Got sheep? They will hammer your woody invasive sprouts and bushes!

[00:00:01]Good day, folks. This is Greg Judy at Green Pastor Farm. Today, Ariel and I are over here trying to beat the heat.

[00:00:07]It's going to get up in the upper 90s today. Over 100° heat index getting the cattle on an early morning move before it gets too hot. These are the steers and the bulls. And uh the sheep and the guard dogs, they're already the guard dogs already went in. They're over here on the new piece. But, uh, Ariel's back there trying to get the sheep to fall. I can see some of them.

[00:00:36][laughter] Sheep are different critters, you know.

[00:00:40]Usually they're in the lead, though.

[00:00:42]Here they come.

[00:00:45]I'll give him a sheep. Sheep. Sheep.

[00:00:48]Sheep. Sheep. Sheep. Sheep. Sheep.

[00:00:50]Sheep. Sheep. Sheep.

[00:00:53]Man, look at that grass. You know, this this rain stuff is unbelievably spotty.

[00:00:59]Um, we came over here, I guess it was three days ago, and there was puddles.

[00:01:04]There's puddles in the road, and you can just tell the creek had some more water in it, and water sitting in the ditches, and we we got like four sprinkles at the house, and that's three miles from here.

[00:01:15]Then this morning, we drive over, there's puddles. We never got a single sprinkle last night at the house. But here, I don't know. I've got a rain gauge. I got to get it up over here. But I bet they got a half inch here last night again.

[00:01:31]Here comes the sheep.

[00:01:37]St. Croy Kataden Cross with the uh bulls. Those y'all still looking for rams, we've got some available. There's going to be some really nice ram lambs in here that are being moved with the bowls every day. Of course, no wormer, no grain, hot wire broke to one single 12 to 14inch poly braid. Keep you know [snorts] 5 to 6,000 volts in it. And I think you know the key to the sheep is folks with one wire just don't let them get hungry. Just move them. And uh we have not had one single sheep out yet.

[00:02:13]And I mean, they could have easily hopped over that fence last night. There was Well, we just took it up. We had one reel right here and that was it.

[00:02:24]But I'm telling you what, folks, they're they are absolutely massacring, the weeds, the uh honeyloust trees, and these ash, the little ash. I'm going to show you what they did to the ash up here at the top of the hill. That's where they're the thickest. But um the cattle kind of nibble on the ash the ash the ash sprouts a little bit but the sheep kind of take it personal. They they they really go after them.

[00:02:52][laughter] Ariel's she's she's their little sheep herder.

[00:02:59]She's getting them out of that brush.

[00:03:01][laughter] Here they come.

[00:03:05]79.

[00:03:07]Look at them. Look like a bunch of Little rabbits coming out of there.

[00:03:17]>> Gotta love sheep. You know, folks, if you're going to fence your farm, you need to be thinking about if you're going to fence it for cattle, why not run sheep, too? Whatever the sheep eat is almost like a freebie. They will eat some grass, but they don't eat a lot of grass. They eat a lot of weeds and and forbes and sprouts and tree leaves and you name it. Um the one that surprised me is here just lately is the common ragweed. Those cattle, they look at them. I got to go down and show you what they're eating.

[00:03:50]This is Reed's Canary Grass.

[00:03:55]I mean, it's as tall as their heads.

[00:03:57]They're They're not even having to bend their head down to eat. Look at that.

[00:04:08]All you can hear is that rip rip. That is some high quality forage right there, folks. So, this is the This is the Reed's Canary. We got to it right before it started to put a seed head on.

[00:04:28]It's almost like putting them at a a buffet. Kind of looks like a salad bar, doesn't it, Ariel?

[00:04:34]>> Yeah. About as tall as they are.

[00:04:37]>> Yeah, man.

[00:04:42]I tell you what, that Reeds canary surprises me where it'll grow. We've got it on another farm up on top of a hill.

[00:04:49]You usually think of Reeds Canary as a bottomland grass, and which this is bottomland and here's Reed's Canary, but I have seen it grow up on top of hills.

[00:04:58]So, I think it's got a little bit more usefulness than what we think it does as far as where you plant it. I want to show you these sprouts up here.

[00:05:08]They uh they kind of took it personal on some of these ash these ice sprouts.

[00:05:19]Yeah. I'm just going to drive up there.

[00:05:25]I'm going to get on So there's your honey locus.

[00:05:41]They really done a number on the leaves on that thing.

[00:05:46]These a sprouts are really thick right up on top of this hill. And uh there's one doesn't look as good.

[00:05:58]So, I don't think they're going to kill them right away, which doesn't hurt my feelings at all.

[00:06:05]But you can see they're getting wooled over a lot more. The tips, let me show you a virgin one. So, here's what they look like when we turn them.

[00:06:17]They've got all their leaves, folks. That's That's super high quality sheep feed right there.

[00:06:25]That sprout has a tap routt probably 3 foot long. So that sprout is mining minerals deep in the soil up onto the leaves. The sheep eat the leaves. They poop it out on top of the ground. And now your grasses have access to those minerals. Well, here here's a good example. Look at that one. That that tree just almost got stripped.

[00:06:49]There's my honey locust. It's got all the thorns on it.

