Spring Lambing on Pasture & Stockpile Field Update

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]Good day to you. Jason here. Birchfield Family Farm, Oxford, Ohio. Grass-fed Red Devon cattle, St. Croy, sheep, chickens, and pigs in a rotational grazing system.

[00:00:12]Here, a good word today comes from Ephesians 3. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us. To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen. Springtime on the farm here and I am reminded of this verse over and over uh this spring that we really can't even dream up uh how good uh the Lord is to us. And uh he remains that way, remains the same throughout all generations. But uh just reminded him the the little things, right? Like trying to to start uh uh sugar maple uh seedlings. We tried that, save some seed in the fall uh and then uh put those uh potted those. And of course, I need to stratify. And you know, we didn't get it right. So nothing germinated. And oh well. Walk out to the pasture underneath the maples this spring and there are saplings everywhere. uh nature did it all by itself. Imagine that. And uh there they are. Uh just uh you know, ready to be dug or whatever we wanted to to do with those uh spring lambs are bouncing about everywhere here. Uh you know, the U that you didn't expect to do much. And here comes triplets. Uh calves, you know, over and over. Uh this verse uh I see this uh in in practice here every day. So be encouraged today.

[00:01:39]God is good. Okay, we have been off the tubes here for quite some time. Uh the last video we did was on our stockpile grazing and uh we're going to get out there and take a look at that field. I want to give you an update on that for those of you that were I know there were some of you following that really close and interested in that. Um we need to get a cattle move done here. We need to get uh a sheep move. uh mama use are are with lambs right now and uh it's going to be uh chaotic to get them moved, but it it needs to happen here. Uh let's get out here in the field with the cattle and uh we'll talk through this. Okay, so believe it or not, we are the second time through the rotation here. We did the first time with sheep. Hey, what are you doing over there?

[00:02:25]Ah, a little booger snuck out and getting some shade over there. So, we'll bring him back. You know, that's uh telling me here we've probably got some grass in the wires here that needs trimmed back, man. Alive. Uh never a shortage of stuff to do there in the spring. How you like our little calf there? That's out of Emma. Little heer calf. She's uh what, two, three, three weeks old now? Maybe a little north of three weeks actually. Time's getting away from me here. Uh we are, this is the first time through the rotation with cattle. Uh, and you can see they're getting this eaten down. We We should be moving faster than we are. Uh, lambs have kind of had me hung up here. So, uh, yeah, they're honking. They're ready to move. Uh, yeah, we'll mess with that little guy in a minute here. Let's get this gate opened up and and get them going. Come on, Moose. Come on, Mo.

[00:03:20]Okay, so nine nine head of Devon here.

[00:03:22]We did sell a couple head off over the winter. uh Stephen up there around Cleveland. I hope all is well uh with you guys and uh Hank the bull and uh another little uh heer calf that he purchased up there along with some of our sheep. So, hope all is well up north.

[00:03:45]Uh about nine nine heads. So, nine head of Devon here and I would say yeah, we've got a couple more due to calf here. should be about any time. Um I I would say we're really not running much more than 25 to 30,000 pounds an acre here. Uh you see this new quarter acre. Of course, everything right now uh is just amazing grass. We're we're right right in the middle of the grass explosion. You know, everything comes at once. We got, you know, calves, lambs, we got a couple swarm traps there that filled up with honeybees. So I need to get them moved to to hives. Of course, we've got our other our our main hive there that, by the way, we never treat.

[00:04:28]Okay. Never treat. Now, granted, I don't harvest honey, but that thing has made it through five winters now, I believe, on its own. I don't treat. We don't give nothing. Uh, nature knows what to do.

[00:04:43]So, you know, what does that tell me about bees? Well, it tells me, you know, you're in there. We're in there messing with them too much. You know, that's the that's the problem. And then, you know, of course, you got the mites and all that. That's a whole another conversation for another day. When we're when we're below 40 to 50,000 lbs live animal per acre, so this is a quarter acre, you know, if we had oh 6,000 lbs or, you know, 7,000 lbs, you know, we'd be at about 28,000 lb. So, you know, quarter acre multiply by four, whatever you've got here. And uh so under under 30,000 pounds I would say, but when we're under 40 to 50,000 pounds per acre, you know, that's when I'm going to have to come behind and mow. Now, probably not going to do that this time of the year. I'm just going to try and we're going to try and skip them quick here, you know, if we can keep up with it. Okay, now here's the art here. Uh this guy is is pretty pretty finicky.

