Ep 189 Observation Grazing

It always makes me, like, just tense up a little bit when we talk about a purposeful feeding of hay or dry lot use in this time, you know, August, September, when we're trying to get stockpile going and growing again.

Again, you know, a year like this year, probably something that you really wouldn't have needed to do from a management situation just because we had the moisture.

And so, I mean, this grass is rebounding exceptionally well.

I will say just an anecdotal observation.

Mentioned on the podcast earlier this spring that we had some poultry litter spread out on the fields.

And I didn't feel like we saw the initial bump.

in that spring flush, that green up like maybe I thought we would.

Like, oh, man, look at all this tonnage from this manure that we're putting out.

But I will say the rebound, the regrowth on the second time, and then here in the fall.

I think we're seeing that fertility stick around, take advantage of putting some of those inputs onto those fields that needed it.

And the rebound has been more rapid.

That's also in part to the rain.

Like I'm not naive enough to think that, oh, wow, look at this.

We actually have grass that's growing after we graze it.

Well, yeah, the last two years you didn't have rain.

So that kind of inhibits your ability to stockpile forage.

But it's been kind of exciting to just see.

see good quality forages popping back up and unfortunately and i don't think this is ever going to change and if you think that you can get away with like oh i can plan my grazing allocations i can plan how i'm going to rotate sheep through here during this time of year and then the rest of the year everything just falls in line and i don't have to mess with it again I was probably thinking that in the beginning of the year, and as I've mentioned kind of consistently through 2026, is the goal was to do better at record keeping.

How many sheep were on these acres and how many days of rest and all of those metrics, just so we have a baseline, so we have some information for personal use to figure out, okay, what can we support and what do we need to change for next year? But we're getting to the point now, Tom, where I was drawing out I was stuck in the airport like all day yesterday.

And so I'm there trying to get caught up on some work work, trying to get caught up on some personal work, and then the grazing work side of things where I'm drawing out some paddocks for... our stockpile and grazing.

It's like, well, if they get corn, if it stops raining and they get corn out on this date, then we can go to stocks for 60 days.

And then we can come back to this field and do this.

And unfortunately, Tom, you know, this as well as anybody that that plan might as well, just, you know, it's fun to do spend some time in the airport doing that, but might as well put it in the shredder because it's never going to work out how I drew it out in the first place.

Yeah.

Yeah, not to burst your bubble on the grass regrowing with all the poultry litter you put on.