From the Pastures: Down the road

Well, I finally got some rain and the pastures are responding nicely. The corn and beans jumped overnight and so did the weeds. I’ve decided to trailer the ewes and lambs down the road three miles to a farmette with 3.5 acres of grass that I have not grazed in two years. Moving ewes and lambs together is very risky because they need to be separated to transport them or the lambs could get trampled or get a broken leg. I could also walk them down the road since it’s only three miles. Time and weather will dictate what I do. It is a lot faster just walking them down the road, though.

But I need time for my grass and annuals to grow here at my ranch, and the other farms that I made hay off of June 2 still have not fully grown back so I shouldn’t graze them yet. As I write this, I have the flock going through the permanent fescue field the second time in six weeks; June 2 started the first pass. I’m trying to “just” graze the top third of the plants and then move the flock, but it’s hard to leave that much grass behind. But it’s essential to leave that much residual in a drought so when the rains do come, the forage can “bounce” back. The 3.5-acre farm will probably get grazed down closer to the ground because I don’t plan on coming back to it this year and it has a thick thatch layer already from two years of resting.

It seems the drought did help out the wheat yield. I had a 50% increase in yield and almost everyone had a larger crop than they expected. The highest yield I’ve heard of was 134 bushels per acre east and south of Champaign. At least now I can measure water in my rain gauges and not dead bugs.