No new news here, as the song goes. I did get the sheep dewormed, and I looked at them today, it really does seem to have picked them up. Of course they are also grazing James' silage corn free choice (sorry James; at least they're out of the tobacco, right?).
WHAT?!?!?! I'm feeding CORN?!?!?!
Relax. They are grazing corn, the green growing plant. Very different proposition than locking them up, feeding them grain out of a trough while they stand around in their own waste. At this point it's just a big giant grass. Being silage corn it actually won't produce a great deal of grain anyway, it's probably some sort of hybrid bred for total dry matter tonnage per acre. They surely do eat it right down to the ground. I figure being big and tall it's an excellent way to prevent them from picking up parasite larvae. Anyway, they look really good.
Took off that ram lamb I missed. Bugger weighed 137 lb too. Guess the other slaughter lambs are closer to being ready to go than I thought. Which would be nice, if I could take them all out of here before I started lambing in mid-September.
Bought lambs from a new producer last week, the Morrows of Springfield KY. I market other producers' lambs along with my own, as long as they use similar genetics, feeding methods (pastured, no grain) and cultural practices (no antibiotics, steroids, added hormones). They weighed more than either one of us thought.
Got some plans back from Frank Kipe, but still pretty preliminary. Hopefully more by Monday. There's a meeting being put on by the KY Sheep and Goat Development Center in Jessamine Co September 9th on starting a small dairy. They're going to have Giovanni Capazutto and Susan Miller talk; Susan runs Bluegrass Chevre in Lexington, and Giovanni is wanting to (or maybe has started to?) put up a cheeseplant in Nicholasville. That'd be good news for me, because he might be a potential buyer for the milk from my sheep dairy. The meeting's going to be at the Jessamine County Extension building at 6:30. If you're interested in going you should get hold of Ray Bowman of the KSGDC by email at ray@kysheepandgoat.org
Huh, and I haven't posted sooner because I thought I didn't have anything to talk about...