I will write up about our inaugural field day soon when some photos from others are sent to me. In the meantime, I'm doing a few little fun experiments. We all need to scratch right? We go crazy if we can't get the itch, right? Well,.....our hairsheep like to scratch. So,....while the fencing contractor was in to put in two more sets of gates for us, I asked him to make three different versions of a scratching post to see which works best before we go and put one in every paddock. These will be put near each watering trough. I think it will make a difference to the sheep's well being :-), as well as them looking nicer.
The three designs are in the photos below. I'll report back later after I check what the sheep think is the best design :-).
Another little experiment was: what does it look like when you put 1,806 ewes into a 1.0 hectare paddock? Photos below.
We are at peak pasture production at the moment and we have not restarted fertilising until we need to. There's not a paddock we can eat down sufficiently at the moment within 7 days except for a ram paddock when I put 1800 sheep in it :-).
I am really happy with the kikuyu underneath. It has a lovely rich green and lots and lots of runners (stolons). I will be doing all I can to get the kikuyu to grow a thick thatch above and below ground this summer to prevent non-wetting from happening again.
If we needed the feed, and if we had a boom spray (we don't), I'd definitely have sprayed some fungicide a while ago for the ryegrass. Rust is kicking in and other leaf diseases. In the future I'll probably spray it anyway as we will be at a much higher stocking rate by then and will want to keep the quality of the ryegrass as high as we can.
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