[00:05:39]He's just at that age, right? that teenage stage where uh we've all been there, right? Let's see if we can get this gate opened up here. But we should we should mow really mow behind them at least, you know, a couple times a year just to knock back those undesirabs. Look at the uh purple martin. Put a couple houses up here.

[00:05:59]Swallows. Oh yeah. Love it. They'll dive bomb the cattle. Oh, hey, look at that.

[00:06:03]You're going to do it for me. I don't even have to open up the gate. Okay, so we got to trim up some grass here and get those wires hot again. That little calf, she's about she's about lost in that stuff.

[00:06:17]But uh anyway, so you know, I do prefer a multiecies graze, getting sheep and cattle together, you know, getting that live weight up there, preferably above 50,000 pounds to get a nice graze. It's always a balance between animal health and pasture health, though. And like this time of the year with sheep, you know, we've got lambs out there that are uh you know, a day old. And so, you [clears throat] know, I'm I'm not going to be running them in here with cattle.

[00:06:44]We uh we lammed a little bit in the beginning of the season with cattle and cattle were kind of coming over and sniffing the lambs and I thought, man, you know, lambs were were lying down. I thought one one wrong step with a a cow hoof, you know, on a lamb and and that's going to be it, you know. And I don't know, probably worry a little too much, but we did end up separating here for now. And then we'll uh we'll get some sheep back with cattle uh eventually.

[00:07:10]And uh anyhow, everything everything's looking good in the paddics. And uh we'll leave these guys here. We might give them a day. We'll see.

[00:07:21]Let's see how it goes. Okay, so about uh 50 U's here. We've got about 60 60 lambs on the ground almost right now.

[00:07:32]Still have some first years uh to go yet. Basically, I want to get them moved and and before I get into this. Sam is not here today, so I I don't have overhead shots to share with you in real time, but I'll have him get some when he's here later and I'll patch those in.

[00:07:49]Uh we we basically we need to get these 50 use and 60 lambs. What 110 head of sheep here moved from this we call this the pond pasture. There's a pond over there. We need to get them moved over to the windmill pasture. And that's kind of what I wanted to talk about today is that windmill pasture. That's where we did the stockpile. And uh man, look at those boys there.

[00:08:14]Everybody's less than like two weeks old here.

[00:08:18]uh or they they could be a little more than two weeks. We're about two and a half weeks into it here. And uh we had a pretty tight pretty tight season, everybody. Uh you know, dropping really kind of within two weeks here. Uh still still have some more to go, but what's up?

[00:08:37]Yeah. No, I'm not mama. I'm not mama.

[00:08:40]I'm not mama. Um, we are in addition to uh the YouTube channel here, we are putting up some more content online as well. We're in the middle of doing a course on lamming.

[00:08:54]Now, we were going to make a a a beginner sheep course, hair sheep course. We still may do that, but I I it was just so overwhelming to come up with all of the content. There's just so much. It was too much, you know, to put in one course. I didn't feel like I could cover it all. So I'm like, let's just split up the different sections of, you know, shephering. And so that first one we'll put out will be a course on lamming. [music] So, you know, keep an eye out for that. It will be very very real world uh just real experience. It's not going to be a lot of text textbook baloney, okay? I'm not going to bore you, dude. Seriously, I'm not it. I'm not it. So, this is one of the reasons we we tag at a day [clears throat] old is because I can look 56 and I can look that up and find exactly who mama is. But she's probably calling this guy. Oh man, you're you're a chunk, aren't you? He's getting plenty to eat, so mama's definitely interacting with him.

[00:09:53]Okay, so B2156 goes with Piggins. Hey, you just need a break from him or what? Huh?

[00:10:02]Yeah, there we go. Go, nurse, bud.

[00:10:08]Yeah, there we go.

[00:10:11]Those boys are hitting the milkers. All is good. Now, you don't have to do that.

[00:10:15]They'll eventually, you know, especially a ram that size, he'll eventually find mama. They'll call to him. I think, you know what happens is mas the the lambs get milk, they take a milknap, they lay down and snooze, and then mamas wander off trying to find food and graze. And a lot of times they'll just get, you know, quite a ways away. Well, then the lambs wake up and oh my gosh, where' mom go?

