Shade and Water for Rotational Grazing

One of our blogger friends/fellow aspiring farmer left some great questions in a comment on our Of Guineas and Guard Dogs post. You can see the questions in the comment section, but here's the gist of it:

I was kind of astounded by the idea of using a poultry tractor for shade for larger grazing animals. One issue we've had with the fence is that since it's SO hot and humid here and since the majority of our pasture is just that- pasture- with no trees, the sheep get very overheated if we leave them in all day. We've taken to letting them sleep in there if it's not going to storm and graze until about noon. Then we bring them in the barnyard for a siesta. Later on we put them back out.

How tall is your tractor (note: tractor is short for chicken tractor, or guinea mobile in this instance)?Do you think one needs to be a minimal height to provide shade?

Also, do you have any creative ideas for transporting water to the far parts of the pasture? Right now we're still experimenting with how much they'll eat in how little time, so we've kept them close to the house. But in the future they won't be within reasonable walking distance to carry gallons and gallons of water by hand.

Shade for the Goats on Pasture

Firstly, I think that bringing the animals in and out of the barn if you don't have an option for shade is a great idea. The animals need shade. There's A LOT of farmers around here that disagree and do not always provide shade for the animals. I don't fall in that camp. 


Guineas enjoying the new veranda

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Hard Work and Long Hours


Little Willow coming along for a paddock shift. Goats are lucky Izzy's not around to witness them licking her food bowl!This is a follow-up to @shmeedie’s questions from Twitter a couple weeks ago. The question was this:

I would love to see a post about how you're adjusting to the long hours, hard work, and general transition to farm life.

The first post addressed Social Isolation on the farm. This post is about adjusting to the labor intensity and the long hours. Same as the last post, I can’t comment for Sweetbreads since we have our own roles and responsibilities on the farm.

The hard work is something I looked forward to, so it hasn’t been too much of a surprise for me. I got restless in the city. I continue to work a day-job, so yes the hours are tough sometimes. I do an hour or two’s worth of work in the morning and at least two hours at night. That means waking up around 5:30am, working til around 7am and then working again from 6pm til 8pm or later. I don’t know what will happen when it starts getting dark closer to 6pm, but we’ll figure it out.

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Goat Buck Pen - The Finer Points



Electric fence insulator, gate handle and hot wire clip

The last post on the bucks omitted a lot of the little details about the pen that we just made up on the fly, but that might be helpful for someone looking to build a pen. Before we started frequenting the Co-Op and Tractor Supply I never knew most of the stuff we use everyday even existed. I hope that by sharing the details other readers who are interested in the little stuff can get a better idea of exactly how it's all put together. I'd also love to hear feedback and what other people have done that worked well for them.

As you can see in the photos above and below, we put an electric wire around the top of the cattle panel using 2" insulator attachments that we got from Tractor Supply. The purpose having it stick 2" inward is so when the bucks climb on the fence they get zapped on the head and learn not to do that. If they are allowed to climb the fence will slowly lean over and they'll be able to climb out (and it will look ridiculous). At each gate there is a gate handle so we don't have to duck under the wire if we don't want to or if we need to bring something into the pen.

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