[Billy Foster]

Hey Earl

I dropped a couple acres yesterday as well, yea the weather was perfect. Temp was warm enough to dry hay but not to warn that you couldn’t keep working the horses. I just so happen to be working on my tedder this AM as well. Mine is an old kicker style, you have rubber tires on your tedder…modern equipment aye brother. Today I will see if it was a bad idea to spread manure on this field, the grass was so thick, I couldn’t believe how much dry matter there was. I think I am going to need all three of these nice days to get it dried.

Well break is over, back to work.
Billy

[Billy Foster]

I cut the bar on my number 4 down. Really easy, I cut the length off the end and used the cut off end as a template to cut and drill the shortened bar to fit the shoe.Just pay attention to the location of the last rock guard in relation to the outer shoe when you make your marks to cut. I had to cut a little off the trailing edge of the bar to allow the show to fit.
Billy

[Billy Foster]

I am planning on cutting Wednesday as well. Big year this year. I will be putting up a couple acres loose with just the horses. First time doing loose hay and first time knocking it down using a sickle bar, we used a mower conditioner when I was a kid. I wonder how much longer the really mature red clover stems will take to dry?
Billy

[Billy Foster]

Donn
I assume since you are a grass dairy you are rotationally grazing your flock? We keep a flock of about 20 ewes and I always fight to keep up with the spring flush. We lamb on pasture and use a “drift lambing” approach so the ewes are grazing stock piled grass or grass that has only just started to grow early in the spring, we usually have to feed some hay to them in the beginning. Getting the sheep out there early and moving them everyday has helped me almost keep up with the flush. I move them very “fast”, 24hr rotations and bigger than normal paddocks (about 40 head and acre stocking density). I want them to just take a bite from each plant to set it back a week or so. I just make sure I don’t move them so fast I am back to the start before the 45 days, I like to wait for the worm larve to “peter out” before they get back on a paddock. If the growth comes back to fast I will either rotary mow it, or decide to let it mature and use that section for horse pasture. My mind thinks it is good to let the grass complete a reproductive cycle every couple years, this is just my opinion.
What time of year do you lamb, also at how many days do you wean the lambs? I have had poor experience feeding growing lambs first cut hay over the winter. I have found their growth stalls out until they we back on pasture in the spring. I do not know much about dairy genetics but I would think you should be able to grow a good size lamb with that good milk production. Sorry for all the comments and questions Donn, I love grazing sheep almost as much as thinking about pasture management .
Billy

Oh yea this is a haying thread!

[Billy Foster]

Anthony
What I would be concerned with by letting it mature is the plant population going to increase over time. Would a timed mowing, or grazing, keep this from flowing? Have you seen the population of this plant change over time (years)?

[Billy Foster]

I don’t think I have seen this one before. I am in New England so it could just be out of my climate. How does it reproduce, Seed, rhyzome? Will your livestock eat it?

Billy

[Billy Foster]

Rod I wish I was but we will not be able to get away.

[Billy Foster]

I did not used backwoods Solar when building our system but my neighbor, who is off the grid as well, used them to purchase all his equipment and he was very pleased with their service. For small panels, i.e., 40watts, I buy them though Amazon.com. The prices are really good and so far I have had good luck getting some decent equipment. The trick I have found with buying from places like Amazon.com is reading the reviews for the equipment. A 40 or 50w panel with a little 7Amp charge controller will do a great job charging your 12v battery as long as you are not draining it really low every day.
Billy

[Billy Foster]

where are you located and what type of farm do you have.
Billy

[Billy Foster]

Starting is something I think a lot about. I think a lot about it because I am always working on teaching these guys to stay relaxed and still when stopped. It became very clear to me that anticipating the next move or remembering a routine was something that horses do very well. In the last year I have tried several ways to start , saying there name first, “are you ready”, then a kiss, just a kiss, and recently I have been picking up the lines and moving their heads just a little to get their ears towards me and a kiss to walk forward. I do the same for backing away from the barn. I also will get up on the forecart/equipment pick up the lines and just sit there for a couple minutes since I noticed they were getting ready to go as soon as I got to that part of the routine. Sometimes I will play games with them and climb up and off the forecart a couple times and then leave them on the barn for a ½ hour. In my mind I want them to be able to relax until I actually give them the kiss, not to anticipate it is coming.
As far as the vocal comands, for me I have been trying to reinforce my vocal commands with the lines. Maybe this is a vestige from my dog mushing days but I like to be able to get a response from the horse (s) when I give the auditory command. Perhaps it seems the horses behavior is calmer when I give them a command verbally, with a slight reminded with the bit, than with just the bit because my line handling skills are not developed? To me it feels very smooth when I can tell one horse to step up and he quietly takes a step or tell the team to haw and they side step around in a tight spot of the wood lot. It feels like I am just reminding them of what I am asking with the bit not “making” them do it. Except from the great advice I have gotten from this forum I am in kind of a vacuum up here on our farm; perhaps my methods are not the best way to do things but USUALLY it feels like the horses and I are able to communicate pretty well. They are able to let me know pretty quick if I get off track :).
Billy