[00:10:39]I'm hungry. You know, so then they and a lot of times mama doesn't always call back right away. I think she kind of she kind of needs a break. But anyway, I like to tag. Uh that's something we cover in the course as well, just the tagging process, recordeping um metrics, you know, on on lambs here. But I do like to tag, you know, within usually that next day after they're born. And uh, you know, a lot of times you get a deceased ram or a deceased lamb and it might be a twin or a triplet. And maybe mama's content with just just one. And so she is not really responding to that other one. And then you come out and you you know, you just show up and you find it deceased. Well, who does it belong to? you know, I mean, that's So, we've tried we've tried not tagging in the past, you know, waiting because I, you know, it puts a little bit of stress on those lambs, you know, piercing their ear. I don't really care for it doing that that early. And but we do get birth weights and uh uh anyway, having a tag and an ID and then matching that, keeping track of that and matching that with uh the U is just it just comes in handy. It's just helpful, you know, especially like that when you find one separated, you can kind of put them back. Makes me feel good. Anyway, right, let's get over here and check out this uh pasture where we stockpile grazed. Okay, out here on the stockpile grazed field. Uh we are coming into miday here. We spent 80 days on this doing our stockpile uh stockpile grazing over the winter. Conservatively said that we grazed about half of our Ohio winter here on this stockpile. I think we said about 15 animal units, sheep and cattle uh mixed in and uh [clears throat] we ended up on January 24th. Just going to kind of walk through here and show you. Uh this has just bounced back. Uh it's it's been good. I mean, look at the look at the red clover here. Uh it's it's bounced back well, but I I wanted to make a few points here uh about this as we look it over. You know, obviously some stuff going to seed head here, so we probably could have gone on it a little bit sooner, but you know, some of the stuff underneath here is just a little bit uh shorter. You know, I I would say it's not quite as thick uh as as usual. Okay. And uh you know, the point that I want to make here, well, before I do that, I want to say uh 80 days of stockpile grazing here. We ended up on January 24th. Uh if I've got shots of that, I'll I'll put them up here. Some of that winter stockpile grazing. But uh animals did did okay. Uh coming through that, we saved a tremendous amount on, you know, hay costs and and labor and also put down uh a lot of manure. You know, we talked about that and I tell you, we came out here in like March. Uh it was it was relatively difficult to find a cowpad.

[00:13:45]It's like everything has is is kind of gone. You can see this this spot here.

[00:13:49]I'm not sure if this is going to show up, but you know, here's, you know, my shoe and it's it's, you know, it's a little thinner in spots. Okay. So, um, you know, I did not want to come back on this too early and uh, you know, 100 it's been 108 days since we got off this. So, 108 days of rest. Now, obviously that rest was through February, March, April, and part of May here. Um, but, you know, it did it did bounce back. You know, we do have a lot of good stuff in here. You know, I don't think it's anywhere near as tall as it would be as if we hadn't stockpiled grazes.

[00:14:27]So, the point that I want to make and what I want to say to those that are thinking about doing this, uh, you definitely definitely have to let this go a little bit longer in the spring.

[00:14:38]Okay? Okay. But that was the purpose of having that, you know, you can see the the uh mama use and the lambs over here.

[00:14:44]You know, that was the purpose of having this pond pasture. We did not touch that all winter. And so, we came in and lammed on that. I had originally planned to lamb over here in this windmill pasture and just got to looking at it and kind of made the decision like, you know what, it's just not it's not popping back as early as it usually does. And so I think in my area, you know, doing this, if you're going to pull off the end of January, you know, you're you're you're going to have to give it until about Mother's Day before you're able to kind of come in and and reintegrate that, you know, into your rotation.

[00:15:20]And so, uh, but you know, we had kind of two halves when we did this as well. You know, I'm in the I'm in the half up here that was longer.

[00:15:30]And then this half back here, we cut we cut shorter. You know, very thick down here. Very thick down here in this valley. You know, that is another point I should make is, you know, speaking of this valley, this is going to hold more moisture down in here. We we did have a a period of time through the spring here where we got we got pretty dry. Uh definitely drier than normal uh for spring here. And so, yeah, you you kind of get down here in this valley and it does it does get a lot thicker it seems like. Now, this stuff that we really really hammered and and had it down short, you know, when we tested this, we were much higher in protein and energy and uh gave the animals a good shot.

[00:16:11]But, but you can definitely tell a difference between, you know, where we cut it short back here last year and then where we left it long up there.

[00:16:22]And uh I do think that longer stuff was a little bit better. Um you know, I know I know I spoke to the fact that I liked leaving a section long and a section short and then running the fence this way, you know, so so that animals had access to both long and short and they could kind of, you know, most of them went right to the short stuff, you know, obviously higher higher protein and energy. But I think, you know, and you know, and looking back, that was like midepptember that we pulled sheep off and I may have even mowed it, you know, at at midepptember, which is just too late.