[00:06:53]That thing got hammered.

[00:06:56]I'd say a couple more rotations and that sprout will be dead. Look at this one.

[00:07:01]There's one that they took all the leaves off except for folks that that's a that's what you call sheep feed. Look at them all. I mean, you just see they they reached as high as they could get.

[00:07:20]on that one.

[00:07:25]Man, I thought they'd eat them, but I didn't think they'd eat them that good.

[00:07:32]I like it. I hope they now that they're doing this to these trees, I kind of hope they don't kill them. We just kind of control them. And you know, if you only leave them on them for one day and then move them, you're probably not going to kill them. Because now, you know, I went from a nuisance plant. This is a nuisance plant because it's, you know, it's all over the field here. All of a sudden, it's high quality sheep feed. Look at that.

[00:07:58]I mean, they ripped the That could have been a cow there or a bull, man.

[00:08:05]There's probably 500 sprouts just on these three or four ridges right here.

[00:08:10]They're everywhere.

[00:08:12]And I'm not going to brush hog them. I'm just I haven't brush hoged this farm since we bought it. Um, hey Cotton, how you doing?

[00:08:22]We came by here last night right before dark and uh Cotton and Duke were out patrolling. Hey. Yeah, Duke.

[00:08:31]Yes, you're a good boy.

[00:08:34]This is an Armenian gamper here on the right. This dog, he's a brute.

[00:08:41]Yeah, he just patrols so much. He just runs all his weight off. Cotton says, "I sleep. I get in my dog feeder. I like sleeping in there." Yeah. Anyway, right before dark, we came by here and them dogs are barking at us. I stopped to show my brother-in-law and sister-in-law the the uh the flur. We were just sitting in the car up there on F and man, they come running to the fence and they were barking their heads off at us. And that's what I want. I don't I don't want them running through the fence and chasing coyotes and cars down the road.

[00:09:16]But if they bark, that's all you need.

[00:09:18]You just need a dog that'll bark. So, with that, we're going to go ahead and get out of here. And uh Ariel, Ariel's my little shepherd.

[00:09:28]You ran them out of that brush this morning, Ariel. I just saw sheep coming.

[00:09:32]And they were just running and running and running.

[00:09:34]>> Did not want to move. [laughter] >> Well, you can't really blame them. They were up in the shade.

[00:09:39]>> For some reason, I've noticed like if you just say like, "Come on," or whatever, they're like, "Okay." But as soon as you say, "Yep." They're like, "Whoa." I [laughter] don't know if it sounds like a dog.

[00:09:50]>> Yeah.

[00:09:51]>> Kind of.

[00:09:53]>> They kind of like screech a little bit.

[00:09:54]>> You get their attention, >> but it like really gets their attention.

[00:09:57]Like, okay.

[00:09:58]>> Yeah.

[00:09:59]>> Keep moving. If you look behind us, folks, uh you can tell even the Queen Anne's lace looks kind of mangled looking. Um they just went off. They just went after all the all the weeds.

[00:10:12]Here's a milkweed plant. It's a member of the milkweed.

[00:10:17]They knocked that thing down.

[00:10:20]The queen ants lace. They're working it over.

[00:10:25]So, I guess where I'm coming from, if you have a farm, if you can get it fenced, you can run cattle, you might think about getting a fence where you can run sheep and you're getting basically another species in there. And they're not taking a whole lot away from the cows. In the winter time, they will graze some winter stockpile fescue.

[00:10:44]That's what we that's what we winter them on. We don't give them any hay. And uh but far as in the summertime and fall and spring, they're not really competing too much with their cattle. Um this is the first time this has had sheep exposed to it right here. Look at this, folks. That is a boondoggle.

[00:11:05]I mean, all that is is um multipose bushes.

[00:11:11]I guarantee you 24 hours that's going to look a whole lot different in there.

[00:11:16]There's going to be a graze line.

[00:11:18]They're just going to work that whole thing over. So, I'm anxious to see it.

[00:11:22]See what it's going to do. And uh got to get this ash tree down. My gosh, it's a monster.

[00:11:30]It's better than a hammer.

[00:11:33]Darn ash bors. Dude, you kind of like getting a pet anymore, don't you? He was kind of standoffish for a while, but now he's [laughter] I like a dog you can get a hold of. You don't want them to just follow you back to the truck and stuff like that. But if you can pet them, that's that's a advantage. Folks, I'm going to get out of here. Check out the website. We're going to be having um we've got another bowl we're going to be posting next week. The one we had this week sold. And I think we got one more. And then uh we're going to have uh there's a big sale coming up in the next couple weeks.

[00:12:12]It's 50 50 uh South Pole cows and a guy got into health issues and he's having to basically sell his uh it's a herd dispersal is what it is. It's North Missouri and super super cattle. They're out of our genetics and he's been using our South Pole bulls for years and boy has he got a herd. They are beautiful and so somebody's going to have access an opportunity. Um, just watch our website.

[00:12:41]I'll probably send out a newsletter. If you're not signed up for the newsletter, you ought to do that. You can do that on our website and that way you're you're alerted when we do something like that.

[00:12:50]We put out a a bunch of cattle for sale.

[00:12:53]Folks, you'll have a good one and we'll see you next