Farm Blog

Yesterday was the day to finally move the animals to their pasture homes. 
First the chickens - Sharon manages all of the operations that involve chickens, so if I sound like these are processes I have come up with I am only describing processes that she's developed. Friday night the kids caught the chickens in their deep bedding barn and moved them out into the "egg mobile".  The reason that it's best to do it at night is two fold.  First is that at night, like most birds, they perch/roost for safety and it's easy to catch them when they roost.  Second is that the birds will get into their new home and figure out their pecking order and roost order at night and in the morning while they move to their new pasture home.  Usually the first week or two after the chickens are put on pasture they have to be manually put back into the egg mobile at sunset until they learn that it's better to roost in the safety of the egg mobile rather than on the running gear and wheels of the egg mobile where they would be easy pickings for the local predators.  But last night Sharon came back from checking on the chickens and announced that they all went into the egg mobile by themselves.  That is huge!  I've never liked wrangling chickens in the dark and vowed this year I wouldn't be a chicken wrangler.  It looks like this year no one will have to be nighttime chicken wranglers. 

Next came the cattle - The bull and steers were separated from the cows, and the cows were let out onto the pasture.  We'll be grazing them outside of the fenced in pasture area using single strand of electric twine.  When we were carrying water across the pasture for the chickens the cows thought that we were carrying something they wanted, so they started to follow our pickup.  Not wanting to miss an opportunity to lure cattle rather than push cattle, we led them across the pasture and down some ally ways that we built to get them outside of the pasture.  They were kicking up their heals and running at full cow speed to keep up with our pickup.  It's a joy to watch the cows run and hop around like calves.  They moved right down where we wanted them and have started their work turning sunlight into calves and milk, and clearing the cool season grasses so that wildlife will have the prairie grasses in the fall.
That left the chicks which were moved to the deep bedding barn and the goats to the pasture.  It made for some long days but we enjoyed each others company and enjoyed the beautiful spring weather on the farm.