[00:17:00]It's too late in the season. So, you know, [clears throat] as with farming, you know, everything's about timing and uh knowing what to do when, you know, and and so I think this year I think it's going to be a mid August kind of game here. And uh I don't know that I will do two sections again, shorter and longer. We'll see um you know kind of what the year brings here moisture-wise as well. We're short on moisture. I probably will just let everything go after mid August here and try it that way again. But uh anyway, uh definitely some good growth out here.

[00:17:39]But but but the takeaway here again, the point I want to make is you have to give this a little bit more rest when you come into spring, okay? Because you know, especially if you do it like we did it, I mean, we hammered this stuff.

[00:17:52]We hammered this whole pasture. I mean, I'll put the shots up here. You know, we took it down to nothing, you I mean there was mud in spots and uh you know having having good organic matter, good soil health. Um it really has has uh absorbed uh you know we have found a lot of earthworms uh coming into those uh cow pads and so those have all been uh pretty well reintegrated. Matter of fact, I spoke to the fact that I really didn't want to I didn't want to harrow those pads because they're earthworm homes in the spring.

[00:18:27]You know, it's like we're farming earthworms without really even trying in those cowpats. And uh that that gets me excited. Uh we see things out here like uh I saw a rainbow scarab dung beetle, you know, the other day. Um we've got, you know, all kinds of bird populations now. Redwing blackbirds, uh purple martins, you know, all kinds of to swallow right there diving. uh you know and so we'll put the uh we'll put the sheep on here. I think it is ready.

[00:18:59]Uh it's probably a little bit past ready, you know, with some of this uh coming into seed head here, but you know, the sheep will select. They'll get down in there and they'll they'll eat what they want. Um other point that I wanted to make is on lamming here, we really don't I I I do not bunch them up the sheep. Okay, we're not going to There's a redwing blackbird right there.

[00:19:22]Very cool. Uh I, you know, I'm not going to bunch them. You know, we're not going to go for uh you know, a world record here on, you know, a million pounds of of sheep, you know, uh per acre. You know, we're not going to mob grace sheep when we're lamming. Okay, that's that's the other point I want to make is it's it's the highest time that that the highest demand of nutritional uh demand on those sheep is right now, right? when they're when they're in uh early lactation.

[00:19:52]And we have got to keep them we've got to keep good grass in front of them. And this over here, they've got this eaten down. That's that's past where I mean, I know there's still some there, but but I need to pull them off of there. And I want to get them over on this on this good stuff. Look how thick that clover is uh over in here. Okay, so we're ready to make the move here. Here, I did have my drone operator show up. So, we'll get this some overhead shots for you guys.

[00:20:17]But, I'm hoping to kind of rattle these gates and I'm hoping most of them come this [clears throat] way cuz we got to come from that pond pasture down through here and make a turn. This will be the toughest part about it. And I got this net set up to kind of get them out into there. When you're running lambs with use, the point that we've learned over the years is that the lambs, especially if they're older than 48 hours, it's going to be like hurting cats. So you want to just focus on the use run the mamas.

[00:20:45]>> And mamas will call to little ones and they they should follow. Should being the key word here. Uh never had never had this many sheep. Never done a move here with 110 head of sheep. I see one I see one way back there on the hill.

[00:21:02]Yeah, we'll have to we'll have to go back after some scragglers here, but I think we can get most of them up here.

[00:21:10]We're out of these gates a little bit.

[00:21:11]Come on, sheeps. Come on, sheeps.

[00:21:14]Come on, sheeps.

[00:21:17]Okay, here we go.

[00:21:20]All right, so I'm going to kind of hang out here. Now, when we we kind of had them over in this area a little bit earlier on in the season, and this was the hangup point here because you'd get you'd get mama's that would come running into here and then see the lambs. The lambs are going to hang up right here.

[00:21:36]So, trying to make that turn is just it's too much for >> a lot of them. What does he get stuck?

[00:21:43]Oh gosh. Easy, easy. Yeah, he's got his he's got his head through there. Oh gosh. Easy, easy. Go under.

[00:21:51]>> Go.

[00:21:51]>> I'll go. Okay, there we [laughter] go.

[00:21:53]What the heck? You got him.

[00:21:55]>> All right. All right. Go on, little guy.

[00:21:57]Get out there.

[00:21:59]Okay. Here they come.

[00:22:02]All right. You guys want to go back on the back side and uh run them from back there? Just get as far back as you can.

