- DATE: October 1, 2014
- MANAGEMENT UNIT: Shepherd note: Oct 01, 2014
The cattle have been moseying along in the paddock next to the orchard. We originally estimated the paddock at having 30 animal days per acre and it has almost 40 animal days per acre. It looks like we will have enough grass to keep them here until near the End of October. They have been calm and had good movement. We have been letting them eat half and then trample half. We have been using the dogs to get impact and that has been going pretty well. After working with the dogs we make sure to take the stress off them by pressuring and releasing, bud williams stockmanship style. We got a few little drizzels over the last week, but nothing over a quarter of an inch, however every little bit helps. We have been using a two wire system due to the failure of the one wire system at Petaluma. We haven’t had one animal get out with the two wire system. Once the gear is all set up for two wire it only takes make ~ 25% longer to set up. The cattle have been eating star thistle and there are some pictures in the post of them doing just that. The two pictures on the right are of that occurrence. There is quite a bit of star thistle in the southern boundary of the paddock they are in next to the road. We will have to keep an eye on it to see how their impact effects that patch.