Greg figured out the sheep water supply in unison with the cow herd (flerd) twice daily moves.

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:03]Good day, folks. This is Greg Judy at Green Pastures Farm. Somebody had asked what we're doing, you know, with the farm, the the sheep and the cattle, what are we doing about, you know, the young ones getting them a drink. Right now, the lambs are not drinking. They're getting all their water from the ewes, but you know, we have some yearling ewes that aren't quite tall enough to get up on the livestock tank.

[00:00:27]And so, what we did is we've got this It's about uh 10 in high.

[00:00:34]And I've got it all leveled up, and it actually when I built this pond back in 2002, I put a hydrant in down here.

[00:00:44]And uh I've got a shutoff right here.

[00:00:48]And so, I I never used the hydrant. I just put it in in case this would ever break, in a pinch, I could set a tank up and I could get water for the cattle.

[00:00:59]Well, I just hooked the hose onto it, brought it over here and put a film act There's a film act float valve on there.

[00:01:09]And um the sheep can go off underneath this wire. The cattle cannot drink from that because they can't get through the wire.

[00:01:18]So, you know, I've seen dogs The dogs drink out of cattle tank. They They can easily reach this cuz our dogs are so big.

[00:01:28]Um I've seen some of the bigger ewes drink I adjusted my water to where it's right almost on the edge. So, I've seen sheep drinking here, but they also can drink over here. The The more timid ones that don't want to compete with the cows, they can drink right there.

[00:01:45]So, that's pretty cool.

[00:01:48]Um the water is an issue on some of these farms cuz you got to figure out how to get it to the sheep. I've got some taller water tanks.

[00:01:56]We're going to actually use this same setup, except for hooking to a hydrant, we're just going to do a gravity suction. So, it's going to be a siphon.

[00:02:06]I shouldn't say suction.

[00:02:08]A siphon. We'll pull a siphon.

[00:02:10]That red hose, just set it in the tank.

[00:02:13]Put a weight on it so the cattle don't pull it out of the tank. And it'll go to this little That's a 50-gallon tank.

[00:02:20]Sheep don't drink much. And um so, they'll have plenty of water there.

[00:02:25]And they'll be unimpeded by the cattle because we're going to protect it with this.

[00:02:30]Sheep will go underneath it. They don't even know it's up there cuz it's high enough that they don't even see it.

[00:02:36]Um we also have the same kind of wire around our dog feeder over there.

[00:02:41]Uh it's down the hill.

[00:02:43]Uh seen cot- Cotton's over there sleeping in the dog feeder right now.

[00:02:48]That's one of our guard dogs.

[00:02:51]But, I hear the sheep over here. Um it's going to be time to move them here in about an hour.

[00:03:00]Sasha and interns are over here getting the getting more sheep fence in today.

[00:03:09]That's what I'm doing.

[00:03:11]You see the brush on the front of that grapple.

[00:03:15]I'm getting caught up. I still got quite a bit to go, but um it's supposed to rain tomorrow. I hope it does.

[00:03:23]I don't think you can see the sheep from here or not.

[00:03:28]Oh.

[00:03:30]There's Alice. He's saw me.

[00:03:36]Man, we get the lambs.

[00:03:38]The lambs are just pouring out.

[00:03:41]Come here. Hey.

[00:03:43]Come here.

[00:03:44]Alice, come here.

[00:03:49]Duke's already wagging his tail.

[00:03:52]Come on.

[00:03:54]There's big boy.

[00:03:58]>> [whistles] >> They didn't know who I was. I just snuck up on them.

[00:04:04]Cotton's [laughter] down there sleeping.

[00:04:10]Come here.

[00:04:14]We've got the cattle They're up at the very top.

[00:04:17]These are the calving the calving herd.

[00:04:20]I think we're up to 61 new baby calves in the last 3 weeks.

[00:04:26]And uh I don't know. There's a ton of lambs out here.

[00:04:30]We just finally gave up trying to keep count of the lambs.

[00:04:34]But, uh I think they got about another 8 to 10 days and they'll be done.

[00:04:41]The sheep are a lot more uh Well, they just get with it.

[00:04:47]They get They get They get the lambing process done quick.

[00:04:51]Cuz the rams, when you turn them in, they get the breeding process done pretty quick.

[00:04:58]I got to show you this pond.

[00:05:00]I finally got some good rains uh late winter, early spring.

[00:05:05]This pond was down Oh gosh.

[00:05:09]Probably at least 3 ft from where it is right now.

[00:05:12]Um it could still use another 3 ft to bring it clear up to the top over there.

