Hello and Happy New Year!
I guess winter has arrived. From my perspective, the fall and early winter, while sort of wet, were relatively mild. The mature ewes have been grazing without any supplemental feed up until a week or so ago. Now that they are in the last field left to graze, I’m also feeding them some baleage.
When cold windy weather moves in it is important to make sure the ewes have plenty of feed in a sheltered area. Where I was standing to take this picture is pretty exposed and the wind was whipping across the field. But down where the sheep feeder is, behind the hill and in the hedgerow, it is quite nice. As soon as the weather clears, I’ll move the feed back up into the open part of the field.
Besides getting the animals out of the wind, I also unroll some hay so that there is some bedding to lie on. Having clean bedding really helps the sheep and cows stay warm.
The cold weather causes some problems like frozen waterers. But as long as I get the animals out of the wind and they have plenty of good feed they are quite happy during the cold snaps.
On top of keeping animals happy and water flowing, winter is also a time when we catch up on bookkeeping from the previous year and business planning for the next. This year Norah came along to help count bales of baleage on New Year's Day as part of our year end feed inventory.
Thanks for reading,
Leith, Mary Kate & Norah MacKenzie