[00:22:09]I'll uh Yeah. Push these. [laughter] Look at all the lambs lined up at the fence. They just can't They can't do it.

[00:22:21]Yeah, I know. I know. Yeah. Look at your head, man. All right. Yeah. [laughter] Oh, it's like hurting cats, literally.

[00:22:32]Go around the corner, guys. Look at that one there. I believe that's [crying] a nice looking ram. Look at him trying to mount already. Two weeks old.

[00:22:43]Go on.

[00:22:46]Okay. Why don't you I got them from here. I'll kind of keep them in here and then you go ahead and go back and get those. Okay, here comes some more mamas here. See if we can make this turn a little easier. There's a lamb. There's a pair that knows what's going on. Oh yeah, there we go.

[00:23:02]They should have enough grass where they are able to able to settle down.

[00:23:08]See? Yeah, these guys are completely lost here. They've lost mama. So, they'll just have to go out there and call. You can hear them. The sheep have kind of like a a half a half a bath that they do that I never heard them do until we got into lamming. And it's just a unique little uh call uh conversation back and forth, you know, between lamb and and mama. So, what's going on now? You know, you've got these lambs that are looking for mom and they're scared, but mom's, you know, mom's out there eating. She's like, I I got to get something get something good here. I'll get back to you later. And so we're going to have a little hollering here in the meantime. We're having lambs kind of popping through the fence here.

[00:23:49]So I'm going to kind of push everybody back out. Your mom's out in the field.

[00:23:56]Come on. Come on. Oh yeah. Look at all these guys.

[00:24:03][crying] [laughter] This is going to be an ordeal. Okay, I think we've got everybody in here now.

[00:24:12]Nope.

[00:24:13]See, they're trying to go back to where they were. That's all they know, but we just need to get them out here. Get them out here with mama's.

[00:24:22]Yeah. Why don't we see if we can run them away from that fence? Come on. Out with mamas. Come on. Okay. So, we got our electron set up here down the the fence line. You know, the paddics, the edge of the paddics are that way. So, we've got them out here in this windmill field. I think that was a little bit chaotic. The girls are kind of putting lambs back with with mamas. I don't think that's entirely necessary. They'll call mamas will call to them when they're ready. But that's okay. Guess makes us feel better the time being. But I think we probably could. Oh, cool.

[00:24:54]Look at the redwing blackbird there on the Wonder if they've got a nest or something there in the [crying] interesting kind of interacting with the sheep there. I've never never really seen that.

[00:25:07]But uh [crying] boy, that sun will get awful close. Um I I think if we had to do that again, moving this many and the young lambs, I think probably like setting up a net in the intermediate there and then running everybody into the net. the the lambs, believe it or not, the lambs are already electron trained. But, uh, leaving them in here uh, you know, in an intermediate area, let everybody get re situated, find every, you know, lambs, find mamas, and then go ahead and move them into here. Just we had a lot of lambs trying to get back through the fence. You know, that's that's all they know. They think, you know, home is over that way. And so, they're slowly moving out here into the field. Uh, man, is that a pretty view or what?

[00:25:56]And uh [screaming] they'll uh they'll reunite here. They'll call to each other and uh I feel really really good about this uh nutrition that we're getting. So Oh yeah. Here you go.

[00:26:11]That's what mama was all Oh, look at that.

[00:26:15]Yep. That was mom and dad there landing on those branches.

[00:26:22]Red red redwinged uh black bird there.

[00:26:25]So, how cool. Well, hopefully the sheep stay out of that. We'll see. Okay, about an hour or so later here and everybody's ventured out into the field there.

[00:26:37]Sounds like I still got one mama calling there, but everybody's pretty much pretty much settled down for the most part. I think everybody's kind of reunited, found everybody. Just uh takes them a little while to get sorted out.

[00:26:51]You know, we kind of go through this in the evenings as well. They've got this time and we call it we call it the zooies where they just the lambs just get crazy, run around, jump straight up in the air and it's really really fun to watch. But then everybody gets all whopper jawled and away from mama. And so there's a bunch of hollering and just chaos there. And then it's amazing cuz you come back out just after dark and everybody's lying down. Uh lambs are beside the right mama. Nobody's hollering. So, they eventually get it all sorted out here. But I tell you, I really would not want to be making a a long move with a bunch of lambs that uh [clears throat] especially when they're not used to it. Uh that could really get a bit uh cumbersome. But anyway, making it work here. Uh hey, thanks for uh being here today. Hope you're well. Be at peace today.

[00:27:48]Talk to you next time. Take care.