[00:05:17]But, I'm happy with it. Um I wasn't real happy three That's been 3 weeks ago now.

[00:05:24]We got all that rain in um yeah.

[00:05:30]So, what Sasha's doing is he's putting two wires around the pond just on one side.

[00:05:36]This side. The other side only has one wire on it. That lets the sheep go under that single wire, and they can go in and graze around the pond.

[00:05:46]Plus, they can drink from the pond if they want. But, they they're putting a putting the hammer putting hammer on them invasive brushes trying to grow up. So, it's protected by a wire, and a cow can't get to it, but a sheep can.

[00:06:02]Um that's all a win-win.

[00:06:06]But, I tell you, these cedar trees, folks, it's just a constant Look at that.

[00:06:16]I mean, they are in here now.

[00:06:20]You just got to con- constantly stay on top of the cedars cuz they are uh Well, the birds The birds eat the seeds.

[00:06:30]And then, of course, they poop them out around your farm, and then you're going to have a ton of ton of cedars.

[00:06:36]But, it's all part of it, you know, you just I do like what the sheep are doing to the buck brush here. You can tell they've been in there.

[00:06:45]They've worked a lot of leaves off the blackberry vines, autumn olives, uh thorn trees, multiple rose bushes.

[00:06:55]Here's an autumn olive that didn't have a very good day.

[00:07:02]I like it when I see leaves missing, and I know they went into the belly of a sheep that are nursing twin lambs.

[00:07:12]So, raising lambs now from autumn olive leaves.

[00:07:16]Super, super nutritious.

[00:07:19]So, I like that. You know, when you can take a nasty piece of brush that was a problem, and now you've got something to eat it.

[00:07:30]Is it a problem anymore?

[00:07:33]Maybe not. Maybe we call that forage.

[00:07:36]So, it has required quite a bit more work um on our fencing.

[00:07:44]You can see all of our fences now have two wires on All the gates have two wires.

[00:07:50]Um I'm using rope.

[00:07:52]That horse rope.

[00:07:54]That's what we use for our gates. It's very durable.

[00:07:59]It's got uh I think it's 20 some strands of conductive wire in it.

[00:08:06]Uh the wind. I used to use tape, white tape. And the tape the wind would grab it and blow it.

[00:08:13]And in period of a couple of years, it would break the tape. This rope doesn't catch wind, and it's a lot stronger than tape is.

[00:08:22]So, that's what we're doing.

[00:08:27]Yep.

[00:08:28]But, that tractor's got my name on it.

[00:08:30]It's like big.

[00:08:33]You better get with it.

[00:08:35]I still got a ton of brush to stack. I'm catching up with the our guys and our girls.

[00:08:44]Um Folks, that tractor out there, I've already stacked probably a mile a total uh fence brush just since I got over here at 11:00, and it's 4:00.

[00:09:02]So, in 5 hours, and it took a little bit of time for lunch, um this 75 horse tractor has saved me days and days and days of hand stacking brush. So, what Sasha and them are doing, they're just cutting it.

[00:09:17]They're pulling it away from the fence, and they're leaving it.

[00:09:20]And I've got this whole line all the way through here.

[00:09:24]There is a bunch over there. I was in on that cutting some of that.

[00:09:28]And uh with this, you can lay it You can lay it down on the ground, and open up your grapples, and just start driving forward like this, and it starts accumulating it.

[00:09:39]And when you can't accumulate anymore, and you see the brush coming back towards you, just stop, crunch it, pick it up, and go stack it. So, that's where I'm going with this pile.

[00:09:51]I've got it stuck on here, and then I'm going to just keep going. We've still got daylight. Folks, y'all have a good one.

[00:09:58]Be seeing some of y'all in the grazing school that's coming up. Uh the Let's see. The advanced school is the 7th through the 9th.

[00:10:06]And then we have the beginner grazing school the week after that. I believe it's the 15th and 16th. But, you can go to our website at greenpasturesfarm.net.

[00:10:15]Check it out. It's filling up. It's going to be a nice crowd, and we're going to be teaching a lot of people uh what we do here on the farm, keeping it simple, not how to spend all your money.

[00:10:26]And, you know, there's there's [snorts] logical ways to do things in this business and it's a great business if you make money at it every year.

[00:10:34]If you lose [snorts] money because you didn't do it right, you didn't set up your operation correctly, and you don't stay focused on the right things, it's not a fun business to be in. It's not fun losing money every year. So, anyway, come check it out. We'll see you at the Green Pastures Farm. It's going to be held right here on our farm. And, uh hope to be seeing a bunch of y'all soon.

[00:10:54]Take care and have a safe one out there.