[Billy Foster]

Jared like you I am newer to working horses on our farm, and like you I have chosen to use Haflingers as well. I typically use a pair for most all work but this time of year, with cutting fire wood, I find myself using a single much more often. One of the pair is a bit younger (just over 4yo) so I have been trying to use him more since he is quite nervous by himself. I think making myself use the less developed horse will only help to make him a more valuable animal. Working this way has forced me to work more cautiously and plan out the steps of the job much more critically. As I said this guy is much more nervous when he is by himself so planning a relatively safe work method keeps me safe and him from going backwards in development. I often have to make myself think of the work differently not as getting the work done but as getting the training done with whatever work we complete as a plus.
A note on dragging things: This is my opinion and someone else is entitled to disagree. Be sure you have “enough bit” to have some control on the horse if he gets spooked. Dragging something small like a tire can create a potentially scary noise to the horse but will do little to slow that guy down if he getts spooked. A bit that communicates well when everything is going well may not do anything to the pony running to get away from the scary noise chasing him. The important thing to remember when doing this is being really delicate with the lines since you have a lot more power (in my case I would go to a lower hole on a Liverpool bit).
Having said that I will add that I think about how to work without getting him on edge. The goal being to get the training/work done without him getting anxious at all. Pulling logs out of the woods on snow seems to be a pretty stress free activity for that youngster. Can you just use a single tree and a choke chain to skid logs?
IMHO: Forgive me for being frank but that pony will not get to be the tool you want him to be without training and work, there is always something getting in the way of working the horses. You have a point to make in that this guy will contribute to your farm, be stubborn in that point and make it happen.
Respectfully
Billy

[Billy Foster]

Update to the propane heater I posted in the last link:
we have had some pretty cold weather here in Maine this winter. The heater I made with the burner under the tank works great. Normally I just fire it up for a half hour while doing morning and evening chores and it puts enough heat into the water to keep it free of ice for the night. when it is going to be really cold I leave the burner going as low as it will go for the night and even when the temp is single numbers the water stays open. The flame stayed burning though the blizzard! I have used 3 propane tanks (20 pound) so far. I really like this set up because the horses now have water available all the time. I have been very surprised how much water they have been drinking now that they have free access to it 24/7.

Billy

[Billy Foster]

50mph winds,a projected 2′ of snow and a hill top farm…good times! I am glad for the snow since we lost all of it a couple weeks ago and I have had to haul water to the sheep since. At least the new snow will make my life a little easier, after the clean-up I mean.

[Billy Foster]

Dominiquer60 you nailed it!
We use rolls and rolls of electro net fencing to rotationally graze our flock and we have found it, and 2 LGD within the fence, to be a 100% effective coyote deterrent. We pasture lamb in a 8 acre paddock that has forest on 3 sides and still have never, knock on wood, lost a lamb to predation. On multiple occasions we have moved the flock and netting fence off a parcel and the next morning there is coyote scat where the sheep were. I think the net works best, I have seen dogs jump though smooth wire fence. Somehow they figure out that if they are in the air when they go through the fence they don’t get shocked, maybe it is just the coat insulating them. Alternating ground wires may help but I find the netting to work really well. I think the mule would most likely pester the coyote long enough that it would eventually leave. Our horses do not seem to be bothered by them, coyote tracks go in and out of the horse paddock. I have not actually seen the 2 close together but when the coyotes are in the immediate area the horses don’t act any different than normal.
Billy

[Billy Foster]

@Countymouse 39163 wrote:

That said, I still wouldnt want one of my pugs in the backyard with a coyote.

I think this is good sound advice 🙂

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