence building has commenced again on the south side of the central waterway. Hazel is doing well as well. She has gone from looking like a newborn to looking more like a baby in the past two to three days. I have also been at an INCA training workshop and have some work to sort through in that arena during the next week. I think the weather is going to be pretty calm in the foreseeable future and might even cool off a bit after the holiday weekend. That would be nice considering how hot the weather has been recently. Until later, thanks for reading.